Product Description

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12752 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

About the Author
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and wrote both poetry and novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure. He died in 1928. Tim Dolin teaches English at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. Margaret R. Higonnet teaches English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut.

Customer Reviews

if you're an adolescent ... or still feel like one...
I have to give Tess five stars because no book I have read before or since has moved me to such a degree. Thirty years later I still have my original copy, entirely disintegrated, the glue dissolved, in part I'm sure by my hot adolescent tears. It simply tore me apart - I remember in particular strugggling to finish Tess's letter from Flintcomb-Ash through eyes fogged with grief and that after finishing the book I was well-nigh inconsolable for days. I spent the following summer touring the Dorset locations on my bicycle as a kind of pilgrimage, and remember those cruel hills pretty well too.

But having said that, I was sixteen at the time and emotionally wide open. Reading it five years later, I could hardly get past the clumsiness and infelicities in the writing and the crude manipulation and melodrama of the plot. How could I have fallen for this? Reading it again another ten years further on I better understood the theatricality of it - it should be read in some ways like the old ballads with which Hardy was very familiar, with their highly exaggerated representations of good and evil - but the magic had gone.

Maybe the key is that Tess is a book written by an emotional adolescent - Hardy was a writer who arguably never really grew up, and his own relationships seem to bear this out - which speaks most forcefully to other adolescents. The melodrama and the suffering, the torment and the injustice which Tess is put through really are meat and drink to the average sensitive sixteen year old, but seem perhaps a bit foolish in retrospect.

But this isn't really a criticism. 'Tess' is by far the greatest of Hardy's novels and the high point of his career as a novelist (Jude the Obscure would tip over into self parody) and is written with a rare passion - Hardy said that he loved Tess and, although he perhaps had a funny way of showing it, his depth of feeling for his creation really comes through. Like 'The Catcher in the Rye', if you're in the right demographic - a sixteen year old or someone who still feels like one - you're going to love it. If not, you may wonder what all the fuss is about and should perhaps move straight on to Dickens.

The top, the point, the great devine - beyond romanticism
It'd been a while since I read a truly magnificent book. My last "#1 in drama" held its position firmly for about 10 years (Het oog van de engel by Nelleke Noordervliet - in Dutch, that is), despite the fact that quite a few books have passed (most notably the books by Yoko Ogawa, unfortunately only translated in French). Douglas Adams' books, Catch 22 and Stephen Fry's The Liar were supreme, but in an entirely different category. But now there's Tess, which, as far a drama goes, is a non sequitur.

Of course there's the top layer of romantic/pastoral drama, but that's just the surface. The real bliss here lies in the fact that is doesn't classify as a classic story in the romantic tradition at all, a fact which expresses itself in the way the story is told. The switching between romantic musings suddenly shattered by harsh commentaries or switched to an almost documentary description of the surroundings keeps you alert to the story, which might be drawn out, but that's the point - you've got to live with Tess. That's the only way to get into her character, because Hardy simply never takes a stand, and that's one of the secrets of the book. Ok, difficult now to imagine people acting so stupid because of moral conventions, but that's the only hurdle to take (however - look around you). Despite the fact that there's this really romantic "back to nature" message in it all (which strangly does not convey itself in the depiction of the life of Tess, but rather, in de description of the Dorset countryside), there's simply no denying that Hardy's way of writing has one foot firmly in de industrial era, delivering a comment on it - attacking it with its own weapons, mixing his anger with his (o so clear between the lines) love for the main character, with her with qualities and her flaws. Don't miss out on this one.

Stupid that it's been waiting for me for more than a century. Hands down 5 stars.

An Excellent work of art ..
Hardy examines the difficulties in the life of a women and explores the inner feelings of Tess during the events that happened to her. The novel brings you the ages old question of fate and free will and he left it on the reader to decide if they really are free in this world to live the life as they want to.

An excellent novel that still can be related to the situation of women in today's society. We believe that women is now independent and liberated from the burdens of social nomrs and is now living according to her free will. But is it really true? Read the novel and you will realize how wrong you are if you think like this, you will be reminded of many women that you personally know who were exploited by someone in the same manner. Only the time is different and perhaps the names.