"Cliff Notes - Tess of the D'urbervilles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Jude and Tess, Hardy gave up trying to write novels to please a mass
audience and returned to poetry, his first love.

Hardy's wife, Emma, died in 1912 and though he had made her life
fairly miserable, he never stopped mourning her death. The Hardys
suffered much as a married couple, and the problems of men and women
living together as life partners are demonstrated in Tess. Emma and
Thomas came from different social classes and backgrounds and had
different expectations. Emma loved socializing and London, while
Thomas was a country hermit. They never had any children and life at
their home, Max Gate, seemed dreary to outsiders. After Emma's
death, Thomas, now in his seventies, married his young secretary,
Florence Dugdale, who cared for him until he died in 1928. He is
buried at Westminster Abbey next to Charles Dickens, though his
heart, by his own request, is buried next to his first wife's grave.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles was originally published as a serial in a
magazine. In order to get past magazine censorship, Hardy was forced
to cut some of the more sexually explicit passages. (These are all
restored in current editions.) To mollify his magazine audience, Tess
is made to think she has married Alec (a mock service is performed).
That way, she doesn't know she's having sex out of wedlock. In the
magazine version, Tess doesn't have a child by Alec, and she returns
to live with him at Sandbourne.

When Hardy published the complete text of Tess in book form, critics
were both impressed at its brilliance and horrified at its
unconventional moral stance. How could a murderess ever be a pure
woman, many asked.

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES: THE PLOT

In the Vale of Blackmoor in rural Wessex lives a teenage girl, Tess
Durbeyfield, her six younger sisters and brothers, and her parents,
John and Joan. One day John, coming home from work in his typical
drunken manner, meets the local parson who tells him an amazing
secret. It turns out that Mr. Durbeyfield is really the last
descendant of one of the most ancient and powerful families of
England, known as the d'Urbervilles. John, unlike his illustrious
ancestors, is poor and powerless. Naturally he's determined to make
this d'Urberville legacy pay off for him and his family. Triumphant,
he swaggers home to the village of Marlott where he sees his
sparkling daughter Tess dancing in the local club-walking
festivities. There's another important male observer at this
all-women dance--Angel Clare, a young man on a sightseeing tour with
his brothers. He notices Tess but doesn't dance with her, which
hurts her feelings.

Mr. Durbeyfield is so carried away at the thought of being "Sir
John" that he drinks all night, concocting grand plans to send young