that meaning is given to people, animals, and objects that is more than their original meaning. I will examine a few ways in which symbolism is used in Thomas Hardy’s last novel.

When Tess kills Prince, the Durbeyfield family horse and primary source of income, she seeks out and goes working for the d’Urbervilles. It is, therefore, the death of Prince that launches the novel’s action. Prince is also a symbol of Tess and her family. He bears a regal name but is forced to live a life of menial labor.

The Durbeyfields still own a spoon which bears the family’s crest. This spoon is the only thing the family has that shows the truth of their heritage. As an item, the spoon is not only very small but has no real useful purpose. It is a symbol of how the name d’Urberville also has no real purpose or usefulness when it comes to having any real influence anymore.

Although the novel is set in rural England, it moves to Brazil when Angel, after rejecting Tess, moves to began a career in farming there. To nineteenth-century England, and to Angel, Brazil represents an ideal, a far-off land where dreams can come true. It is also symbolic of his relationship with Tess. Angel is an idealist and a romantic and when he first sees Tess:

What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!

But, when he discovers that Tess is not a virgin:

I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you . . . Another woman in your shape.

Angel, although an excellent farmer, is not very worldly wise and his time in Brazil is not what he had dreamed. The experience also makes him realize how, like Brazil, he had put Tess on a pedestal and expected too much from her. Brazil symbolizes reality for Angel.

It is interesting to see that Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles starts out with positive symbols of peace and happiness, but then it ends with symbols of darkness and sadness. In the beginning of the novel, Tess, along with other women of her home town, is wearing a white dress during a May festival. The opening scene portrays peace, hope and happiness because the color white symbolizes virtue and purity; the time of year also symbolizes a period of youth, birth, and playfulness since it is during the spring. On the opposite end of the novel,  however, the cloudy and cold days of winter create a mood of gloominess and darkness. In the end, one black flag waives in the distance and marks the death of Tess at a young age for a crime she would never have committed in the beginning of the story. There are also Christian symbols throughout the novel that depict Christianity's influence on Victorian society. Alec dresses as a parson when he is converted by Angel's father; Tess and her friends from the dairy farm dress nicely and go to church on Sundays; and, Tess's baby is not allowed to be buried in the cemetery of the churchyard. All of these symbols help to aide the author in relaying the story from all aspects of life so that the reader may fully understand the culture and society from which Tess hails. Other symbols include the landscape, the weather's changing, parental figures, the Fortune Teller book, and the ever-present symbol and value of money.

One of the best examples of symbolism in Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles is right at the beginning of the novel. All of the women, both old and young, are parading through the village in white dress while holding white flowers. It's the May Day Festival and it's probably one of the only holidays where everyone is viewed (visibly anyway) as equals. The festival encompasses all of England and is celebrated as one. Tess, of course, is also wearing the color that symbolizes purity and virtue. Although she starts the novel out as an innocent in society, Fate and poor decisions will slowly lead her down a dark path--even to the depths of murder, which is black and completely opposite from her beginnings. Symbolism is a device used by authors to show a story rather than to tell it. Letters, flowers, colors, personal items, national items (i.e., flags, bells) all help to paint a picture for the reader. It is more fun to read a book and to decipher the symbolic codes and other figures of speech rather than to have the author explicitly reveal everything at once. Suspense, mood, and other plot elements are satisfied as an author uses a literary device correctly.

Symbolism serves an essential purpose in the novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles because it often helps explore the themes of the story more deeply. In particular, many of the symbols within the novel focus on the concept of fantasy as a coping mechanism. Tess is a poor woman in Victorian England—but she finds out at the start of the novel that she is related to the d'Urbervilles, an aristocratic family.

Many of the symbols in the novel relate to Tess's revelation because they point to the idea of a better life. Tess always dreams of or thinks about the things that would make her life better, but often her fixations or fantasies end up costing her in the real world. These symbols serve to show that there isn't a magic way to end the struggle she goes through, but instead, every symbol shows the unobtainable reality of class mobility in Victorian England.

Additionally, the novel employs several symbols that illustrate that the actions that characters take in order to gain what they desire are actually counter-intuitive. Brazil is one of these key symbols. Angel Clare—after marrying Tess and learning of how she was seduced before their marriage—decides to escape to Brazil; before this point, Angel considered Tess to be a paragon of virtue, and having this ideal shattered has had a profound effect on him. However, rather than providing a solution to Angel's tormented state, Brazil only accentuates his mental and physical struggles.

Not only does Angel have little success with farming but he also catches a fever and becomes incredibly ill, making him worse off than he was in England. Thus, in an attempt to escape a difficult and painful situation back at home, Angel only burdens himself with more difficulty and pain. This experience only serves to illustrate to him that running away was ultimately unproductive when it came to dealing with his problems, and thus Brazil becomes symbolic of Angel's misguided attempts to start a "new life."