Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman | Literary Precedents
The somewhat lengthy list of coincidences in the novel, which individual readers can extend to triple or quadruple its length, would indeed seem to support the assertion that Tess's life is fated, that she, like Frank Norris's McTeague (of the novel of the same name, 1899; see separate entry) is a plaything of fate and that her story is essentially a de casibus tragedy, or a tragedy of fate. Her confrontation with destiny would then be what an important character in King Lear (1605), the great tragedy often associated by critics with Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge...
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