Tess of the D'Urbervilles

I really enjoy reading Thomas Hardy. I feel bereft at the ending of this book. I miss the characters, the English countryside and the writing style . I also have such a sense of melancholy at the ending. The reader was lovely and her interpretation of Hardy's words increased their beauty and eloquence.

A beautiful novel full of mysterious, luminous landscapes and portraits, painted with care by Hardy, as an artist on a canvas. My favorite quote: "Many...have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective experience."

When I read this in high school I doubt that I had the same insights as I did this time around. I don't really remember much about the book from that time but the thought that stayed with me all along was how unfair it was that Tess should have to suffer because she was raped. I saw it as an example of the double standard in the treatment of men and women. I really thought Angel Clare was the villain but this time around I have more sympathy for Angel.I also this time felt that Hardy's portrayal of Tess was rather one-dimensional whereas I am pretty sure that as a teenager I thought Tess's character was well-rounded. His continuous reference to her lips, her eyes, her complexion, her figure and the effect that her loveliness had on men seemed just too exaggerated, almost cartoonish. I almost felt that Hardy was saying that men couldn't help lusting after her because she was so beautiful. There's a scene where Tess ties a cloth around her head like she is suffering from a toothache and cuts her eyebrows and the next man who sees her comments on her ugliness. Maybe men in that day were more free in their comments but I found this scene unbelievable.I still loved the book and, of the tragedies by Hardy that we have read so far, it is my favourite. Hardy's description of the countryside are some of the best in literature I think. I marked the following passage as I read it:The season developed and matured. Another year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.I also really appreciated his description of life on the farms and the differences between the lush meadows in the valleys to that of the barely tillable lands on the hilltops. Hardy obviously had spent a lot of time on farms although I'm not sure if he actually partook in the labour. Students of agrarian history could do worse than read Hardy for insights into farming at that time.I am so glad I got the chance to re-read this book. I got a lot out of it the second time around.

Tess breaks my heart all over again on every rereading. The plot and social commentary are biting; the intersection of doctrine with life damning; the minor characters compelling and the major characters unforgettable. This remains one of the few books I ever wrote a paper about that I still want to reread annually. If a more devastating and cathartic book is out there, I have not found it.

Absolutely heartbreaking and so beautifully written I wanted to cry.

The slow tragedy of pure-hearted Tess as life slowly and it feels like inevitably results in her tragic demise.

It is a long time since I read this (for my A Levels, and if I said how long that would be giving away too much!), and it probably merits a reread.On a par with Mme Bovary and Anna Karenina (in period and theme), it is the story of a fallen woman, a victim of her class and the patriarchal society she lives in. She is seduced by the caddish Alex D'Urbeville, and subsequently cast away by her fiance, Angel (and on this basis he is the more dastardly, as Alex at least tries to atone for his sins). A tragic ending.

This is a beautifully written, tragic romance. Hardy's writing style is poetic and romantic. The characters are well written and well developed, especially the ethereal, sad main character of Tess.The writing style is truly beautiful, and the plot is as dramatic and sad as Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." This is a classic love story, my favorite romance ever.

Quite the phenomenal book. This was the first book that I have read by Thomas Hardy and it leads me to believe that his other stuff should be well worth my time to pick up. The story in this was phenomenal as well as the pace and way in which he carries the story along as far as the detail used. It was quite brilliant and very refreshing to read. It seems to go well with this time of year(fall), which was a fortunate coincidence.

This is an enjoyable read, and I found ‘The Maiden’, the first of six ‘phases’, to be five star, really getting it off to a great start. I’ll describe the main elements of its plot (mini spoiler alert), but not too much beyond that. We’re first introduced to Tess Durbeyfield’s father, who is somewhat lazy and a drinker; when he finds out he has a connection to an ancient family in the region, he comes to have some unrealistic, high falutin’ hopes about falling into fortune. One night when he can’t drive his beehives to the market for the following morning’s sales, Tess goes in his place. Unfortunately, she falls asleep at the reins, which Hardy describes cosmically: “With no longer a companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning against the hives. The mute procession past her shoulders of trees and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality and the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in time.”Shortly afterward, in a shocking sequence, Tess gets into a violent accident with a wagon coming the other direction, which kills the family horse. The resulting financial hardship encourages her parents all the more to send her off to the distant d’Urberville family, to work on their property and form a connection with them, but there she becomes the prey of the dastardly Alec d’Urberville. Hardy hints at Alec’s intentions in ways that make the reader cringe, and in an absolutely brilliant sequence late at night after a dance, he rapes Tess. In the morality of the time, this stains Tess; she feels guilty over it for the rest of the novel and unworthy of a future husband, while Alec happily goes on with his life. Grrr.Hardy was a transitional writer in the late 19th century, including old school melodrama in his writing, but also modernist psychology, and challenges to religion and the morality of the day which deeply offended Victorians. As an extension of that, his (ostensible) protagonist Angel Clare, the more enlightened gentleman who finds Tess and falls for her, is a transitional thinker. On the one hand, Angel is aware of evolution and flouts religion and conventionality, but on the other hand, he has old-fashioned about a woman’s virtue. Between the outright evil of Alec, who Tess has fled, and Alec’s hypocrisy, it’s hard to like either character, or to know who is worse, but I think that’s part of Hardy’s point. The unfairness of life for women will almost certainly make you grit your teeth, and Hardy may go on a teeny bit too long in the center sections of the book, but there is a lot to like here.Quotes:On art:“She thought, without exactly wording the thought, how strange and godlike was a composer’s power, who from the grave could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone had felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard of his name, and never would have a clue to his personality.”On beauty:“How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman’s lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabeth simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no – they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.”On death, I thought this was an interesting perspective, and yes, our ‘deathday’ is out there somewhere for all of us:“She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her undoing at Tantridge with its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby’s birth and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen and among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation? She had Jeremy Taylor’s thought that some time in the future those who had known her would say, ‘It is the- th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died’; and there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to her terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know the place in month, week, season, or year.”On knowledge:“’Because what’s the use of learning that I am one of a long row only – finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that’s all. The best is not to remember that your nature and past doings have been just like thousands’ and thousands’, and that your coming life and doings’ll be like thousands’ and thousands’.’‘What, really, then, you don’t want to learn anything?’‘I shouldn’t mind learning why – why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike,’ she answered, with a slight quaver in her voice. ‘But that’s what the books will not tell me.’”On religion, harkening back to worship of the sun:“The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression. His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him.”And this one, questioning God in a world of cruelty:“The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained with her in the infant’s loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her terrors about his soul to have been somewhat exaggerated; whether well founded or not she had no uneasiness now, reasoning that if Providence would not ratify such an act of approximation she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the irregularity – either for herself or for her child.”And:“Once upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation, that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine; and his father’s grief was of that blank description which could not realize that there might lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less a half truth or a whole truth, in such a proposition.”Lastly this one, an example of Hardy taking a simple scene on a dairy farm and both putting it in perspective in the bigger picture, but also pointing out it’s no less important than scenes of royalty; this quote really has it all, compared to how simply it may have been put:“Long thatched sheds stretched round the enclosure, their slopes encrusted with vivid green moss, and their eaves supported by wooden posts rubbed to a glossy smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows and calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion almost inconceivable in its profundity. Between the posts were ranged the milchers, each exhibiting herself at the present moment to a whimsical eye in the rear as a circle on two stalks, down the centre of which a switched moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows accurately inwards upon the wall. Thus it threw shadows of these obscure and homely figures every evening with as much care over each contour as if it had been the profile of a Court beauty on a palace wall; copied them as diligently as it had copied Olympian shades on marble facades long ago, or the outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs.”

Prachtig, in de eerste plaats als smartelijk liefdesverhaal.Centrale figuur Tess is heel geloofwaardig uitgewerkt; bijna sotto voce.Naturalistisch accent in sociaal stigma, de erfelijke belasting en het noodlotsthema maar niet overdreven.Figuur van Angel is intrigerend, maar niet helemaal geloofwaardig (zijn sociaal nonconformisme vloekt met zijn verstoting van Tess om sociale redenen). Het einde (vooral het huwelijk van Angel met Liza Lie is heel ongeloofwaardig)Prachtige setting in agrarische Engeland in volle verandering (machines)

Brilliant. A real classic. Heartbreaking in its view of the life of a woman condemned by her beauty, social class, and time.

I picked up Tess to listen to during the last week of September to celebrate Banned Books Week. Originally published in 1888, this book was often censored for sexual content. It is still often included as required reading in many high schools - and is still occasionally censored.

Tess Durbeyfield comes from a poor family that are descendents of the noble D'Urbevilles. In the hopes that Tess can marry a distant cousin, Alec D'Urbeville, Tess' parents send her to work in his household. Instead, young Tess is seduced by Alec and her reputation is ruined. She goes to work as a dairy maid in a distant farm where she is unknown. She falls in love with a handsome gentlman, Angel Clare, throwing Tess in a dilemma of whether or not she should tell Angel of her past.

This book is a wonderful example of the double standard of sexual conduct held during Victorian times between men and women. Although Tess' problems are really caused by men, she pays the ultimate price for their behavior. I found this story haunting - so beautifully written and told, and so sad. Wonderful narration by Simon Vance!

The essence of the plot is appealing, but Hardy drapes everything in so much symbolism and imagery that it makes it so difficult to get to the actual point. I downloaded this on my Nook since I somehow made it through high school and college without reading this, and I've been slogging my way through it. It will happen. Eventually.

Much better than I remembered from high school. A story about a woman who just could not get a break, with a lot to say about Victorian morals, social class and economic realities as the English countryside and villages emerged into the modern world.

Another TV tip from Faulks on Fiction, about as successful a selection for me as reading The End of the Affair. Tess is well crafted, but unevenly developed, and although I liked Hardy's style to begin with, there was far too much introspection and pastoral eulogising between the main events of the story. Novels filled with thinking, especially Victorian novels, bore me silly.Tess is a victim throughout most of the story, until Hardy has an attack of the potboilers in the final chapters, and her choice in men (or the men who choose her) is woeful, from priggish Angel (what a name!) to Hardy's omniscient narrator, who obviously fancies her. She is a Victorian pin-up, with 'peony' lips (or cheeks in the Graphic) and a voloptuous figure. And although I thought that Tess' confrontation with her new husband was tense and incredibly emotional, he is hardly worth the bother. Likewise, Alec D'Urberville is a pantomime villain with no depth or shade whatsoever.Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the contrast between the 1891 text reprinted as the Penguin Classics edition, and the very Victorian censorship of the same story for Graphic magazine in Hardy's time (the footnotes mark where passages were changed, such as the description of Tess' looks). The prudishness is almost laughable! (The central conflict of Tess was 'cleaned up' as a clandestine marriage between Tess and Alec.)

I could barely make it halfway through this book before I had to toss it aside. I hate it when the author tries to write a sentence phonetically, instead of just typing it out in standard English, and then saying (spoken in a _____ accent). It makes it very difficult to read. That bit aside, the little that I did read seemed to be following a very tragic route. Firstly, her parents are extremely foolish, and very poor, and have a string of children to feed. She accidentally kills the family horse, and then tries to restore honor by going to work for what she thinks is her rich relation (they aren't even related). Her mother hopes she will marry the rich relation. Instead, he rapes her. The child that she has (aptly named Sorrow), dies in infancy. That is about the point where I started to just lose interest. It's a bit depressing to be reading about rape and infant death. The book does have some redeeming qualities. For instance, Hardy was a bit of a rebel for his time- he wrote things that seriously wounded Victorian sensibilities. He wrote of poverty, death, and rape, at a time when that was not considered to be part of "polite" conversation. What today might be considered mild, was certainly at the time the book was written, considered outrageous. This is probably the reason why this book would be included on a school's reading list.

This is definitive Hardy: Verbose and pastoral, with highly-detailed descriptions of the scenery that make the setting as important a character as the characters themselves.Tess is all innocence, vulnerability, and well-meaning ignorance. Decended from a now-impoverished line of a noble family, she and her family are resigned to a life of hard work. Her life is thrown into upheveal when she becomes the pawn of two rich men: Alex, with bad intentions, and Angel, with good. No matter what their intentions, their meddling sends Tess to her downfall. She overcomes seduction, or rape, depending upon your interpretation of the scene, only to suffer the hypocrisy of the man she loves, who cannot forgive her for having the audacity to be forced upon. Classism clashes with the reality of the poor working woman's life. Injustice is a major theme, and Hardy spends much time on bringing home the point that Tess, though not a bad person, is constantly outcast as a sinner. If this all sounds familiar, think of its American counterpart ``The Scarlet Letter." But while Hester Prynne wears the symbol of her sin on her breast, Tess carries her shame inside of her, only to cause a furor when she confesses under the innocent delusion that Angel will forgive her. With Hester's sin exposed, society can gradually adjust ot the idea of her disturbing presence. Tess's sin confessed disrupts the illusions of her innocence, causing her to be rejected in an impulsive burst of hypocrisy, immaturity, and vengefulness. In fact, we can judge the morality of the characters by the way they treat Tess.The book is rife with symbolism, a dream for English majors bent on interpreation. Those simply reading for fun may be put off by Hardy's wordiness. He often says thirty words when five will do, but this is all part of his distinguishing style. If you're the type to get lost in words, Hardy is an excellent choice of an author.

It took me forever and a day to get stuck into this one. Tess' discovery of her aristocratic ancestry sparks a chain of misfortune and disaster which leads to her tragic downfall. Knowing the basics of the plot, I wasn't expecting sunshine and happiness from this book, but I was struck repeatedly at just how downright miserable Hardy is. My annoyance at Tess and the other female characters for their weakness and dependence came second only to my anger at the two male protagonists for their piggishness and idiocy. It wasn't until about half way through the story that I got properly hooked, but any book that can make me tut and sigh audibly, as this one did, could be considered a good read.

Never has a story gripped me more and made me fiercely proud to be a woman of our modern era. For a book that Hardy meant to create a conversation about the treatment and view of women, I would say he succeeded...even today. You fall in love with Tess, you feel for her pain, and you cheer her on in the hopes of some happiness. Tess, the book, is horribly tragic, but makes its point about the subjugation of women and the double standard placed on women of the Victorian era.

After all of this time, and after all of the books I've read, this is my first Thomas Hardy novel. To be really honest, PBS recently ran the BBC production of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and I wanted to read the book before I watch it (it's still on TiVo). Now I'm afraid...this book was so incredibly depressing! That's not to say I didn't love it. I won't rehash the plot; there are wonderful examples of critique, criticism and plot summaries all over the internet. I found Tess to be a complex character -- while she is certainly a very tragic figure, she is proud, able to face adversity and determined to do what it takes to survive in the most trying of situations. The male characters of this novel I found to be the least likeable, no matter who they were. But on the other hand, it also struck me that one could argue that men like Angel were also victims of the times -- although he felt himself to be more idealistic than other men of his generation, and although he escaped his father's plans for his future, he was still a product of ingrained proper Victorian society, where scandal could ruin a "good" family. He has to go to a place where societal ideals mean nothing before he turns himself around. As a human being, this doesn't excuse his behavior, but it does help to explain it. I enjoyed reading this book, but it was like watching the proverbial train wreck -- you just know what's going to happen and yet you cannot turn away. I see many more books by Hardy in my future. I'd recommend it for others who might be considering reading this author's works; if you're not into tragic heroines you may consider skipping it. Overall, a fine book, one I'm very happy to have read.

Apologies for the length of this review, but it's still considerably shorter than the book and may save you time in the long run!

It all started well enough with a lightly humourous approach to Tess's father's discovery of the ancient bloodline. The plot then moved along fairly quickly to find Tess in a new position in the service of the only other living D'Urbervilles - who turn out not to be actual D'Urbervilles at all, but that's another tangent altogether. The master of the house takes a shine to our Tess and she daily encounters his attentions in pursuit of her, but she's having none of it. Thus, late one night, on her way home from the local village, the rogueish D'Urberville gets her alone and has his wicked way with her.

This is the point at which, I am sure, the reader's interest was intended to have been piqued and hereafter taken on a journey of Tess's turbulent consequential situations and emotions. Sadly, for me, this was the point where it all started to lose my attention. It really isn't clear that Tess has definitely been raped - yes, you can read through the lines and work it out but the next chapter meanders along pointlessly before we finally confirm that Tess has not only had sex (consensually or otherwise) but has had a baby as a result. Only the conversations between Tess and her mother: 'Twas not your fault', 'Aye, but I'm such a terrible person nonetheless' etc. clarify that Tess really did not welcome the physical advances of D'Urberville that night.

***SPOILERS***

As if Tess wasn't getting morbid enough, the baby then dies and is not provided with a Christian burial because it wasn't properly baptised. Tess is understandably grief stricken but somewhat stoic and ends up taking work as a milkmaid. From thereon in, Tess continues in much the same vein, lamenting what a terrible person she is, a sinful woman who no man will ever love, blah blah blah, while keeping her head down at work.

Once again though, she has caught the attention of a young suitor, Angel Clare; only this time she quite likes him back. But remember, dear reader, she is a FALLEN WOMAN and must therefore rebuke all his advances! This is where it goes from slightly dull to downright ridiculous. Angel carries on pursuing her for some time, she keeps knocking him back, her roommates think she's barmy as they're all madly in love with him too, ergo she tries to push him in their general direction, so altruistic and magnanimous is she.

Inevitably, she gives in and admits she fancies him but she won't marry him because she's a HARLOT and IMPURE and he must never know! So then we trawl through another few chapters which pretty much repeat the above ad nauseum. Then she decides she will marry him, but should she tell him about her past or not? (repeat) Her one attempt to tell him is foiled by blasted artistic licence/fate and she goes ahead and marries him anyway. And then tells him. And he handles the whole situation in an unconditionally loving, non-judgmental and accepting way. Except he doesn't. Poor old Tess is fraught for days while she waits for him to decide how he feels about it all and, alas, he tells her he doesn't feel very good about it at all. He adopts a full on 'woe is me' attitude not dissimilar to his new (JEZEBEL) wife's bemoanings and buggers off to Brazil. Not before bumping into one of the other ladies who loved him so, inviting her to come with him, then changing his mind in the space of two pages. Meanwhile, the other ladies haven't fared too well in their grief at losing out on him to Tess: suicide attempts and alcoholism no less! He must be one hell of a catch!!

Anyway, the story then rambles on again, with Tess moving around the fields of Wessex like a ghost, lamenting all the while and wishing her husband would come back to her. Then, completely inexplicably, D'Urberville reappears in her life, begs her forgiveness, and asks her to come and live with him as his wife - because apparently she IS really his wife, what with him being the first to do rude stuff to her and all. Even more inexplicably, she agrees to it! Only, would you believe it? Just at that exact moment, Angel decides he's been a bit of a wally and returns to England to patch things up with poor Tess. Following a short conversation between the estranged spouses, Tess (without any description of thought pattern or motive) only goes and kills D'Urberville! She could have packed her bags and left, of course, but that just wouldn't be melodramatic enough.

Needless to say, it all catches up with her and, following a five night stay in an empty mansion and a night under the stars at Stonehenge of all places, the final page of this sorry tale sees Tess swinging from the gallows while her husband (the one she legally married, not the one she had a child to) walks off hand in hand with her little sister.

THE END

Maybe as a 21st century feminist I cannot possibly sympathise with Tess; her wet, pathetic insistence that she didn't deserve any happiness coupled with her tendency to just go along with what everyone else wanted, to increasingly stupid lengths just grated on me. I did not find any of the characters particularly likeable, or any more than 2D caricatures. Angel degenerated into a pious little upstart and the only positive came towards the end when Tess finally gets a bit indignant and writes him a letter that gives him a jolly good ticking off! Unfortunately, she can only maintain this attitude for all of five minutes until she claps eyes on him again and... well, you know the rest.

I've since heard that Hardy wrote the equivalent of soap opera stories in his day and I only wish I had known this before I picked up 'Tess'. If you're looking for Emo-style, weak characters who take ages to make a single decision over the most minute points, Tess is for you. If you prefer strong characters, fast-paced stories and a satisfying outcome, steer well clear!!

It's a well written piece of fiction, but oh, after reading it, one thirsts for a book with a happy ending.

Depressing. There was no point in this novel where Tess was really happy. I remember looking at a lot of puppy pictures - Youtube wasn't around yet to provide puppy videos.

 This was the first time for reading a Hardy novel, and it wasn't quite so bad as what I thought it would be. Hardy's pastoral descriptions of country life in the English countryside were so acute. The courtship between Tess and Angel was beautifully portrayed, before Tess's shattering confession, and the lurking Alec D'Urberville in the background was a very strange rival.. There were patches where Hardy would ramble on about something completely allien to me and would then return to the story, which is why I have rated it lower. But when it got back on track, it was great. I did not agree with the ending, though.

the first 80% of the bookmare rather slow. lots of repetitions and hidden meanings that uounalmost miss the rape until you read that she has a baby. thrn you roll your eyes for a long time while thr main characters are courting and then again when they make themselves miserable. however, the ending was a surprise and for me the best part of the book when Tess finally took some action.

It seems that people either love or hate Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Among those who hate it the main reasons for disliking it appear to be that the book was too dark and depressing, or that Tess was too passive and weak. Although I can understand these complaints, I personally fall into the group of readers who loved the book. I don't have a problem with a story being tragic, melodramatic or depressing as long as it's well-written. And Hardy's writing is beautiful. With other books I am often tempted to skim through pages of descriptions of trees, fields, sunrises etc, but Hardy's portrayal of nature and the English countryside is so poetic I wanted to read every word. Be prepared, though – you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about milking cows, threshing wheat and slicing turnips!The injustice of a society with different sets of rules for men and women, Christianity vs pagan symbolism, the Industrial Revolution, and the class system of Victorian England are some of the interesting topics this book covers. The only thing I didn't like about the book was the ending – the final chapters just didn't seem to fit with the rest of the novel.So, if you haven’t read this book yet give it a try – you might hate it...but you might just love it like I did.

Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas HardyStory of a woman who is raised in the 1800's and does manual labor for her parents as a milk maid.She had once gone with others but one man refused to dance with her and he meets her again and she never forgets him.Loved learning the process of doing the job of milk maid, so much more than i ever realized. Skimming and then the milking.She is tortured being married to the Aristotle and really treasures everything she sees in Angel.Drastic changes when Angel returns.... summaries of other works by the author are listed at the end.I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

Dear Tom,Why do I keep reading your books? No one, and I mean no one, treats his characters (or her characters) as badly as you do. Well, maybe with the exception of Upton Sinclair, who must have been greatly influenced by you.I read Jude the Obscure several years ago and closed the book with a "Never Again." I was sure I could not bear to read another one of your books after somehow finishing it in spite of that awful letter from the kids "Because we are too menny". I can't figure out what your overall point is except that if one is poor, one is destined to be miserable and that is all there is to it. I guessed what Tess would be about just from its title. I've read lots and lots of other 19th century fiction. Many books have treated the issue of women who lose their chastity, as it would have been put at the time. Many books are pretty grim about their fate. However, you manage to make it worse than the norm because your characters are so very sympathetic. As I read on, I know that Tess' life is going to go from bad to worse, that her ridiculous level of nobility will end up undoing her, that all bad things will happen to her. Sure enough, but what else would we expect of you. What is the point, Tom? Why do you write these novels? What do you want your readers to do? Unlike Dickens, you don't seem to be a social reformer. You don't seem to ever paint the slightest possibility of an alternative to all this woe. On the other hand, your respectful-but-not-convinced portrayal of evangelical Christianity doesn't seem to show religion as a way out, either. Were you just trying to convey existentialist despair? Weren't you a little too early for this?I am really giving you up this time. This is it. You have been too cruel on your characters and your readers and this is the last of your novels I plan to read. How could you, Tom? You are too cruel, and I will never forgive you.Yr servant,Anna

I truly believe that this is the greatest book ever written. There is nothing about this book that I can criticise - it has drama, romance, betrayal, violence, tragedy and every part of it lulls you in. What the truly great thing about the book is that all the characters are flawed - Tess, even as a great literary heroine is naive to a fault, almost to the point of stupidity at times. She's selfless to a fault and because of her inexperience she never truly fights for what she wants, and it's a trait that sometimes makes you want to shake her and tell her she's worth more, that she deserves happiness and that she's got to fight for it more, but her naivety is a trait that you find yourself accepting and wanting to protect her from.

She's a victim of circumstance, and whether you buy into her being raped or merely seduced by Alex, the undeniable fact is that she was taken advantage of. Alex is a character who comes in with the air of a stereotypical victim complete with the evocative language designed to show how worldly wise and sleazy he is compared to Tess' ignorance and innocence. He, in a lot of ways though is an honest villain - he does her wrong, attempts to attone before basically backing her into a corner in her weakest moments and looking after her and her family when the hero of the piece has left her abandoned. Make no mistakes though, Alex is never a guy you like, or fully trust and even when he's 'good' there is still the dangerous air about him and the way he plays on her doubts, insecurities and fears shows that even as a changed character, at the end of the day he is still just a predator.

Perhaps the most interesting character is Angel - the love interest and one more man who does her wrong. He meets and falls in love with her and pursues her relentlessly until she agrees to marry him and then, when she eventually agrees he casts her aside with such stunning hypocrisy that you want desperately to hate him for it. He admits that prior to their marriage that he had taken another lover and that confession leads to Tess confessing what happened in her own past and the scene where she's begging his forgiveness is heartbreaking.

Angel, deciding he can't be with Tess due to her 'sins' decides to separate for her until he can forgive her, and Tess, in her shame at hurting him agrees to every term he demands. Angel, after separating from her decides to go to Brazil but in his heartbreak he considers taking a mistress with him and propositions Tess' friend and it is only when she admits that Tess loves him more than she ever could he realises his folly, but it's a sign of the utter hypocrisy of the times.

The return of Angel, and the culmination of the Tess,Angel,Alex dynamic is heartbreaking. You want so badly for Angel and Tess to have their happily ever after, you want Tess to have good things happen for once in her life, but ultimately you know that it's not going to happen. I remember reading this for the first time as a kid and being shocked and heartbroken how it ended despite the clues throughout, and even after multiple re-readings and knowing how it ends, I still read it and get shocked and heartbroken because I will never stop wanting Tess and Angel to get away. There's something about tragedy and soulmates being wrenched asunder under such tragic circumstances after wasting so much time due to stupid things that will never not be relevant be it in 19th Century Wessex, or 21st century anywhere.

If you haven't read it, please do. It's an amazing book with amazing characters and everyone should read it at least once in their lives.