Darwin and Social Darwinism

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed groundbreaking advancements in science and technology, profoundly transforming society. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, introduced in his 1859 publication On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, had far-reaching cultural effects. The notion that humans evolved from apes challenged traditional religious and societal beliefs. It undermined faith in the Biblical creation story and, consequently, many religious convictions. Victorians, who lived during Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901, were particularly disturbed by the idea that their ancestors were animals. They valued order and moral integrity and considered themselves, as British citizens, the epitome of civilization.

To make Darwin's theory more acceptable, a related concept known as Social Darwinism emerged. Advocates of this social philosophy argued that Darwin's principle of "survival of the fittest" also applied to human societies. They claimed that the existence of lower social classes could be attributed to their perceived lack of intelligence and initiative compared to the upper classes. Angel alludes to this theory when he expresses astonishment at the absence of "Hodge" among the workers at Talbothays. He notes, "The conventional farm-folk of his imagination—personified in the newspaper-press by the pitiable dummy known as Hodge—were obliterated after a few days' residences." He is further surprised to find in Tess "the ache of modernism." For Tess, Angel, and their contemporaries, the God of their childhood no longer provided satisfactory answers. Darwin's work disrupted the security of a society that once offered definitive answers to every question; like Angel, many began to place their trust in "intellectual liberty" rather than religion.

Industrialization and Rural England

When the railroad reached the southwest region of England where Tess was born, the area still maintained an isolated, almost medieval lifestyle. The railroad facilitated the migration of rural inhabitants seeking employment, enabling them to leave the towns where their families had resided for generations. It also promoted new agricultural practices. Large dairies like Talbothays, where Tess worked as a milkmaid, thrived because rapid train services could transport fresh milk to densely populated areas. As Tess and Angel transport milk cans to the nearest train station, Tess contemplates that the next morning in London "strange people we have never seen" will consume the milk. The trains transformed a tightly-knit community into one where consumers and producers never met, and where strangers coexisted in increasingly larger groups.

England entered an agricultural depression in the 1870s, partly due to the completion of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States in 1869. This development made it easier and cheaper for American goods to compete with British ones. As rural workers struggled to find employment, they migrated to British cities, doubling the urban population between 1851 and 1881. Farming became less profitable, prompting the consolidation of smaller farms into larger ones to maintain profitability. Innovations like the steam threshing machine at Flintcomb Ash reduced the demand for agricultural laborers. Large landowners, disconnected from the families living on their estates, chose not to renew leases purely for economic reasons, as seen with Tess's family on Old Ladies Day. Hardy criticized this practice in his essay "The Dorsetshire Labourer," published in Longman's magazine in July 1883, and quoted in Martin Seymour-Smith's biography of Hardy. Hardy states, "But the question of the Dorset cottager here merges in that of all the houseless and landless poor and the vast topic of the Rights of Man."

Women in Victorian Society

In Tess, Hardy explores both the "Rights of Man" and, with equal empathy, the rights of women. Women in the Victorian era were idealized as man's helpmate, the keeper of the home, and the "weaker sex." Heroines in popular fiction were expected to be frail and virtuous. Hardy's decision to subtitle his novel "A Pure Woman" outraged some Victorian critics, as it challenged their deeply held beliefs. The Victorian era, marked by national pride and a belief in British superiority, is also remembered for its strict moral code, which was unequally applied to men and women. The term Victorian has come to describe any person or group with a rigid, uncompromising sense of morality. Women faced discrimination not only from societal norms but also from the legal system of the time. Until the 1880s, married women could not hold property in their own names, and the wages of rural workers would go directly to the husband, even if he neglected his family. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 allowed both men and women to divorce on the grounds of adultery, but a woman seeking divorce also had to prove gross cruelty or desertion. Women who sought divorce were often ostracized from polite society. Much like children, women were expected to be "seen, but not heard," or as Seymour-Smith notes, "The Victorian middle-class wife...was admired upon her pedestal of moral superiority only so long as she remained there silently."

Narrator

Tess of the d'Urbervilles narrates the life of a young woman who is seduced and subsequently has a child who passes away. Later, she meets another man she wishes to marry but struggles to disclose her past until after their wedding. Her husband then leaves her, leading Tess into a state of despair that drives her back to her former seducer. When her husband eventually returns, Tess kills the man she is living with. Hardy employs a third-person ("he/she") omniscient narrator to unfold Tess's story. This narrator not only describes the characters but also delves into their thoughts. Additionally, Hardy uses his narrative voice to offer philosophical reflections on the events. The novel's closing paragraph, starting with "'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess," exemplifies how Hardy comments on the unfolding events. Some critics argue that the novel might have been more effective if Hardy had refrained from such commentary, allowing the characters' actions to speak for themselves. At various points in the novel, Hardy's narrator shifts from an omniscient perspective to that of a local storyteller. For instance, when recounting Tess and Angel's first encounter, where Angel chooses another girl to dance with, the narrator admits to not knowing the girl's name. "The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed down," he remarks.

Setting

The narrative unfolds in Wessex, a fictional region inspired by the Dorset countryside where Hardy was born and which captivated him throughout his life. Hardy breathes life into Wessex by portraying the area's folk traditions, such as the "club-walking" in the scene where we first encounter Tess, the local dialect with its vivid expressions like "get green malt in floor" (meaning to become pregnant), and its superstitions, including the tale of the d'Urberville coach. Hardy's settings often reflect the emotions of his characters. At Talbothays Dairy, where the love between Angel and Tess flourishes, the place is described as "oozing fatness and warm ferments," with "the rush of juices almost audible beneath the hiss of fertilization." This setting is teeming with the essence of fertility and sensuality. In sharp contrast, Flintcomb Ash, where Tess goes after Angel abandons her, is depicted as "a starve-acre place" with fields of "a desolate drab" hue, where the labor is grueling and humiliating. The scene of Tess's capture occurs at Stonehenge, the renowned prehistoric monument on the Salisbury Plain, featuring large upright stones surrounding an altar stone. Notably, it is on this altar stone, believed to have been the site of ancient sacrificial offerings, that Tess lies when the police arrive to arrest her for Alec's murder. Through his choice of settings, Hardy subtly comments on the story's events without additional narrative interruptions. By placing Tess on the sacrificial altar, Hardy underscores his view of her as an innocent victim. The time of year also plays a crucial role in the novel, as Hardy uses the changing seasons over roughly five years to symbolize the shifting fortunes of his heroine. It is "a particularly fine spring" when she arrives at Talbothays, summer during Angel's courtship, and finally winter at Flintcomb Ash as she struggles to evade Alec's advances once again. The time of day is equally significant: unfortunate events typically occur in the evening or at night.

Symbolism

The settings in Tess of the d'Urbervilles serve as symbols, with their names holding meanings beyond mere geographical locations. Mar-lott, where Tess is born, hints at her "marred" or troubled fate. Flintcomb Ash, as its name suggests, is a harsh and desolate place. Additionally, several characters have symbolic names. For instance, Mercy Chant, the girl Angel's parents prefer for him, is portrayed as excessively devout. Angel Clare, perceived as an "angel" by Tess and her three milkmaid friends, even plays a harp. However, the harp is secondhand, symbolizing Angel's flawed nature. Throughout the novel, Angel and Tess are symbolically linked to Adam and Eve from the Bible. One of the most discussed scenes in Tess of the d'Urbervilles features Tess approaching Angel, who is playing his harp, through a garden overrun with wildflowers and weeds, including an apple tree. As she moves closer, she is oblivious to the "thistle-milk and slug-slime" and other unpleasant natural substances staining her skirts and arms. Although Talbothays might seem like Paradise, readers recognize that this Garden of Eden is tainted. Later in the story, further references continue to align Tess with Eve and Angel with Adam. In contrast, Alec appears to Tess while she plants potatoes in a Marlott field. Amidst the fires of burning weeds, he emerges holding a pitchfork and declares, "You are Eve, and I am the old Other One come to tempt you." Tess is also frequently compared to a trapped bird. Other significant symbolic images in the novel include a bloodstained piece of butcher paper caught in the gate of the Clare residence when Tess tries to contact Angel's parents in Emminster, the bloody heart-shaped stain on the ceiling at "The Herons" after Tess kills Alec in the room above, and Tess's capture on the sacrificial stone at Stonehenge.

Wessex

Wessex. Hardy’s fictionalized version of the region around Dorset, a coastal county in southern England, taking its name from the West Saxon kingdom of the sixth to tenth centuries. Hardy introduced Wessex in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). In later fiction, he layered a detailed topography modeled on actual locations with archetypal symbolism. The capital city of Wessex, Casterbridge, mentioned several times in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, is Hardy’s version of Dorchester.

Marlott

Marlott. Village in the north of Wessex on a plain called the Vale of Blackmoor (or Blakemore), modeled on Marnhull, that is Tess Durbeyfield’s original home. Even before she is forced to leave this “fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry,” mishaps and catastrophes in its environs indeed seem destined to mar her lot in life.

Trantridge

Trantridge. Town east of Marlott, based on Pentridge, where the Durbyfieldses’ supposed D’Urberville relatives live in a redbrick lodge. At the edge of this newly rich estate, Hardy places the Chase, a forest dating back to the time of the Druids that he bases on Cranbourne Chase, once a royal hunting ground. There, primeval shadows and modern corruption collude in Alec D’Urberville’s rape of Tess.

Chaseborough

Chaseborough. “Decayed market-town,” located two or three miles southeast of Trantridge, whose hard-drinking looseness drives Tess into Alec’s company.

Talbothays Dairy

Talbothays Dairy. Destination of Tess’s second journey from home, in the Great Dairies region, which Hardy alternately calls Var Vale and Froom Valley after its double-named river. Lying symbolically in almost the opposite direction from Trantridge, the fertile valley is the scene of Tess’s summer healing and rebirth after her rape. At times, Talbothays seems to be Eden after the Fall, at others a pagan pastoral idyll.

Emminster

Emminster. Little town surrounded by hills in which the religious family of Tess’s husband, Angel Clare, lives. A dominant church tower signals the contrast to Talbothays’ natural, pagan lushness.

Wellbridge

Wellbridge. Village in which Tess and Angel honeymoon in a farmhouse. There her ancestors’ looming portraits represent Tess’s entrapment by her past, and Angel leaves her after she finally reveals part of her past to him.

*Brazil

*Brazil. South American country to which Angel flees to gain new farming experience after he is disillusioned by Tess’s revelation. In addition to reflecting a trend among British agriculturists of the period, Angel’s stay in the New World serves to liberate him from England’s narrow conventions.

Flintcomb-Ash

Flintcomb-Ash. Bleak “starve-acre place” about fifteen miles southwest of Marlott where Tess works at swede-hacking during a harsh winter. Hardy explicitly contrasts Flintcomb-Ash, his fictionalized Nettlecombe-Tout, with “Talbothays Dairy, that happy green tract of land where summer had been liberal in her gifts.” At Flintcomb-Ash, Tess simultaneously endures seasonal hardship, renewed sexual predation by Alec, and mechanical oppression by a demoniac, black threshing machine.

Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill

Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill. Former home of Tess’s highborn D’Urberville ancestors, now buried in its churchyard. The migration of Tess’s family from Marlott to Kingsbere (modeled on Bere Regis) exemplifies village depopulation caused by seasonal work but also symbolizes how Tess’s heritage has a death-grip on her fate.

Sandbourne

Sandbourne. Fashionable resort modeled on Bournemouth where Angel finds Tess after returning from Brazil. Hardy uses this “city of detached mansions; a Mediterranean lounging-place on the English Channel” to emphasize his rural heroine’s sense of alienation in living as the wife of the newly rich Alec, whom she kills after she turns away Angel.

New Forest

New Forest. Setting for Tess and Angel’s delayed consummation of their marriage, contrasting with the antiquity of the Chase.

*Stonehenge

*Stonehenge. Circle of stone monoliths placed in prehistoric times on a plain about eight miles northwest of Salisbury, which Hardy calls “ancient Melchester,” in the county of Wiltshire. In this pagan setting, which Angel associates with human sacrifices to the sun, Tess rests on a stone slab before her arrest for Alec’s murder. As the police close in around her, the setting makes her not merely the law’s victim but also a sacrifice to some unjust, even cruel, universal power beyond natural phenomena.

Casagrande, Peter J. Tess of the D’Urbervilles: Unorthodox Beauty. New York: Twayne, 1992. Focuses on Hardy’s intertwining of beauty and ugliness, of moral and aesthetic issues. Examines Victorian attitudes toward women, Tess’s “terrible beauty” and parallels between her suffering and the horse’s death. Analyzes Angel as a mix of convention and newness.

Kramer, Dale, and Nancy Marck, eds. Critical Essays on Thomas Hardy: The Novels. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990. Discusses Hardy’s plots and rhetoric, with focus on individual novels. Good essay on Hardy’s understanding of Tess as a woman, examining Victorian debates and postromantic ideas. Treats awareness of language as a shaping force.

Moore, Kevin Z. The Descent of the Imagination: Postromantic Culture in the Later Novels of Thomas Hardy. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Uses language and cultural dominance issues to discuss Tess’s quest for beauty and freedom.

Vigar, Penelope. The Novels of Thomas Hardy: Illusion and Reality. London: Athlone Press, 1974. Analyzes Hardy’s techniques and style. Examines Tess of the D’Urbervilles in terms of Hardy’s notion of imaginative flights that emerge from visual effects. Analyzes the novel’s structure in terms of its contrasts—Tess’s purity and guilt, reality and perceptions.

Wright, Terence. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1987. Summarizes critical approaches to Tess of the D’Urbervilles: social, character, ideas, formal, and genetic. Gives overview of criticism on the novel. Synthesizes the best criticism, emphasizing importance of place, ambiguity of causes, human insignificance, and the inevitability of human tragedy, with Tess representing individual and larger tragedy.

1890s: Due to low prices and the mechanization of farming equipment, the rural population was compelled to migrate to urban areas as smaller farms became less profitable.

Today: Family-operated farms are vanishing across the United States at a rate of several hundred annually, mainly because large corporations dominate food production and pricing.

1890s: The introduction of rail transportation connecting rural areas to bustling cities in the late nineteenth century made dairy farming more appealing than crop farming. This shift occurred because dairy production was less dependent on weather conditions, had lower costs, and had a growing customer base within easy reach.

Today: While small dairies still exist, rising production costs and declining prices have pressured many dairy farmers to sell to larger enterprises. On average, a dairy in the western United States now milks between one to two thousand cows.

1890s: Women were unable to divorce their husbands for infidelity unless they could prove cruelty or abandonment.

Today: All fifty states allow couples to divorce by mutual consent. However, in twenty states, pro-family groups have proposed, and in some cases passed, legislation to make divorce more challenging when children are involved.

1890s: State-supported education was available for all children, and schooling was compulsory until age eleven.

Today: Growing dissatisfaction with public education has led to the exploration of alternative educational methods, including independent public charter schools and homeschooling, which now involves 1.2 million students.

1890s: Women seeking financial independence could work as teachers, rural workers, domestic helpers, and nurses; those who pursued nontraditional careers like medicine faced ridicule.

Today: Although women, on average, still earn less per hour than men, they now have unlimited career opportunities. In 1997, Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, removing yet another barrier to women's advancement.

1890s: Women who had children out of wedlock were considered "ruined," facing social marginalization along with their children.

Today: Single parenting is now common, with over 30% of U.S. children born to unmarried parents.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles was turned into a film directed by Roman Polanski in 1980. The movie featured Nastassja Kinski, Leigh Lawson, and Peter Firth. It garnered several Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. The film won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. You can find it through Columbia Tristar Home Video.

Additionally, it was released as an audio cassette narrated by Davina Porter and published by Recorded Books in 1994.

Similar to most of Hardy's works, Tess of the D'Urbervilles employs traditional and understated literary techniques. The novel skillfully utilizes an omniscient narrator, providing, like many Victorian novels, a friendly guide to help readers understand the unfolding events. As Hardy bemoans the misguided decisions of Joan and John Durbeyfield that chart a bleak future for Tess and her siblings, we come to depend on Hardy's narrative "voice" for interpreting these developments. He excels in depicting sweeping scenes of social realism, such as the harvest at Marlott and later at Flintcomb-Ash, as well as the "lady-day" evictions that force the widowed Mrs. Durbeyfield and her family from their home.

Much like The Mayor of Casterbridge, this novel, although extensively revised from its serialized form to its book publication, still retains the hallmarks of serialized storytelling, including occasional anticlimactic moments. Hardy highlights smaller units of meaning by titling sections of the novel as "Phases," often with double or ambiguous meanings. For instance, "The Rally" describes Tess's journey to Talbothay's to escape the shame and sorrow of Marlott. Here, she falls in love with Angel (a positive "rally") but is tormented by her perceived unworthiness to be his partner (a reminder that her fate denies any true rally). Similarly, Hardy names the final phase of the novel, chapters 53 through 59, "Fulfillment." This section narrates the idyllic week Tess and Angel spend at a closed estate (a symbol suggesting that their happiness must be stolen in a world of sorrow), as well as the murder of Alec and Tess's eventual execution by hanging, which ironically fulfills the death wish she has harbored since returning pregnant to Marlott, vividly captured in the scene where she visits her D'Urberville ancestors' graves.

The novel also incorporates the archetypal myth of the scapegoat. Carpenter succinctly describes this aspect as an "archetypal folk tale of the wronged maiden who cannot escape her past, who ultimately turns on her seducer to destroy him, and who loses her own life as a result." Most critics and readers would find much to agree with in this characterization.

Most group discussions will likely and effectively center on questions of guilt and responsibility. Another productive area to explore is the issue of gender roles. To what extent is Hardy's portrayal of Tess as a victim of entrenched gender roles deliberate? Several omniscient passages in the novel highlight certain behaviors as "feminine," often in an unflattering light. Do these sections undermine the perception of Tess as a victim of repressive gender attitudes? Here are some additional questions to consider.

1. At the conclusion of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, two characters, Angel and Tess's sister Liza-Lu, pause and kneel in prayer when the signal is given that Tess has been executed. Tess had suggested to Angel that he marry her sister after her death. Is Hardy presenting this as the fulfillment of Tess's wishes, an act of loyalty to her memory by the two people she loved most? Or is there an element of irony, suggesting that Angel and Liza-Lu will move on to a future that was denied to Tess? Does their implied future together honor or diminish Tess's memory?

2. One of the novel's most striking scenes occurs on the way to Flintcomb-Ash, where Tess sleeps in a grove and awakens to find pheasants wounded by hunters and left to die. To what extent do the pheasants symbolize broader themes in the novel? How do we interpret Tess's systematic strangling of all the pheasants she can catch?

3. A highly acclaimed passage in the novel deals with the "lady-day" removals that force members of the old peasant class to move from one job and home to another. Discuss the sociological implications of this passage. Is it a lament for a lost, stable peasantry? A call for reform in England's labor practices? Or a recognition of inevitable social change?

4. Murder is never justified. How close is Tess's killing of Alec to being an exception to this rule? Is it an act of fate, or an act of choice?

5. How effectively does Hardy explain the love that the three dairymaids, as well as Tess, feel for Angel Clare? It is evidently more than mere infatuation. What is it about "Mr. Clare" that so captivates the young women?

6. Compare Tess's time at Talbothays Dairy with her stay at Flintcomb-Ash as variations on Hardy's vision of England's vanishing rural economy. While there are clear and significant differences, are there underlying similarities?

7. What aspects of Tess's character or situation might be emphasized by a reader influenced by modern feminist theory or concerns? How consistent do you think such interpretations are with Hardy's perspectives at the time the novel was written?

8. How believable is Alec D'Urberville's conversion to evangelical Christianity? Does Hardy make this transformation convincing? Or is this change part of Hardy's relentless critique of Christianity? Alternatively, is the conversion simply necessary for the plot, setting up Alec's inevitable backsliding?

9. Tess ventures into the crypt of the local church, where she discovers the burial chamber of the D'Urberville family and encounters the unrepentant Alec. This is the last time we see her before Angel finds her as Alec's mistress. How much credibility does the crypt scene, with its gloomy associations with mortality, lend to Tess's eventual submission to Alec's demands?

10. At what points in the novel did Tess make significant choices about her future? Was her fate shaped by chance, economics, culture, or destiny? Were her decisions influenced by external factors? Which of these choices set off a chain of events that appear to conspire against Tess's happiness?

Sources

Harold Bloom, "Introduction," in Thomas Hardy: Modern Critical Views, Chelsea House, 1987, pp. 1-22.

Butler, Lance St. John, Thomas Hardy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Donald Davidson, "The Traditional Basis of Thomas Hardy's Fiction," in Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Albert J. Guerard, Prentice-Hall, 1963.

Gittings, Robert. Young Thomas Hardy. London: Heinemann, 1975.

Gregor, Ian. The Great Web. London: Faber, 1974.

Guerard, A. J. (ed.). Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.

Albert J. Guerard, "Introduction," in his Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1963, pp. 1-9.

Florence Emily Hardy, "Background Hardy's Autobiography," in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy, 2nd edition, edited by Scott Elledge, Norton, 1979, pp. 343-63.

Hardy, F. E. The Life of Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan, 1962.

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Norton Critical Edition, WW Norton, 1979.

John Holloway, "Hardy's Major Fiction," in Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Albert Guerard, Prentice-Hall, 1963, pp. 52-62.

Martin Seymour-Smith, Hardy: A Biography, St. Martin's Press, 1994.

Review of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, in Athenaeum, January 9, 1892.

Review of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in Times (London), January 13, 1892.

Dorothy Van Ghent, "On Tess of the d'Urbervilles," in Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Albert J. Guerard, Prentice-Hall, 1963, pp. 77-90.

For Further Study

Byron Caminero-Santangelo, "A Moral Dilemma: Ethics in Tess of the d'Urbervilles," in English Studies, Vol. 75, No. 1, January 1994, pp. 46-61. Caminero-Santangelo begins by noting that the world of Tess is a post-Darwinian one where ethics lack a natural foundation. He argues that the novel's "ethical center" can be found within a "community of careful readers" who recognize the novel's injustices and follow Tess's example in challenging them.

Peter J. Casagrande, Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Unorthodox Beauty, Twayne's Masterwork Studies, 1992. In this comprehensive study, Casagrande argues that Hardy, while exploring why innocents suffer, finds beauty in Tess's suffering even as he condemns it.

Graham Handley, in Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Penguin, 1991. Handley examines Tess in terms of "narrative structures." He emphasizes the roles of the characters and also explores the novel's "figurative patterns" and "themes."

Irving Howe, Thomas Hardy, Macmillan, 1967. Howe offers an extensive discussion of Tess, including a comparison between Hardy's novel and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

Lionel Johnson, "The Argument," in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy, 2nd edition, edited by Scott Elledge, Norton, 1979, pp. 389-400. This is a part of poet Lionel Johnson's acclaimed early analysis of Hardy's fiction, where he examines Hardy's attitude toward Nature, his depiction of Wessex country folk, and his fatalistic worldview.

Hugh Kenner, "J. Hillis Miller, Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire," in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 26, No. 2, September 1971, pp. 230-34. While reviewing J. Hillis Miller's book on Hardy, Kenner offers his own insights into Hardy's significance and contributions.

Andrew Lang, review of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, in Longman's, November, 1892. This early critique offers minimal commendation for the novel.

Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, University of California Press, 1980. This seminal work, originally published in 1873, primarily examines the visual arts of Renaissance Italy.

Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle, Viking Penguin, 1990. Showalter's analysis explores gender dynamics in 1890s Britain, drawing several comparisons to the United States in the 1980s.

Peter Widdowson, editor, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Macmillan, 1993. This anthology of essays provides diverse critical perspectives on Hardy's novel, particularly from Marxist, feminist, and poststructuralist viewpoints.

Terence Wright, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Macmillan, 1987. This concise book is split into two sections. The first part reviews various critical interpretations of the novel, categorizing them into five main groups. In the second part, Wright attempts to merge the most valuable aspects of these interpretations into a cohesive analysis of the novel.

In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy's most influential novel, which deeply offended the pious Victorian sensibilities, he boldly challenged many entrenched social beliefs of the late nineteenth century. It is no surprise that contemporary critics deemed the novel immoral, as it was essentially a direct assault on prevailing notions about the social caste system, women's roles in society, and the function of organized religion in upholding empty social conventions rather than addressing genuine human needs. The strength of Hardy's critique becomes evident when we recognize that this denunciation of those attitudes also serves as one of our culture's most powerful introductions to them.

By the late nineteenth century, England was undergoing a turbulent transition between two competing systems of economy and governance. The long-standing, essentially feudal aristocracy, where ancient, landed gentry dominated the culture and economy of many communities, faced opposition from those who believed that political authority should be based on acquired wealth and civil achievement. Although the associations among wealth, power, and privilege continued to prevail, the notion of heredity as a source of cultural authority was, in Hardy's time, in the midst of a well-deserved and long-overdue dismantling.

In Tess, the concept of inherited status is satirized at the beginning of the story when Jack Durbeyfield, a ne'er-do-well beekeeper with a penchant for drinking, learns from a meddling parson that his family descends from the noble D'Urberville clan of the era when knights were significant economic, political, and social forces. "Sir John" Derbyfield and his malapropistic wife reveal the absurdity of caste, estate, and privilege as they not only put on airs in the village of Marlott but also assume that their branch of a nearly extinct family is superior to other branches that have either died out or survived in a diluted form. The drunker Sir John becomes while celebrating his newfound importance, the more illustrious his ancestors appear. He boasts, "finer skillentons [skeletons (in his closet)] than any man in Wessex!"

Hardy critiques the automatic link between worth and wealth through Jack's transformation, but it is his usually cheerful wife, Joan, who exposes a more calculating side of the inheritance system. She devises a plan to send their beautiful eldest daughter to "claim kin" with a wealthy distant relative. However, her backup plan, as she reveals to the younger children, is to eventually marry Tess off to Mrs. D'Urberville's son. Joan is not particularly concerned about whether this marriage occurs before or after Tess becomes a mother. After Tess leaves to work as a poultry keeper, Joan comments to her husband, "And if he don't marry her afore, he will after." Although Tess is unwilling to participate in this claiming kin scheme, the allure of power and wealth, combined with her guilt over accidentally causing the death of the family's only horse, drives her, despite her innocence, into the schemes and expectations of a class-based society.

Alec D'Urberville's attempts to seduce Tess are rooted in his beliefs about the privileges of the upper class. He frequently calls Tess his "poor cousin" and leverages his wealth and social status to pressure her into accepting his advances. Alec's reckless driving of his carriage is a tactic to coerce her into what we would now recognize as sexual harassment. He exploits her position as a disadvantaged relative to impose himself on her sexually. Even the scene where Alec rapes Tess—though Hardy does not explicitly use the term "rape"—involves him forcing himself on a young woman who is exhausted and nearly asleep. This act is preceded by a display of hierarchical deference. Tess unwittingly angers Car Dutch, known as the Queen of Spades and a formidable worker at the D'Urberville estates, after an evening of revelry. Alec offers to escort Tess home, but she declines, feeling obligated to stay with her group. When the Queen demands that Tess engage in a fistfight over an unintended insult, Alec intervenes, insisting that the fighting cease. Despite her aggressive nature, the Queen and the other country folk respect Alec's authority due to his social standing, even though he only has his horse and name to assert his power. Moreover, Car's mother jokingly predicts that Tess is headed "out of the frying-pan into the fire." Although they are intoxicated and Car has labeled Tess as an enemy, the working-class members do not question the potential danger Tess faces as a young woman alone with a known philanderer on the heath. They do not see it as their duty to protect her or even concern themselves with her likely fate. Additionally, Tess never realizes that she is a victim of class inequity. She perceives the entire encounter with Alec as her own fault, even though the incident in the Chase is indeed rape. This assault is based on the perceived rights of the ruling class over the poor as much as it is on the brute force of a man like D'Urberville.

To emphasize his criticism of a social system rooted in wealth and privilege, Hardy introduces two related ironies. The first and more apparent irony is that the D'Urberville family, who mistreat Tess, are actually fraudulent imposters. The omniscient narrator reveals that Alec's father was a prosperous merchant who literally "annexed" the title to the family name Stoke to lend his wealth an air of respectability (when Tess introduces herself to Alec as a relative, he queries if her name is "Stoke"). Thus, the social prestige Joan seeks through her daughter is nothing but an illusion.

On a more subtle level, Hardy portrays Angel Clare, a seemingly progressive thinker, as someone who professes disdain for the decadent aristocratic families still present in Wessex, and by extension, England. One of Hardy's subtle jokes is that the Hardy name is among those Angel despises as emblematic of cultural parasitism. Before their wedding, when Tess struggles to confess her past to Angel, she half-hopes that revealing her aristocratic origins will make her past with Alec irrelevant. However, Angel's disdain for systems of privilege proves to be superficial. He not only "forgives" Tess for her aristocratic ancestors but also plans to use this as leverage to address his parents' objections to his marrying a milkmaid instead of a respectable woman. If she belongs to the petit nobility, how could they possibly object to his choice?

Beyond his critique of Victorian attitudes toward caste and privilege, Hardy also touches on the relationship between gender and privilege, perhaps less deliberately. Tess's apparent means of climbing the social ladder is through marriage or its opposite, prostitution. Despite being generous, hardworking, and the most moral character in the novel, her virtues do nothing to lift her out of poverty and grueling, mind-numbing labor. Hardy excels in depicting the relentless toil Tess must endure to survive, whether in the harvest fields before her infant son dies, at the dairy farm where she meets her husband Angel Clare, or especially at Farmer Groby's desolate farm at Flintcomb-Ash. While some critics associate the dairy descriptions with Edenic imagery (which certainly exists in the novel, along with a variation on the pastoral tradition of the aubade, or morning love song), there is no doubt that milkmaids work long, arduous, and monotonous hours.

Contrary to the traditional romanticized image of milkmaids, the harsh and grueling labor in the north is something anyone would want to escape. Tess's friend Marion seeks solace in excessive drinking, and even the usually reserved Tess indulges in a drink or two to numb the cold, pain, and monotony. Despite her relentless efforts, Tess finds herself increasingly trapped in poverty, with no prospects for advancement based on her hard work. This entrapment is partly due to her pride, which prevents her from seeking help from her clerical father-in-law, and partly due to the hostile resentment of Farmer Groby, who bears a grudge because Tess's fiancé punched him for arrogantly claiming to have known Tess when she was thought to be Alec D'Urberville's mistress.

Additionally, Tess's deepening poverty can be attributed to her imprudent and needy family, who produce little income but have no qualms about asking their daughter, married to the son of a moderately well-off clerical family, for financial support to deal with the endless series of crises facing the last surviving D'Urbervilles.

The core elements of the novel suggest that women's virtues are primarily seen as domestic and tied to marriage. It implies that the only way a woman can escape the constraints of the caste system is either by marrying or by becoming a mistress. Tess's mother sends her to either marry Alec or become his mistress. After Tess refuses Alec's subsequent marriage proposals, her family is left in despair, with no home and no realistic hope of reuniting her with her husband, Angel. To prevent her family from starving, Tess has no choice but to become Alec's mistress.

This theme is further highlighted by the three infatuated dairymaids who vie for Angel's attention at Talbothay's. Although their antics provide an amusing glimpse of youthful infatuation—one even jokes about kissing a wall where Angel's shadow had been—it also paints a troubling picture of female subservience. This portrayal might extend beyond the author's conscious intentions. None of the dairymaids realistically hopes to marry Clare, but they all invest heavily in an imagined future with him. Tess, however, feels unworthy of his affection due to her past with Alec.

Despite Tess’s success, the milkmaids do not express jealousy; instead, they vicariously celebrate her marriage. Yet, they each respond with despair. Marian turns to drinking and links her dependency to her lost hopes for Clare, questioning how Tess can comprehend unhappiness since Angel married her. Izzy Huett agrees to Clare's impulsive proposal to accompany him to Brazil as his mistress after he decides he cannot stay with Tess. Netty Priddle simply disappears from the story, but the remaining milkmaids assume she too despaired over Angel's marriage. Collectively, the milkmaids illustrate Hardy's theme that female happiness and worth are tied to male approval.

Interestingly, the only two powerful women in the novel also reinforce this notion rather than contradict it. Joan Durbeyfield is the decision-maker in Tess's household, but her limited power stems from Sir John's foolishness, laziness, and drunkenness. She holds what little power she has due to a defective male who fails to exercise the patriarchal authority he claims from his noble ancestors. Mrs. D'Urberville, Alec's mother, possesses power through inherited wealth from a hardworking man. However, her blindness significantly limits her understanding of the world. Despite her material authority, she cannot control her son's immoral and exploitative actions. She likely remains unaware of the extent to which Alec undermines her authority while negotiating with their impoverished relatives.

The third major social concern in Tess of the D'Urbervilles is the hypocrisy of the genteel Victorian clergy. Even a casual reader will notice the numerous clerics in the novel, from the meddling parson who sets "Sir John" on his misguided path of ancestor-obsessed vanity, to the briefly reformed Alec D'Urberville as a nonconformist evangelical preacher, and Angel Clare's pompous brothers with their equally absurd names, both destined for careers in the church.

Hardy's inclusion of so many satirical parsons reflects his belief that orthodox Christianity in Victorian England mirrored rather than addressed many of the era's primary issues. With the possible exception of Angel's brothers, who are mere stereotypical hypocrites, the pastoral characters in Tess of the D'Urbervilles are well-meaning but ineffective. The only notable achievement by a cleric in the novel is the unlikely and temporary conversion of the insolent Alec D'Urberville by the elder Parson Clare. However, this conversion does not withstand Alec's second encounter with Tess, although Alec blames Tess's allure for his downfall rather than his own weakness.

While the omniscient narrator laments that Tess, on her long journey to Emmister seeking help from her absent husband's family, encounters the pompous sons instead of the kindly father—thus partially mitigating Hardy's negative view of organized religion and its clergy—in general, Tess of the D'Urbervilles as a work of art expresses despair that organized religion serves as an institutional support for the problems faced by oppressed people in England, rather than offering a means to address and resolve these issues.

A minor example can be seen in the local vicar of Marlott. Hardy portrays him as well-meaning enough to visit the Durbeyfield cottage to baptize Tess's infant when it seems the child will inevitably die. However, he lacks the courage to push past Durbeyfield's drunken refusal to let him in due to the family's shame over Tess's pregnancy. He fails to assert that preparing an innocent child for eternity is more important than family pride, whether real or imagined.

Following the novel's most poignant scene, where Tess frantically performs a secular baptism as her child is dying, the vicar kindly acknowledges to the guilt-ridden teenager that the baptism is valid and that the baby can enter heaven. Yet, he lacks the bravery to allow the child to be buried in the churchyard, fearing it would offend the parishioners. As a result, Tess is forced to bury her child secretly in a corner near the churchyard. The contradiction between the parson's assurance of a valid baptism and the refusal of a churchyard burial weighs heavily on Tess.

When Tess returns from Flintcomb-Ash to care for her sick mother, the parishioners vehemently object to a woman of "her kind" worshiping in the community. They are especially opposed to her efforts to restore the neglected grave of her child, sorrowfully named "Sorrow." It appears the vicar has failed to impart the message of charity and forgiveness to his parishioners.

As significant as this village cleric is to the theme of organized religion's shortcomings, it is within the Clare family that the ultimate critique lies. Angel's brothers are depicted as arrogant fools. His father, though kind, is unimaginative and fearful of the theological changes of the 1860s and 1870s that deeply influenced Hardy. He prefers a conservative and safe approach. Despite his kindness, he openly expresses disappointment that Angel did not follow his brothers into the clergy or marry the equally vapid Mercy Chant, whom the Clares deemed a suitable bride for their wayward son. Hardy eventually condemns his brother Cuthbert to that fate.

More importantly, Angel has inherited much of the rigidity of Victorian Christianity, despite his claims of modernist or pagan thinking. He praises Tess's intuitive questions about orthodoxy and teaches her enough basic criticism of organized religion during their courtship that she impresses Alec with her religious knowledge during his brief stint as an evangelical. Although Angel believes he has shed the empty rituals of conventional religion, he cannot overcome his religious orthodoxy when it truly matters. After she confesses her past relationship with Alec, he finds himself unable to forgive her and appreciate her as the person she is—a victim of Alec's sexual aggression. Despite her reasonable argument that he too has confessed a past affair, one that was significantly more voluntary than hers, he rejects her because he believes she is no longer the person he fell in love with. This mirrors the "fallen woman" image so harshly condemned by society and the church. Angel may see himself as a pagan in philosophy, but Hardy constructs his character to be as much a prude as the most conservative country vicar.

This point is most vividly illustrated in one of the most melodramatic scenes Hardy ever wrote, and quite possibly the only overly dramatic scene in this otherwise splendid novel. During their brief stay in the cottage intended for their honeymoon, Tess receives a gruesome nocturnal visit from her estranged husband. The sleepwalking Angel carries her over a considerable distance, including crossing a small river, to a nearby ruined monastery where he places her in a coffin, the symbolism of which is almost embarrassingly clear. For our purposes, the location, rather than the plausibility, of the scene is what matters. It is a sacred ground, a once-holy place where the sleepwalking Angel would bury the "scarlet woman" his strict Christian morals compel him to scorn, even as he loves the person he can no longer recognize. It takes a transatlantic journey, a near-death experience, and conversations with a progressive English colonist who points out that Clare is bound to outdated value systems, for Clare to finally set aside his prudishness. By then, it is too late for both him and Tess.

One notable social issue unique to Tess of the D 'Urbervilles is Hardy's critique of the British Empire's extensive foreign colonies. During the late nineteenth century, the British Empire thrived and imposed its governance and economic systems on developing countries. Men like Angel Clare ventured abroad to exploit inexpensive land and local labor while introducing advanced British agricultural techniques to regions such as South America, Australia, and Africa.

Hardy excels in brief scenes that depict what another writer, Joseph Conrad, would soon call the twin evils of greed and foolishness inherent in the colonialist venture. With a masterful touch, Hardy uses Angel's disgraceful retreat from the Brazilian interior—feverish and accompanied by a fellow colonist who perishes during the return journey—to symbolize the "crowds of agricultural labourers who had come to the country in his wake, dazzled by representations of easy independence ..."

Although Hardy does not explicitly address our contemporary understanding of the arrogance within colonialism, he skillfully portrays the human cost in terms of shattered hopes and expectations.

The rather extensive list of coincidences in the novel, which individual readers might expand to three or four times its length, seems to support the idea that Tess's life is predestined. Similar to Frank Norris's McTeague (from the 1899 novel of the same name; see separate entry), Tess appears to be a pawn of fate, her story embodying a de casibus tragedy, or a tragedy of destiny. Her encounter with fate is reminiscent of what a significant character in King Lear (1605), a tragedy often linked by critics to Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, describes with this vivid simile: "As flies to wanton [naughty] boys are we to the gods,/They kill us for their sport."

However, this powerful description only captures a portion of King Lear's theme. While the Earl of Gloucester interprets his error-ridden life as proof of his theory that we are all at the mercy of fate, the true tragic figure, Lear, must face an even harsher realization. He learns that the decisions we make can set off chains of events that ultimately overpower us. The true tragic essence of Tess of the D'Urbervilles lies in a similar, though not identical, meditation on fate and character found in Hardy's masterpiece. Tess is undoubtedly a victim of fate. Yet, she also falls prey to foolish parents, the distorted gender roles of Victorian society, a flawed clergy, and, as poet Donald Hall convincingly argues, "an industrial tragedy" where peasant culture is being absorbed into an emerging bourgeois society. Crucially, Tess's own pride, naivety, and poor choices trigger events that eventually overwhelm her—much like the greatest of Elizabethan tragedies. One of Hardy's most esteemed biographers, Carl Weber, notes that while preparing to write his newly-contracted novel about a fallen milkmaid, Hardy "clarified his thoughts on what 'heroic stature' was by re-reading Sophocles and contemplating the essence of tragedy in literary art."

One of the most remarkable adaptations of the Tess story took place during Hardy's lifetime. Biographers like Seymour-Smith note that a well-known British banker, Baron D'Erlanger, teamed up with the famous Italian librettist Luigi Illica to create an operatic version. This opera debuted in Naples in 1906, and four years later, it premiered in London. The Queen attended the London premiere, along with Hardy, his wife Emma, and Florence Dugdale—Emma's companion and Hardy's mistress!

Several film adaptations of Hardy's novel have been made, the most recent being Roman Polanski's Tess, released by Columbia Studios in 1980. Nastassia Kinski stars as Tess in this version. While it is a faithful adaptation of the novel's first half, it emphasizes Tess's role in her relationship with Alec more than Hardy did and leaves out key details about Alec's reappearance in Tess's life, especially his conversion to evangelical Christianity. Although the film simplifies Hardy's themes, it effectively depicts the rural landscape, highlights Hardy's concerns about the transformation of rural England from a peasant to a bourgeois society, and poignantly portrays the struggles Tess faces as a rural peasant woman in the late nineteenth century. The film's most striking visual moments include the bleak, cold, and miserable harvest of the turnip field in Flintcomb-Ash and the subjugation to the new threshing machine, which Hardy refers to as "the red tyrant whom they had come to serve."

Interestingly, a significant portion of Tess is adapted from Emma Hardy's novel, The Maid on the Shore (date uncertain, possibly around 1875; Hardy kept his wife's typescript). In that manuscript, a character named Claude elopes with a peasant girl and eventually gives his bride a casket of valuable jewels, bequeathed by his deceased mother to whoever would become his bride. This undoubtedly inspired the casket of jewels given to Angel by his godmother, which he then presents to Tess on their wedding night.