Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (readict TXT) 📕
Description
Tess of the d’Urbervilles is said to be Thomas Hardy’s fictional masterpiece and is considered to be an important nineteenth century novel. It explores themes of love, sex, class and morality in an aching love story.
It initially appeared in a censored, serialised version in The Graphic in 1891 and was published in a single volume the following year. Early reviews were mixed, partly because of its challenge to Victorian sexual morals—it is now looked upon much more favorably.
Tess Durbeyfield is the oldest child of uneducated peasants who are given the impression that they may have noble blood, as their surname is a corruption of that of an extinct Norman family. When Tess participates in the village May Dance, she meets Angel, who stops to join the dance but notices Tess too late to dance with her. That night, Tess’s father gets too drunk to drive to the market, so she undertakes the journey herself. However, she falls asleep at the reins, and the family’s only horse encounters a speeding wagon and is fatally wounded. Tess feels so guilty over the consequences for the family that she agrees to try to claim kin with a rich widow who lives in a neighbouring town. The story traces Tess’s life through the following years.
The novel has been adapted for the stage, theatre, opera, cinema and television numerous times since its publication.
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- Author: Thomas Hardy
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It was Alec d’Urberville. “Where is Tess?” he asked.
Personally Joan had no liking for Alec. She cursorily signified the direction of the church, and went on, d’Urberville saying that he would see them again, in case they should be still unsuccessful in their search for shelter, of which he had just heard. When they had gone, d’Urberville rode to the inn, and shortly after came out on foot.
In the interim Tess, left with the children inside the bedstead, remained talking with them awhile, till, seeing that no more could be done to make them comfortable just then, she walked about the churchyard, now beginning to be embrowned by the shades of nightfall. The door of the church was unfastened, and she entered it for the first time in her life.
Within the window under which the bedstead stood were the tombs of the family, covering in their dates several centuries. They were canopied, altar-shaped, and plain; their carvings being defaced and broken; their brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet-holes remaining like martin-holes in a sandcliff. Of all the reminders that she had ever received that her people were socially extinct, there was none so forcible as this spoliation.
She drew near to a dark stone on which was inscribed:
Ostium sepulchri antiquae familiae d’Urberville
Tess did not read Church-Latin like a Cardinal, but she knew that this was the door of her ancestral sepulchre, and that the tall knights of whom her father had chanted in his cups lay inside.
She musingly turned to withdraw, passing near an altar-tomb, the oldest of them all, on which was a recumbent figure. In the dusk she had not noticed it before, and would hardly have noticed it now but for an odd fancy that the effigy moved. As soon as she drew close to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living person; and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so violent that she was quite overcome, and sank down nigh to fainting, not, however, till she had recognized Alec d’Urberville in the form.
He leapt off the slab and supported her.
“I saw you come in,” he said smiling, “and got up there not to interrupt your meditations. A family gathering, is it not, with these old fellows under us here? Listen.”
He stamped with his heel heavily on the floor; whereupon there arose a hollow echo from below.
“That shook them a bit, I’ll warrant!” he continued. “And you thought I was the mere stone reproduction of one of them. But no. The old order changeth. The little finger of the sham d’Urberville can do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath … Now command me. What shall I do?”
“Go away!” she murmured.
“I will—I’ll look for your mother,” said he blandly. But in passing her he whispered: “Mind this; you’ll be civil yet!”
When he was gone she bent down upon the entrance to the vaults, and said—
“Why am I on the wrong side of this door!”
In the meantime Marian and Izz Huett had journeyed onward with the chattels of the ploughman in the direction of their land of Canaan—the Egypt of some other family who had left it only that morning. But the girls did not for a long time think of where they were going. Their talk was of Angel Clare and Tess, and Tess’s persistent lover, whose connection with her previous history they had partly heard and partly guessed ere this.
“ ’Tisn’t as though she had never known him afore,” said Marian. “His having won her once makes all the difference in the world. ’Twould be a thousand pities if he were to tole her away again. Mr. Clare can never be anything to us, Izz; and why should we grudge him to her, and not try to mend this quarrel? If he could on’y know what straits she’s put to, and what’s hovering round, he might come to take care of his own.”
“Could we let him know?”
They thought of this all the way to their destination; but the bustle of reestablishment in their new place took up all their attention then. But when they were settled, a month later, they heard of Clare’s approaching return, though they had learnt nothing more of Tess. Upon that, agitated anew by their attachment to him, yet honourably disposed to her, Marian uncorked the penny ink-bottle they shared, and a few lines were concocted between the two girls.
Honour’d Sir—
Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do love you. For she is sore put to by an Enemy in the shape of a Friend. Sir, there is one near her who ought to be Away. A woman should not be try’d beyond her Strength, and continual dropping will wear away a Stone—ay, more—a Diamond.
From
Two Well-Wishers
This was addressed to Angel Clare at the only place they had ever heard him to be connected with, Emminster Vicarage; after which they continued in a mood of emotional exaltation at their own generosity, which made them sing in hysterical snatches and weep at the same time.
Phase the Seventh Fulfilment LIIIIt was evening at Emminster Vicarage. The two customary candles were burning under their green shades in the Vicar’s study, but he had not been sitting there. Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the spring, and went out again; sometimes pausing at the front door, going on to the drawing-room, then returning again to the front door.
It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside, there was still light enough without to see with distinctness. Mrs. Clare, who had been sitting in the drawing-room, followed him hither.
“Plenty of time yet,” said the Vicar. “He doesn’t reach Chalk-Newton till six, even if the train should
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