ABSTRACT
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy is a classic English novel of the late Victorian period, a tragedy of perennially urgent themes. Briefly, it is the story of a young girl, Tess Durbeyfield, ignorant and innocent of sexual matters, who experiences a sexual encounter with Alec d’Urberville, a local member of the nouveau-riche. She gives birth to an illegitimate child, who subsequently dies. Later she falls in love and marries Angel Clare, a pleasant young man. On their wedding night, he confesses a youthful peccadillo. She in turn feels permitted to disclose her past, but her husband’s idealisation of her purity means that he cannot accept these facts. He insists that they part. The young woman spends some time in hardship and poverty, but feels unable to appeal to her estranged husband. Destitute, convinced that her husband is lost to her and careless of her fate, she allows the seducer to establish her as his mistress, partly in order to secure aid for her impoverished family. Meanwhile her husband has relented. He returns to see his wife. Desperate to regain the love of her husband and in an attempt to negate the past, she kills her seducer. Husband and wife are reunited. After a brief period as fugitives, the young woman is captured, tried and hanged for the murder.
