Classic Review: TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy is the biggest downer of all novels. How did this book ever make it as a classic anyone wanted to read?

Why, you ask? Well, here is a snoposis which is also a big spoiler, which will help explain why: 

[Tess of the D'urbervilles is] about a girl who gets raped and impregnated by her fake cousin, buries her illegitimate baby semi-illegally, gets spurned by her new husband because she tells him she was raped (nice dude, eh?), stabs the guy who raped her... and gets arrested at Stonehenge. Oh yeah, and then gets hanged (Shmoop)

I'm not kidding, and neither was Shmoop. Every page you turn finds Tess in some depressing circumstance or another with no way out. Why? Because in Victorian England it is worse to get raped that it is to rape! 

Thomas Hardy wrote Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1890. As you can imagine he had a hard time finding a publisher since people in society were as biased against raped women in scoiety as they were in the book. When the book was finally published in 1891 he added a subtitle to it  -- "A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented." He did so because he was defending the honor of Tess even though she was raped.

I'm guessing Tess of the D'Urbervilles has made it onto the must-read classics list because of the message Hardy was broadcasting to the world: It is not okay to condemn women who are sexually exploited without condemning the men who were the perpetrators. And, since he was writing this at the height of the Victorian social conventions, he was not very popular for his views, as you can imagine.

Looking back on the Victorian mores of that time, I seethed with indignation as I read the book, not thinking about what Hardy was doing for me and for all women. Instead of standing on a soapbox and screaming at whoever would listen, Hardy used a mirror to show people what they were doing. I imagine Victorians reading this book would have squirmed knowing that they were in fact condemning all pure but wronged women to the same fate as Tess by their pious, judgmental attitudes. We move forward when we recognize ourselves in the story and don't like what we see.

Bravo, Thomas Hardy! even though I found the book to be tremendously depressing, I do recognize its brilliance.

Rating: 3.5 stars (Brilliant but I still didn't like it.)

-Anne