I. Thomas Hardy and his Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Son of a mason, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born in Dorsetshire, southwest of England, the area that later became the famous "wessex" in many of his novels. From his parents, hardy gained all interests that would appear in his novels and his own life: his love for architecture and music, his interest in lifestyles of the country folk, and his passion for all sorts of literature.
He completed his general education by attending classes reading widely: language, literature, history, philosophy and art. Moreover he interested himself in fiction and poetry. In his youth, Thomas Hardy had been greatly influenced by some liberal thinkers such as Darwin and John Stuart Mill. In his novels, Hardy incorporated many of these themes in order to portray a real world. Darwin's challenge led Hardy to lose faith in Christianity, and this lack of faith gave his novels their tragic, bleak element.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles was the twelfth novel published by Thomas Hardy. He began the novel in 1889 and encountered roadblocks when attempting to find an editor and publisher for Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It was originally serialized in the Graphic after being rejected by several periodicals from July to December in 1891. It finally published as a novel in December of 1891. When at last the reception of the novel was favorable and drew great public attention, certain critics harshly attacked it. They attacked Tess's morality and blasted Hardy's suggestion in the novel that God is malicious. The outcry discouraged the author to such an extent that he ceased writing novels altogether. At the age of sixty, Hardy turned entirely to poetry.
On January 11,1928, Hardy, the last important novelist and poet of the nineteenth century died who was buried with impressive ceremonies in the Poet's Corner in Westminster abbey.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, like the other major works by Thomas Hardy, although technically nineteenth century work, anticipates the twentieth century in regard to the nature and the treatment of its subject matter. The novel questions the society's sexual mores by compassionately portraying a heroine who is seduced by the son of her employer and who thus is not considered a pure and chaste woman by the society. Upon its publication, although having encountered brutally hostile reviews, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is now considered a major works of fiction. The critical realism of the novel puts it among the best works of the late Victorian period.

II. The story and themes

Tess is the beautiful eldest daughter of a poor villager who discovers that he is a descendant of the ancient family of the D'Urbervilles. The family is very poor and one day their horse is killed by accident. So Tess is persuaded by her mother to go to the prosperous D'Urbervilles to claim kindred, though actually the latter is a family of capitalists who have recently acquired wealth and bought their way into the rich class. Working there as a dairymaid, Tess is seduced by the young master, Alec. She returns home and give birth to a baby in disgrace. The child dies in infancy, Tess is considered as a sinful woman.
Later, she goes to work on a dairy farm in Talbothays. There she meets Angel Clare, son of a clergyman, who is there to gather experience of work in order to be a farmer. The two fall in love. On their wedding night, after Angel's confession of his past relation with a bad woman, Tess tells him of her own story. But while she forgives him readily, Angel is too much a hypocrite and a snob and thinks too much of his own reputation and honor to forgive her. He leaves her for Brazil and she has to go home. Again poverty forces her to go out to work. After many vain attempts, she goes to the notorious Flincomb-Ash farm where condition is of the worst and the hardest. Then comes the news of her father's death and the expulsion of her family from their cottage. This finally drives Tess back to Alec.
Before long, Angel, repentant of his unjust treatment to his wife, returns from abroad in the hope of being reconciled to her, but only to find her living with Alec. He accuses Tess and leaves her. Seeing that Alec's relation with her has once again prevented her union with Angel, she hates him for ruining her life and kills him in a fit of despair. After hiding in a forest and spending a few happy days with Angel, she is finally arrested, tired, convinced and hanged.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles deals with several significant contemporary subjects for Hardy, among which the social moral concept is one of the themes. As we know, a nineteenth-century woman was defined by her adherence to submission and resistance to sexuality. She was portrayed by most writers as naive, accepting figure with strong concerns about living up to the prescribed social ideals for a respectable woman. The woman in Jane Austen's(1775-1817) novels offer a clear representation of the nineteenth-century woman. Austen refuses these women any sexual expressions but focuses more upon their concerns with marriage and society. Thomas Hardy resists Austen's socially accepted depiction of the female with his radically independent heroines.
The novel also reflects Hardy's preoccupation with social sense of hierarchy that continues through his novels. Hardy had connections to both the working and upper class, but felt that he belonged to neither. He felt that rising in the society was like a "double-edged sword": "in rising, one must leave others behind and in a sense comprise one's beliefs; yet, by failing to rise, one does not fulfill one's potential"(Sally Mitchell). This accounts for the clean evidence of Hardy's frustration and pessimism toward social mobility and the class structure in his works. This is reflected in the pessimism contained in Tess of the D'Urbervilles toward the chances for Tess to ascend in the society and Angel's precarious position as neither a member of the upper class nor a working person equivalent to his fellow milker at Talbothays. Tess, the heroine, is depicted as a victim of the society. Being a beautiful, innocent, honest, sweet-natured, and hard-working country girl, she is easily taken in and abused by the hypocritical bourgeoisie, constantly suppressed by the social conventions and moral values of the day, and eventually executed by the unfair legal system of the society. Her absolutely obedience ti Angel as her husband and her willing to suffering and sacrifice to him is not only her weakness in character but also an inevitability in a girl of her upbringing. And most important of all, it is the poverty of the family that forces her to improper relation once and again with Alec, and finally, to her murder and execution. In this sense, she is cornered and driven into dead-end by the destructive social forces embodied in the characters of Alec and Angel, with one depriving her of her virginity and purity and the other forcing her back into an immoral relationship and then catching her at it, reducing her to desperation and self-destruction.
The theme of tragedy is another eye-catching subject in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Tess's fate on one hand is of individual one, because she happens to be so beautiful, so pure, so innocent, so obedient and so poor, and because she happens to get involved with the two men who, though apparent rivals, actually join their forces in bringing about her destruction. On the other hand, her fate represents that of the society. In such a society with such religious and moral concepts, with such social estate, anyone, pure and poor like Tess would possess the same fate. It can be the fate of all the peasants who are driven out of their land and home and forced to seek somewhere else for life. According to Hardy's pessimistic philosophy, some hostile mysterious fate rules mankind and brings misfortune to human life. Tess is just a victim and also an evidence to his philosophy. However, it's not a fate but capitalism that is responsible for the tragedy.

III. The writing techniques and their significance

IV. Conclusion

Hardy' use of an omniscient narrator, descrptive settings, allusion and metaphysical symbols, and letter writing and songs in Tess of the D'Urbervilles enables Hardy to influence the way the readers understand and interpret the events of the novel. These narrative techniques are highly effective in establishing a relationship between the characters and the readers and in understanding of these social, cultural aspects, and also allow the readers to rationale the actions and emotions of the characters in relation to the society in which these characters live. It is crucial for the readers to comprehend the background and aspects of Hardy's society in order that they are able to explicate the plot of the novel in relation to the environment in which the characters exist.

Bibliography
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, Oxford University Press, 1994