Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Tess Durbeyfield is the protagonist of the novel; the plot revolves around her development as a character and the conflict she experiences. Tess is a beautiful young woman with physical characteristics that men tend to find alluring; Hardy describes features, such as a “pouted-up deep red mouth” (21), that imply that Tess possesses a voluptuous beauty. However, Tess’s beauty is largely a source of suffering for her, as it piques Alec d’Urberville’s interest in her and sets the tragic plot in motion.

In addition to her beauty, Tess’s blend of rustic simplicity and thoughtful intelligence also makes her a source of interest to both major male characters. She has received a better education than many of the local villagers; the narrator comments on the vast discrepancy in education between Tess and her mother by explaining that “there was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily understood” (29). Angel is struck by Tess’s existential musing that “this hobble of being alive is rather serious” and later offers to further her education because he can tell that she possesses a keen innate intelligence (139). However, Tess is also quite sheltered, which often leaves her vulnerable to errors and manipulation: When she tells her mother what Alec has done to her, Tess laments, “[L]adies know what to fend hands against […] but I never had the chance o’ learning” (94). Later, when Tess innocently suggests that Angel divorce her, he complains that she is “childish—unformed—crude” in her ignorance (258).

Throughout the novel, Tess shows a strong sense of responsibility and integrity that heightens the tragic nature of her fate; she always tries to do the right thing and yet suffers anyways. Her parents are selfish and ignorant, which leaves their eldest child in a position where she has to act as a surrogate parent. Tess blames herself for Prince’s death, even though the only person responsible is her drunken father, and she agrees to go to the d’Urberville house out of this sense of guilt, saying, “[A]s I killed the horse […] I suppose I ought to do something” (42). When Alec first begins harassing Tess, she is adamant about refusing these advances and even tells him. Later, she will similarly reject his offer of becoming his mistress, even though she desperately needs the financial support he offers. Tess most strongly shows her integrity and sense of personal responsibility when she desperately tries to resist Angel’s proposal. Tess does not think it is ethical for her to marry Angel since she is not a virgin, and she does not want to deceive him in any way. However, she cannot resist the possibility of a happy life with a man she loves, even though she sees consenting as a moral failure, admitting, “I shall give way—I shall say yes—I shall let myself marry him—I cannot help it!” (196).

Tess’s character develops over the course of the novel, largely in response to her gradual exposure to the wider world. Tess is very innocent when she first goes to work at the d’Urberville estate; she later comments, “I was a child when I left this house” (94). Her first loss of innocence occurs when she is either raped or coerced into a sexual encounter with Alec, and this experience leads to her becoming much sadder, more passive, and resigned. However, due to her youth and innate resilience, Tess begins a secondary path of development in which “her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her hopes, [rise] higher and higher” (119). This shows that Tess has the capacity to recover from a trauma and become a happy and productive member of society; however, the punitive force of social norms intervenes when Angel rejects her on their wedding night, unable to look past Tess’s sexual history.

This rejection marks Tess’s second great trauma and loss of innocence, and after it, she lapses into a fatalistic state in which she no longer cares if she lives or dies. When it seems that Angel is going to drown her in his sleep, she passively reflects that “He might drown her if he would” (268). Even when Tess is being arrested and taken away to certain execution, she calmly tells Angel, “I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me” (418). Tess’s character arc culminates in her lapsing into a state of total self-abnegation because she has internalized social messages that she is bad and sinful. This erosion of Tess’s will and agency also heighten the symbolism of her eventual death; by the time the novel ends, she is less a character than an emblem of the natural world, the old aristocratic order, and everything else that modern, industrialized society threatens.