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When the poor Durbeyfield family learns that they descend from the ancient d'Urbervilles, they send their eldest daughter Tess to claim kinship with a rich…
When the poor Durbeyfield family learns that they descend from the ancient d'Urbervilles, they send their eldest daughter Tess to claim kinship with a rich family of that name. The son, Alec, takes advantage of her, and Tess returns home in shame. Years later she finds love with the idealistic Angel Clare, but when she confesses her past on their wedding night, he cannot forgive her.
Context and significance
Published in 1891 with the defiant subtitle 'A Pure Woman', Tess outraged many Victorian readers with its defence of a woman condemned by double standards. Its landscapes of rural Wessex are among the most beautiful in English fiction, and its ending is unforgettable. Hardy's next novel, Jude the Obscure, went even further.
About the author
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was the son of a stonemason in a Dorset hamlet and trained as an architect, restoring country churches. His novels, set in the imaginary region of Wessex, began with modest success, and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) allowed him to write full time.
After the storm of criticism over Jude the Obscure in 1895 he gave up novels for poetry and wrote some of the best English poems of the twentieth century, many of them about his first wife Emma after her death. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart in his home parish.