Tess of the d'Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy
First published 1891 · English · 535 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
- Love and romance
A novel set in rural Wessex. Tess Durbeyfield, a poor country girl, learns that her family descends from the ancient noble d'Urbervilles. Her parents send her to claim kinship with a wealthy household, and the encounter sets her life on a painful course. Later she finds work on a dairy farm and meets a thoughtful young man who offers her hope. Hardy portrays Tess with great sympathy and questions the harsh moral standards of Victorian society. The book is admired for its landscapes, its sense of fate, and its moving central character.
Quotes
felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.
She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.
Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.
Once victim, always victim: that's the law!