Book detail: Tess of the D'urbervilles is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This nineteenth-century novel centers on Tess Durbeyfield, a rural peasant girl whose father learns of distant aristocratic ancestry. Sent to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urberville family, Tess encounters Alec D'Urberville, whose actions set in motion a chain of events that shadow her subsequent life. Later working as a milkmaid, she forms a relationship with Angel Clare, a man of progressive ideals whose response to her past reveals the gap between principle and practice. The narrative traces Tess's movement through agricultural labor, social stigma, and shifting moral landscapes, examining how individual character intersects with circumstance, class hierarchy, and gendered double standards. Hardy's subtitle, "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," signals his authorial stance toward his protagonist, framing the work as social critique as much as personal tragedy. The novel belongs to the pastoral tradition while subverting its conventions, and it contributed to debates about sexual morality, religious doubt, and the representation of working-class experience in literature.
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