Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy > Reviews > A Pure woman

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Absolutely
Story	Outstanding
Characters	Good
Listenability	Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
How does it compare to similar audio books?	Excellent
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?	Excellent

Advantages:	Tess's character is lovely, the language and description are beautiful
Disadvantages:	a sobering read, portrays a bad picture of men

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This novel caused a heck of a fuss when Thomas Hardy first published it. Originally titled "A Pure Woman" it was considered outrageous for a woman such as Tess to be seen as pure in Hardy's eyes. I'm giving a fairly lengthy plot description here, so apologies if you get bored, and the ending is given away, so watch out!

Tess Durbeyfield is the peasant daughter of haggler John. She is partaking in a local dance with other girls when three young brothers wander along- Angel, Felix and Cuthbert (poor bugger) Clare. Angel wants to join in the dance, but his older brothers are basically a bit snobby about dancing with country girls, so Angel dances with all of the girls save for the pretty Tess, which he regrets, while she feels snubbed by him.

When a local parson tells the rather vain John that he is actually the descendant of the D'Urbervilles, an old rich family. John goes to get drunk in celebration and ends up so hammered that he's too ill to take some stuff which he has to sell in the horse and cart. He gets Tess and her little brother to do it instead. Tess falls asleep and the horse ends up in an accident and is killed. As a result, the overly sensitive Tess feels guilty not realising it is really John's fault.

Meanwhile her mother Joan has learned that a Lady D'Urberville lives in a neighbouring village. She wants to send Tess to claim kin and learning that there is a master D'urberville, has notions that Tess, being a beautiful girl, will marry him. Tess really doesn’t want to go but does out of guilt of the death of the horse. Alec, the young D'Urberville, is, to put it politely, a nasty sleazy git who needs to be castrated and lusts after Tess. Eventually he rapes/seduces Tess (because of the time of writing, Hardy had to shroud the sex in imagery) and she ends up pregnant. She goes home after Alec tries to buy her off.

Tess's baby becomes ill, she christens the baby Sorrow in a touching ceremony with her siblings, but the child dies. Not long after, Tess gets work at Talbothays, a large dairy farm a good way away from her home town, and she heads off there. This marks a happy spell in Tess's life. She meets Angel Clare who had been at the spring dance. His father is a parson but Angel doesn't want to be involved in the church and is learning the ways of farming instead. He falls for Tess, who is distraught after deciding not to get married. Angel persists the pair fall in love and agree to marry. The two wed, and just after Angel confesses to "eight-and-forty hours' dissipation with a stranger". Tess, feeling unburdened, confesses. Angel freaks out and leaves Tess, although by law they are still married, and travels to Brazil.

Tess in the meantime ends up working with some of her old dairymaid friends for a horrible farmer. She runs into Alec who accuses her of tempting him and guilt trips Tess into living with him, because her family are on the verge of homelessness and need the money. Having given up on Angel and realising his hypocrisy, she agrees. Angel comes home from Brazil having realised the error of his ways and tracks Tess. On finding her, he learns that she thinks it’s too late for them. He takes off and Tess gets into a fight with Alec, which ends in her stabbing him. She runs after Angel, and they spend time together in an old mansion. After wandering the countryside for a while, Tess finds they are at Stonehenge, and feels at home, having been described as a heathen in her home village. She tells Angel that should she be caught she wants him to marry her sister Liza-Lu. The police catch up to her, and shortly after Tess is hanged.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a beautifully constructed story, which makes use of the hand of fate. It is the sweet and natural character of Tess that gives the book its exceptionality. The beautifully innocent child never seems to grow into a woman; she retains a dear innocence and vulnerability, which she had from the outset. Her purity of morals and spirit make her the perfect victim for such a small-minded society, and I empathised with her in a way I have done with few characters in novels. It is difficult not to fall in love with her sweet naïveté and quiet courage, although it is easy to feel exasperated with her intense passivity. Her true, deep love for Angel is another thing, which makes her endearing. As Izz notes when Angel asks if he loves her more than Tess did, no-one could because she would lay down her life for Angel.

The three-dimensional Angel is another attractive character. Initially you want to like him and by the later chapters you begin to empathise with him despite his rather rash and inconsiderate treatment of his wife. It is clear that he loves her, but it’s also fair to say that he doesn’t feel the intense love that Tess does, given that he was so willing to treat her cruelly and with such narrow-minded hypocrisy.

Hardy’s descriptive language is beautiful, especially in relating the growing love between Angel and Tess at Talbothay’s. The passion shown is so beautifully described, especially considering that there is nothing even beyond the realm of suggestive. The same descriptive style, which I felt, made the Mayor of Casterbridge and bit cumbersome, plodding and difficult to get into has a wonderful vibrance and colour to it, so that you can perfectly picture Tess and the little upward curve of her lip that drives Angel mad. The natural description is also thoroughly detailed in typical Hardy style, but once again has a beauty that the Mayor of Casterbridge didn’t have (for me anyway).

Hardy weaves a complex tale which clearly has dire thoughts of his eras views of morals and religions and the hypocritical stance which said that men were unable to control their sex and drives and therefore upper class men could have sex with as many peasant girls as they wished and have no reason to feel guilty. Alec is painted as the devil, reappearing in different forms and appearing with pitchforks in all his moustached, Victorian melodrama villain glory. Hardy paints a sad picture of religion too, where minor doctrines are given more importance than forgiveness and kindness.

All in all, Tess is a beautiful book full of gorgeous language and suggestive passion, which in my view is unequalled. The lovely Tess is such a sweetie that you just want to wrap her up in bubble wrap and keep her protected and safe from the big bad world. By the end of this I was literally crying buckets of tears; but there is an irony in that Tess dies happy- she feels ready to go, she doesn’t want to live for Angel to lose his love for her, and knows that he will look after her sister. So, in an odd way, the ending could be seen as happy.