Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
by Thomas Hardy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas HardyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-12-23
ISBN: 0141439599
Number of pages: 608
Publisher: Addison Wesley
Book Reviews of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Perhaps Hardy's Fictional Height -- A Dark Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Tess of the D'Urbervilles may be Thomas Hardy's greatest novel and would certainly be almost anyone else's. A dark, sweepingly tragic vision, it is a masterpiece in nearly every area: characterization, plot, meaningful themes, prose, and more.
Hardy is well-known for being depressing, and this may be his most depressing novel. The structure of his dark novels is greatly influenced by Greek tragedy, and this is probably his most purely tragic. Many have thought of him as taking a near-malevolent attitude toward characters like Tess, who indeed seems born only to suffer. The concatenation of dire circumstances engulfing her is truly stunning, and perhaps even more notable is the ceaseless way in which they flow together to wreak the greatest possible devastation. Hardy is famous - or infamous, depending on whom you ask - for complex plotting and melodramatic coincidence, and this has some of his most highly wrought examples. Tragedy of this extent requires a very deft hand to pull off well; it is all too easy to become hyperbolically implausible or even melodramatically corny. However, Tess is so well planned and finely executed that the events unfold not only with verisimilitude but almost with inevitability.
This last is another distinct Hardy characteristic. He had long been an agnostic by, abandoning belief in a benevolent overseeing power - nay, in any force that took account of humanity at all. Added to this was a profound awareness of human insignificance and a consequent absence of conventional meaning. However, he wrote nearly throughout his artistic career about a concept that he eventually came to find very plausible - the Imminent Will, a blind force controlling the fate of humanity and perhaps all else. Hardy is also generally considered a naturalist - a writer depicting environment as a crucial, almost insurmountable force in shaping personality and destiny. Like all of his greatest fiction, Tess dramatizes this vividly, portraying characters unable to escape wretched circumstances and even more wretched fates. Such ideas held great sway with nineteenth century writers and thinkers but was almost entirely replaced by existentialism. Few will now agree with the shadowy forces underpinning the book's tragedy, but the dramatization is so well-done and stunning that it will at the very least provoke thought about important philosophical and theological issues - and of course bring admiration for Hardy's great artistry.
As all this suggests, the novel is incredibly moving. One would be very hard-pressed to find a more pathos-drenched story, and Hardy runs us through a dark emotional gamut. Much of this has to do with the character of Tess, generally considered Hardy's best and seemingly his favorite. The subtitle calls her "A Pure Woman," and so she is in a sense; an innocent, naļve, and ignorant country girl of the kind no longer possible in the developed world, she is far closer - in spirit and otherwise - to people from civilization's first few thousand years than anyone from the last century or so. Hardy plays up her symbolic worth, making her a sort of Eve and giving her many pagan goddess elements. He is well-known for his heroines and generally for depictions of women far removed from Victorian stereotypes. Though not current feminist ideals, they stood out as strong individuals with real feelings and thoughts; Hardy's gender and sexuality views were well ahead of his time, greatly influencing his portrayals. Tess is his most famous, fully realized, and complex example. The most obvious sense in which she is pure is sexually and otherwise morally, but she is not the virginal domestic queen of most Victorian fiction. The pivotal scene in which she loses virginity is deliberately ambiguous, leaving it unclear if she is raped or seduced. Either way it is a sort of reverse Genesis story, as the pure woman is made impure - by Victorian standards - by a worldly, sensualistic man.
Hardy uses this dramatic scene and its aftermath to boldly confront gender and sexuality issues that had always been central to his artistic concerns. He pushed the proverbial envelope in these areas from the start, often facing censorship and always struggling to get his point across in print. A few years before Tess he wrote a famous letter saying his goal was to destroy the doll in English fiction in order for England to have a fiction at all, and Tess was his bravest and most direct attempt. She is in many ways a simple village girl but is not unaware of her beauty, and Hardy was one of the very first modern writers to even acknowledge that women could experience sexuality. We must remember this was several years before Freud revolutionized this area and also keep in mind that this was a time when statues were covered and it was not socially permissible to even mentions legs or ankles. Women were idealized as non-sexual beings meant only for domesticity and with no thoughts beyond it. It is now near-impossible to appreciate just how daring the character was or adequately convey her impact. Hardy's depiction and the issues he uses her to discuss made him world famous - the talk of high society and casual conversation as well as the literary world. For example, in his autobiography, he recalls how a society hostess told him she seated guests according to whether or not they sympathized with Tess and then had them debate. The novel received many glowing reviews but also about as many condemning it as perversely immoral. Hard as it is to believe since it was positively passé even a few decades later, many thought it nothing less than pornographic - and a shockingly bad influence to boot. Perhaps the greatest sign of how much things have changed is that Roman Polanski's faithful 1979 film version was rated PG in the UK.
This was clear reactionary hyperbole from a society so repressive that it had become pathologically hypocritical. Tess was a long overdue wake-up call. Victorians were essentially scandalized by the idea - from a man! - that it might not be a woman's fault if she is raped or seduced. This would be laughable if it were not so sad, but their offense hardly ended here. The novel vividly portrays the plight of many women at the time, especially lower class ones. Far too many women unfortunately identified strongly with Tess' problems: unsought attention from higher-class men that may have been flattering but was above all confusing; pregnancy resulting from rape or seduction without a father to raise or even acknowledge the child; suffering at the hands of grossly unfair sexual double standards from prospective and actual husbands; and, perhaps worst of all, consequent ostracism not only from society but often even from family and friends. Hardy was astounded by how many women, including quite a few high society ones, wrote him saying they were in Tess' position or a very similar one and how much the book meant to them. All this shows how strikingly well the novel dramatized contemporary issues; it is in many ways a novelistic equivalent of Henrik Ibsen's contemporaneous "problem plays" dealing with current social problems.
This was a large part of the reason for Tess' impact and success, but the book would not still be so widely read and appreciated if it were the only feature. As Hardy envisioned, time has proven him right and the reactionaries wrong; the violent outbursts are now seen as perversely fascinating and mildly amusing historical curiosities, but the book's themes shine at least as brightly as ever. Feminists have unsurprisingly long had great interest in Hardy and this novel particularly, which has many themes of note to them and numerous others. Sexuality and morality aside, Tess strikes a somewhat subtle but ringing chord for women's rights via its bleak depiction of their woefully low Victorian status. Hardy movingly and accurately shows how barren life was for women, especially intelligent ones; there was not only a dearth of intellectual stimulation but hardly any stimulation at all. Sexual politics are still hotly debated and may never be resolved, but hard as it may now be to believe, rural women at the time of the novel's setting were actually kept in such ignorance that it was possible for them to not be aware of seduction even as a concept. The novel shows the tragic consequences that could so easily result from this and associated complications. Perhaps more importantly, and even more movingly, the novel also shows the grinding poverty that many rural English women faced. Worse still, it starkly portrays the consequent necessity of earning money without training, help, or encouragement. Hardy sometimes goes into considerable detail to describe the farm labor that girls like Tess had to turn to, putting particular emphasis on then-new machinery. Some may find this somewhat boring, but the point is well taken, especially as the infernal imagery used to describe the machines is particularly emphatic and highly symbolic.
This leads in to some of Tess' other themes, giving the novel relevance to many with no particular interest in women's issues. Rural poverty in general - a perennial Hardy theme - is on grim display, letting readers see just how much life has improved for farmers and other laborers in the last century plus. Hardy's work is also notable for showing what one critic calls "the ache of modernity," and Tess possibly depicts it most painstakingly and memorably. It is important to remember that Hardy grew up in a world without automobiles, electricity, railroads, and many other modern conveniences that were beginning to appear when the novel was written. Tess shows how such innovations were slowly filtering into rural England, profoundly changing a society that had altered little since the Early Middle Ages. It is thus of significant historical and sociological interest.
Relatedly, and as always with Hardy, place is of great importance. Perhaps no one equals him in depicting settings with such close detail and vividness that they become an integral part of the story; setting is never mere backdrop in Hardy. Tess is one of his Wessex novels depicting the part-real, part-dream country, based on his native Southwest England, that he made world famous. We get a good idea of what Hardy country looked like and how its people lived. The landscape is not as important as in some Hardy novels, but we still get an unforgettable depiction of a bygone era.
But the novel is great over and above all this; one can indeed love and appreciate it without knowing any of these factors. The engrossing and profoundly moving story is a large part of this, but Tess herself is at least as important. One of literature's most sympathetic characters, readers have found her irresistible from the start. It is often said that Hardy's depiction is so idealized that he almost seems to be in love with her - and there are indeed some interesting biographical stories behind the claim -, but beauty is only one of the factors making her memorable. Hardy describes her so minutely and reveals her inner thoughts with such breathtaking force that she seems truly alive in a way very few characters do. Labeling her "Pure" caused more controversy than any other element, and perhaps all will still not agree, but it would be very hard to find another character so much more sinned against than sinning. Some of her thoughts and actions may seem extreme - or, in our greatly changed society, perhaps absurdly naļve -, but only the few who have suffered comparable sorrows can say what they would do in her situation. It would take a very hard heart indeed not to feel for Tess, and the strength of her characterization, along with gut-wrenching depiction of her downward spiral, continues to fascinate and move readers - and indeed viewers, as the novel has been filmed no less than seven times and also been adapted into numerous plays, operas, etc. - more than a century after she first became a sensation.
Nor is she the only worthwhile character; Tess has perhaps Hardy's largest, most varied, and most interesting cast. Though set almost entirely in Wessex, we get a good cross section of humanity: Angel Clare, who is intelligent and sensitive but selfish; his father, who is a Christian in the truest sense and a rare example of Hardy depicting a minister positively; Alec D'Urberville, the kind of hedonistically and hypocritically evil man who habitually preyed on girls like Tess; Tess' father, an alcoholic and possibly insane deadbeat of the kind who may first seem harmless and even comical but who inadvertently lead many rural families to ruin; and Tess' mother, who though well-meaning, has a combination of harsh practicality and ignorance leading to near-Machiavellian scheming that often has unforeseen negative consequences. Characterization is not Hardy's acknowledged strength, but this proves that he was on par with the greatest writers here as well as elsewhere.
Another of the book's biggest and most easily recognizable assets is incredible prose. Hardy was a poet at heart, and it shows. An autodidact, he has a distinct style with a strong self-taught air that can be hard for current readers to immediately grasp; his eccentric vocabulary, full of archaisms and "dictionary words," and his heavy use of dialect can easily make his work seem stilted and older than it is. However, this is the apex of his prose as prose; its beauty and power are simply undeniable. Though a very dark novel, the writing often reaches heights of sublime beauty, and philosophical asides about humanity's insignificance, the absence of providence, fate's apparent malice, and social stigmas' drastic effects are immaculately phrased and stunningly forceful. The narration during Tess' lonely ride, the short segment with her son, and the final chapter is almost unmatched in literature, and the writing throughout is incredibly strong - so much so, indeed, that the book would be worth reading for it alone.
In reality, of course, there are many other reasons. Elevated prose and other complexities may mean it is not the best Hardy introduction, and new readers would probably be better off with more accessible masterpieces like The Return of the Native or The Mayor of Casterbridge. Some who have read Tess first have also said they found it so depressing that they vowed never to read Hardy again, but its undeniable greatness forced nearly all to break the vow. Thus, whether you read Tess first or not, Hardy is a must read for any serious lover of literature, and Tess is at or near his considerable summit.
Summary of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
The chance discovery by a young peasant woman that she is a descendant of the noble family of d'Urbervilles is to change the course of her life. Tess Durbeyfield leaves home on the first of her fateful journeys, and meets the ruthless Alec d'Urberville. Thomas Hardy's impassioned story tells of hope and disappointment, rejection and enduring love.
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