Tess of the D'Urbervilles Parts 1 - 2
John Durbeyfield is returning home to his village in Marlott when he encounters Parson John, who has recently taken to referring to him as Sir John. The Parson explains that his genealogical research of the families in the region has led him to conclude that the impoverished Durbeyfield is related to the aristocratic family D’Urberville. John immediately begins to feel a sense of superiority and he calls for a carriage and horse. His carriage passes by a field near the village where Tess, his daughter, is dancing with the other village girls for the May Dance ritual. The girls laugh at the sight of John riding a carriage, but Tess comes to her father’s rescue. Angel, the son of a wealthy and religious family, passes by the group of dancing girls. He dances a turn with them all but doesn’t notice Tess, who is upset at being ignored. She returns home to find her mother, Joan, quite upset since John had been going to see the doctor and hasn’t yet returned home. John has been diagnosed with a heart condition, and the doctor warned him that he did not have long to live.
Tess remains at home with her siblings while Joan goes out to find her husband, but when she doesn’t return, Tess sends her younger brother. Eventually, Tess goes to find them all. Joan finds John drunkenly celebrating his family’s aristocratic pedigree. Upon learning of their connection to the D’Urbervilles, Joan proposes that Tess be sent off to a rich woman with the same name that lives close to the village. She hopes the lady will aid Tess in finding a wealthy husband given their distant family connection. The villagers agree that Tess would easily find a match given all of her virtues. Tess arrives and leads her family back home, but her father is so drunk that she is forced to take the horse the following morning with the farm produce. She falls asleep while reading the cart, and this leads to an accident that kills the family’s horse. No one blames her for the accident, but she feels immensely guilty. In her guilt, she agrees to follow her mother’s instruction and head to the D’Urberville household. The narrator informs the reader that the D’Urberville family that resided near the village was a mercantile family that had no true aristocratic lineage.
She meets Alec D’Urberville, the young son of the rich family, who is immediately infatuated with Tess and begins to flirt with her immediately. He offers her a job and woos her as well as her family to no end. He tries to be amorous with her but she refuses all her advances however she is forced to accept the job out of consideration of her family’s financial condition. Tess gets into a fight during an excursion on a Saturday night and is rescued by Alec. He leads her into the woods in the middle of the night and forces her to have sex with him.
Four months after the incident, Tess sets out for home without informing Alec or his blind mother, but Alec catches up to her and offers her his help in returning home. He has offered to support Tess financially, but she cannot stand the thought of being with him any longer. Alec informs her that he’ll be going to London and that she should write to him if she ever needed anything from him. Tess is immediately beset by questions from her family as she returns home, and they are primarily concerned about whether she is going to marry Alec. Tess is angry at her mother for not having taught her the right way to navigate the world as a woman. She informs her that though Alec had been with her sexually, he had no intention of marrying her. Tess’s absence and return to the village cause a lot of gossips, and it eventually begins to bother Tess. She spends all of her time indoors without the company of others and prefers to spend time in the woods.
The narrative returns to Tess after she has had a child, and is working in the fields as a labourer. As Tess nurses her illegitimate child, the other laborers remark on the sorry state of the woman, who loves her child yet laments its existence. However, the child soon grows sick, and it is suspected that it will soon die. She attempts to have the child baptized, but her father is too embarrassed to call on the priest. Tess decides to baptize the child herself and christens the child as Sorrow. The child passes away, and Tess seeks the local minister’s advice about whether the baptism she had given her child would count. He feels sorry for her and allows her to believe that it would, but he doesn’t allow the child to be buried on consecrated ground. He assures Tess that the child would receive entry into heaven despite the burial spot. Two years after the death of her child, Tess decides to leave her village and make a life somewhere else where she may not be haunted by her past. She decides to work at a dairy farm, which happens to be located in the region where once her noble ancestors, the D’Urbervilles, had once ruled.
Analysis
Thomas Hardy crafts a tragedy of fate about a woman who is involved with Pre-marital sex, which was an extremely controversial topic for the Christian world in the 19th century. The subject of the story made it rather controversial, but it nonetheless received significant controversial success. Thomas Hardy helps his readers confront the actual morality of Tess’s sin by highlighting the role of Fate and the social class involved. The narrator himself remarks that Tess’s life would be markedly different if Angel had observed and interacted with her on the very day that her father discovered his aristocratic heritage. Furthermore, Tess would not have fallen into Alec’s perverse hands if she hadn’t arrived at the house of the D’Urbervilles just as he was walking outside. The author similarly draws attention to the differences in social class which cause Alec to see Tess as something less than human that can be exploited for his pleasure. He often refers to her low social rank when she refuses to entertain his flirtatious overtures.
The narrative also develops the theme of deterioration in the social order as the old system of heritage and lineage is replaced by capitalism through the advent of industrialism. Tess’s noble heritage is repeatedly indicated just as often as his poverty, suggesting that the new system does not favor the truly noble. This is further developed through the crucial genealogical history of Alec’s family, who had adopted the D’Urberville name as a result of their mercantile wealth rather than an actual heritage.
The conflict between nature and society is another important theme that is developed in the book. Tess is often associated with elements of nature, which is further strengthened through her association with agriculture. The conflict between nature and society is most significantly evident in how Tess is punished for giving birth to a child, a most natural act that is deplored by all of Tess’s known society.
