Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Chiltern Classic)

...for one US Dollar.Arrrrgh. What a beautifully frustrating and revealing book. And impossibly well crafted. I want to slap all of the principals, and then hug them, and then get everyone a therapist. I can't possibly have anything new to add to Criticism of Thomas Hardy--threats of bodily harm do not in my view qualify--but his ability to pick out the things we experience as tragic, or joyful, or melancholy, or triumphant and then describe those things poignantly is perhaps unsurpassed. It seems he alone has access to some previously-unknown API that precisely resonates on every page. (Dare I recommend Tess to fans of Neal Stephenson?)I laughed, I cried...okay, fine, maybe I didn't laugh.But I was transported.

I am naturally drawn to works of literature that explore the effects of the past on the present. (This, I know, is a tricky statement; some will argue that all works of literature do this in some way.) I trace my obsession with the past to two main factors: I belong to an inherently nostalgic culture, and during my adolescence I moved to a different country. At a crucial moment in my life, in other words, I experienced an event that dramatically accelerated a preexisting tendency. I've quoted a famous line by Faulkner in previous reviews, but I'll do it again: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Thomas Hardy obviously understood this sometimes fascinating, sometimes irritating fact of life._Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ (1891) is the first novel by Hardy that I read in its entirety. My first experience of the author's prose was _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ (1886), which I was supposed to read years ago for a university course on the nineteenth-century novel. I was not able to finish it due to an illness, but I remember being pleasantly surprised. For some reason, I had expected a boring story and a tedious style; instead I found an engaging narrative with a few unexpected twists. I promised myself I would read the novel some day. Years passed, and when I heard that _Tess_ dealt with purity in a fallen world, I felt inclined to read this novel before reattempting _The Mayor of Casterbridge_.Tess is one of the most interesting characters I have encountered in nineteenth-century novels. If Flaubert and Emily Brontë catered to readers' fascination with illicit pleasure and self-destruction, and Jane Austen proved that virtue is far from safe and humdrum, Hardy offers a heroine that is pure, human, and real. Tess is a good girl who makes a mistake through no fault of her own. She is too good for this fallen world.The first quarter of the novel relates the realist equivalent of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. When Tess' father is told that he is the descendant of the noble family of the D'Urbervilles, the young woman's parents send her to a well-off family that bears that name, in the hope of improving their status. The wealthy family, it turns out, has merely adopted the name of D'Urberville, and Tess gains nothing from the experience. On the contrary, she is seduced, ruined, by Alec D'Urberville, who calls her "coz." Years later, Tess meets Mr. Right in the form of Angel Clare (talk about a symbolic name), and the encounter gives rise to the novel's central dilemma. If Tess tells Angel about her past, she may lose her second chance at a happy life. If she does not tell, her new relationship will be based on a lie (or, at least, a hidden truth) that may be made manifest at any moment. Tess' present and future are thus determined by her past. One of the crucial questions that Hardy raises is this novel is: to what extent should a person be judged by one specific past action?_Tess_ owes its transcendence largely to the complexity of the issues it raises. We as readers know that Tess should not be judged by her past mistake. She is innocent, not to blame for what happened to her. Angel, for his part, may not be so sure. On hearing about Tess' mistake, he may come to perceive her as a loose woman, someone not to be trusted. Society condemns Tess because she is a woman; her seducer does not suffer at all the consequences of his action. The situation is complicated by the fact that the society that Hardy portrays is not exactly Christian. For a Christian, the answer to Tess' dilemma is quite simple: she should be open with Angel, as it is preferable that he know the truth from the beginning. If he is to find out later on, as he surely will, he will feel cheated. If Angel judges Tess unjustly, finally, he will be responsible for that. ("In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was.") In the novel, Tess knows (almost instinctively) what to do, but her hesitancy, combined with Angel's optimism, leads to greater conflict.Another major issue treated in _Tess_ has to do with the selfish nature of human attachments. When rehearsing to herself words that are meant for Angel, Tess says: "she you love is not my real self, but one in my image, the one I might have been!" Tess is conscious that Angel does not love her for who she truly is. How many people can say that they love someone for who he/she is? To put it another way, to what extent can we claim to know a person for who he/she really is? All we know is what others choose (consciously and/or unconsciously) to show us. Based on this, we create for ourselves an image of the other person, almost as if we were covering his/her face with a mask. (In psychoanalysis, this mental image we have of another person is referred to as the "imago.") Many times, our perception of the other person is even a reflection of ourselves. We do not see each other face to face. One cannot love what one does not know, and yet how many people can truly say that they even know themselves? Our way of life does not promote this type of knowledge. We are conveniently kept busy.So far I've commented on the novel's moral and psychological dimensions. Let me now mention the style. One may criticize Hardy for many things, among which are his relativism and his pessimism, but he is undoubtedly a master stylist. The beauty of his prose is heightened by its measured quality. He is not excessive; rather, he will dazzle the reader every now and then with a beautiful passage. For instance: "It was a fine September evening, just before sunset, when yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hair-like lines, and the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without aid from more solid objects, except the innumerable winged insects that dance in it." Consider also the following meditation: "Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order." The actual explanation may be simple (the law of cause and effect), but this does not diminish the beauty of the prose. Philosophy is a different matter. At the risk of sounding simplistic, I believe much of Hardy's worldview may be summarized with the paraphrase, "Fate acts in mysterious ways."Why not five stars? I feel the novel could have been 100 pages shorter. The world it describes is rather small, so small, in fact, that serendipity plays a pretty large--and unfortunately not always believable--role. _Tess_ is great realist fiction, but it is not _Middlemarch_. At the same time, the heroine herself is memorable and unique. Like Dostoevsky's _The Idiot_, this novel seeks to trace the effects of a corrupt world on a pure individual. Hardy is a much more effective narrator than Dostoevsky, however, and personally the story of an innocent woman appeals to me more than that of an innocent man.My next Hardy novel will be _The Mayor of Casterbridge_.Thanks for reading, and enjoy the book!

Reading Tess's story is a good reminder of how the prospects for women's lives have improved dramatically over the ~140 years since it's setting in the 1870's. Raised in an impoverished family, Tess Durbeyfield is sent to spend time with the D'Urbervilles in hopes that she can lay claim to some of the family's wealth. She finds that she is not related to that family, and in her innocence of the ways of the world (and of men), she is taken advantage of in the worst way. Returning home with her reputation in shambles, she decided to eventually leave home once again to go to a place where no one knows her so she can start over. She becomes a dairymaid at a remote farm and makes friends with several of the other maids, as well as a devout young man, Angel Clare. Tess' sordid past continues to haunt her, and she struggles to find a safe place in the world where her past secrets can be left behind.Hardy's stilted, occasionally flowery and overly verbose language sometimes makes it difficult to discern exactly what is going on, but the cloak of bad luck and misery never seems to be far from Tess. Her hopes and dreams are constantly dashed, and it is difficult for her to know who to trust.I know that this novel is frequently assigned to high school students, which seems surprising due not only to the mature content, but also the length of the novel and the antiquated language. However, there are a number of strong themes throughout the novel that still resonate today, particularly the double standards that apply to women: a pure woman faithfully presented.

I've read lots of Thomas Hardy, and somehow left this book for last. I should have read it sooner. Not to give too much away, every woman alive in the western world should read this book to see how much better they have it than their sisters from the nineteenth century. Tess is sorely used by almost every man in the book who encounters her, and she has so little protection from those who should protect her, it's very sad.The language, somewhat difficult for a less educated reader like me, is beautiful. The descriptions of the English countryside makes one long for simpler, more bucolic times. We wouldn't have to keep track of our steps to get our 10,000 every day. In several scenes, characters walk 30 miles in a day, starting before first light (in summer) and arriving at their destination well after dark.At least two characters in the book get just what they deserve--I'll leave it to you to decide if I'm right.I loved the book. It is my favorite of all the TH books I've read.

I have bought several of the Penguin Classics Hardcover series. Each cover is beautifully done and the novels themselves are excellent quality. The bookstores tend to sell these editions for $25.00, so I'm always excited to see them on this site for roughly half the price. As a couple of others have stated, the covers look great on bookshelves. I look forward to buying more from this collection.As for the novel itself, Tess of the D'Urvervilles is one of my favorite novels of all time. Rich, complex, heartbreaking, and beautifully written.

I will not elaborate on the content of this magnificent Thomas Hardy work, as other reviewers have dealt with this subject in great depth in other reviews, but will concentrate on the presentation of the book itself.The cover is, in my personal opinion, beautifully presented, as is also the case with 'Far From the Madding Crowd' also a Wordsworth Classics edition, which was purchased at the same time. Both are compact editions and were reasonably priced.These two books represent my personal favourites of Thomas Hardy's works and I have read them many times over the years. They were purchased as gifts for my father-in-law, who at ninety years of age is discovering Thomas Hardy for the first time and enjoying the experience.

When Tess’s family fall on hard times, Tess is forced to go and see family she has never heard of before – the well off D’Ubervilles. On arriving she is met with Alec D’Uberville, the man who will be her downfall. After losing her child to illness, Tess receives employment as a milkmaid, and falls in love with Angel Clare, but will Tess be able to tell him about the dark past that she has so long kept secret? And if the truth is revealed, will Angel Clare still feel the same way?I absolutely loved this book. I’m actually sad that I haven’t read it before. I read if for classes, but so many of my classmates had read it before, and I envied being able to read it without studying it. It’s such a beautiful book with such an immense plot. I kept having to put it down and come back to it, purely so I could give myself time to process what I’d read. Hardy has that ability to describe something in detail, pages covering the same thing, but it’s never repetitious and it’s never boring.Tess of the D’Ubervilles is famous for being scandalous and shocking when it was first published, and I can see why. Though not really shocking to us now, I can imagine the horror at a story of women with a child out of marriage, and the idea of concealing that child from her suitor. Hardy certainly has a lot to say about social conventions and the way women were treated at that time.I think Tess is a really fascinating character, she’s strong willed, stubborn and utterly loyal. She makes lots of mistakes throughout the story – and more often than not she pays the price for them. Her story is an immensely sad one. She is a survivor, continuing on even when her life seems the most hopeless.No matter what I write about Tess of the D’Ubervilles, this review will be woefully understating how wonderful this novel is (but that’s not going to stop me trying!) The language in the novel is beautiful and poetic, and I loved the descriptions of nature. Tess is closely linked to nature throughout the plot – something I found particularly interesting. She is seen as almost part of nature herself, a pure, earthy country girl.It’s a very bleak and depressing story, but it is definitely worth reading. This was my first outing in the novels of Thomas Hardy – although I am told The Mayor of Casterbridge is by far his best novel, I really enjoyed Tess of the D’Ubervilles and all its wonderful comments on society.

I couldn’t bear to finish this book, as from the start you can see that terrible things are going to happen to Tess. I first read this book when I was still at school (so, in my late teens) and remember crying floods of tears over it. This time, from the beginning, you can see what is going to happen and I couldn’t bear it. All in all, I found his descriptions of nature beautiful, his descriptions of bygone agricultural processes fascinating and almost balletic, but couldn’t take Tess’s fate! Hardy may have been portraying the fate of working-class women of that era – and I hope that it aided their cause long-term (Tess was, indeed, a ‘pure woman’ - see the sub-heading), but I couldn’t really bear the negativity, the lack of long-term hope (ie the lack of an eternal hope).

Bought this book for my a-level studies and it does the job fine. Here's my breakdown:Pros - good read, reasonable price for a classic (around £5)Cons - quality is on the lower side of average; paper is on the thinner side (annotations/highlighting likely to show through to the other side - to avoid this I either write my annotations in pencil, or write them on a post-it that I stick to the page), flimsy book (tried to show how easily it bends in a photo), and the underside of my book came slightly creased, though I'm sure this isn't the sellers fault, just regular delivery damage that happens to the best of usOverall though, it fufills its purpose and, at the end of the day, a book is solely meant to be read, which I am able to achieve without issue.

It is a dark novel, but exemplifies the genius of Thomas Hardy. Tess is an incredible woman. Hopefully you do not know her fate of you have never read the book. Hardy's prose is often incandescent. He depicts Wessex with consummate verisimilitude. He also depicts the lives of agricultural workers with absolute realism. It is a harrowing story, but there are also episodes of sublime poetry. Once you begin this book you will only unwillingly lay it down.