9780140431353

Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Thomas Hardy's early work, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, has achieved classic stature.

Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At sixteen, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure—he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He died on January 11, 1928, and was buried in Poet’s Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It was as a poet that he wished to be remembered, but today critics regard his novels as his most memorable contribution to English literature for their psychological insight, decisive delineation of character, and profound presentation of tragedy.

Acknowledgements
General Editors' Preface
Introduction: Tess of the d'Urbervilles Faithfully Presented	p. 1
Hardy and Social Class	p. 24
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Towards a Materialist Criticism	p. 33
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form	p. 44
Tess: A Less than Pure Woman Ambivalently Presented	p. 63
Fallen Woman as Sign, and Narrative Syntax in Tess of the d'Urbervilles	p. 80
A Tess for Child Molesters	p. 90
'A Tragedy of Modern Life?' Polanski's Tess	p. 95
Language and the Shape of Reality in Tess of the d'Urbervilles	p. 109
History, Figuration and Female Subjectivity in Tess of the d'Urbervilles	p. 129
The Violence of Style in Tess of the d'Urbervilles	p. 147
Geographies of Hardy's Wessex in Tess of the d'Urbervilles	p. 157
Creating Tess, 1892	p. 172
The Offensive Truth: Tess of the d'Urbervilles	p. 184
Further Reading	p. 201
Notes on Contributors	p. 205
Index	p. 207
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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Tess of the D'Urbervilles A Pure Woman

Tess of the D'Urbervilles A Pure Woman

0140431357

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