A review by ianbanks
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

5.0

I can't add anything new to the insights that thousands of cleverer people than I have gleaned from this text except to say that I did not remember the beginning of this novel being as funny as it was, albeit grimly and darkly humourous rather than jolly. Tess's parents are not too far removed in genealogy from Mrs Bennet and Tess comes across as the only sensible person far too often. However, she is often rendered helpless by circumstances and is forced to take ever-decreasing steps as she goes through her life.

From this reading I took the general sense of frustration that Hardy must have felt as he grew to realise that Victorian society's obsession with "form" and "propriety" was destroying lives and creating more misery than it prevented, which came to a head after his final novel, when he gave it all away and focused on poetry for the rest of his life. Here we see Tess constantly on guard against letting herself be brought lower than she has been and forever trying to recover from the mistakes she made as a girl - a child, really. While her story is not as tragic as Fantine's in Les Miserables she does find herself travelling the same downward spiral in spite of her best intentions and the help of some friends, simply because she doesn't believe that she deserves to be forgiven for her mistakes. It doesn't help that she has the twin influences of Angel and Alec, the men in her life, constantly putting her on her guard and reminding her of what she thinks she has lost.

Something that I've noticed especially on this reread is that Alec is possibly a better - or, at least, a more understanding - person than Angel, despite starting Tess on her path to tragedy by his ugly fascination with her: Alec is happy to be with Tess and is constantly trying to help her out, while Angel is constantly thinking about his damned propriety, despite his adoration of Tess. Like most of Hardy's books, there are no real villains or cads, just characters with varying degrees of culpability and short-sightedness.