Book Report: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Torgo approves

This book took me forever to read. In the beginning, Tess is at home with her parents and siblings in rural England. She speaks in dialect, things move slowly.

Over the next 400 pages, the book pretty much boils down to this:

Tess is raped by Alec d'Urberville, becomes a 'fallen woman,' falls in love with Angel Clare, but remains the 'fallen woman,' so things aren't easy.

Hardy has some fun with religion. Angel is the wayward son of a parson. His two brothers are parsons, too. But Angel is something of an atheist. Meanwhile, the rapist Alec converts after being scolded by Angel's father, only to be tempted by Tess into giving up his faith.

That last bit is amazingly topical for a book over 100 years old, set about 150 years ago. Alec blames Tess for tempting him by just being beautiful. It's the classic "Women wouldn't get harassed if they didn't dress like that" faulty logic. I didn't know that line was so old. Maybe it goes back to Eve.

As a cultural encyclopedia, the book is fascinating. It's a highly readable study of rural 19th century England, something I'd never consider myself the least bit interested in. But I kept going.

I came within about 30 pages of the end of the book when I thought to myself: I should stop reading now. I know it's a tragedy, let's see if I can predict how it will end. This is at the point where Angel has returned from Brazil and is on his way to reclaim Tess, while Alec has been wooing her with the promise of money for her destitute family.

I would have said this, perhaps: Angel will kill Alec, as his death was foreshadowed earlier, thereby separating Tess from Angel.

Or, Alec will kill Angel. Or Alec might kill Tess to keep Angel from having her.

If you haven't read the book, let me just say this: The edition I read didn't have a picture on the cover. I've since seen many covers depicting the hot farmgirl. That seems to be the standard. But many picture Stonehenge. If you saw that, you might think, "Stonehenge? What the hell does that have to do with anything?" You'd be correct for about 450 pages.

Two things I never would have predicted: Stonehenge and sloppy seconds. Both come out of nowhere and don't make it any less tragic, just more weird.

That being said (which is another title for this blog, I think, 'that being said'), I recommend the book. Though she's a stereotype bound by the ridiculous cultural biases of the time, Tess is a central, titular heroine in a book written by a man at a time when that was rare.

I did think throughout the book how foreign the idea is that if you discover your girlfriend was raped as a child, you can no longer marry her or even remain on the same continent with her. But maybe that isn't so foreign. Maybe I've just been in San Francisco too long.