Tess of the D’urbervilles revision booklet
AO3
Historical context
Hardy centres Tess in and around Dorset, an agricultural region
which, by the time Hardy was writing, has already undergone
considerable economic and social change. There was no longer a
‘peasantry’, but a society structured by class relations and social
mobility.
The rural economy was now dependent on urban markets – Dorset,
which was a pastoral county, ultimately did very well out of this –
and by the 1890s had been through a long-term depression brought
about by shifts in the global economy
Rural poverty
As a result of the depression, employment had declined drastically,
and wages had fallen, especially in the south and east of England
where arable farming predominated.
Thousands left the countryside in search of work, series of education
acts passed in the 1870s onwards added to the process of
depopulation.
The Dorset agricultural labourer lived, generally, in appalling
conditions, in fact some of the worst in the country, while class
relations were among the most embittered of the time
Shifting pattern of rural life
Late nineteenth-century rural society was characterised by mobility,
insecurity and separation, just like its urban counterpart.
We see this in Tess’s constant journeying and movement from farm
to farm, but also in the journeys of more minor characters like
Marian and Izz or the way in which the Durbeyfield's are thrown out
of their home as soon as the last male tenant dies, because they’re
morally inferior
The agricultural revolution had taken place by the time Hardy was
writing – the railway came to Dorchester when Hardy was seven.
What he describes, therefore, is an ongoing, continuous process of
change in the countryside, not a static and idealised rural world
Hardy’s Wessex is a pastoral environment destroyed by new,
invasive technologies
Social relations
, Hardy was sensitive to the workings of the rural economy and to its
actual, everyday social relations. He was not always accurate in
terms of detail (a woman could not of worked a threshing machine
in the 1880s as Tess does)
What concerned him was the economic context of that work and the
impact of the wider social and moral concerns of his period on
people like the Durbeyfield’s
Settings
Settings in a novel ordinarily provide background, atmosphere, and
interest; they add a degree of authenticity, in Hardy’s novel can be
extremely detailed – provide the novel with a degree of
verisimilitude and realism
Hardy specialises in a very careful handling of season and scenery,
so time and place reinforce mood. Every detail of the hour, season
or landscape echoes a shift in sensibility
Most of the settings in Tess underline Tess’s development and
current condition or well-being. For example, you can contrast her
arrival in the valley of the Great Dairies in Chapter 16 with her
journey to Flintcomb-Ash in Chapter 42. So, it is vital the settings in
Tess are appreciated in order that the themes of the novel can be
understood
Hardy often initially sketches a landscape from a height and at a
distance then closes in. For example in the beginning of Chapter 14,
he provides a long description of the August harvest at Marlott and,
after initially making her an anonymous figure, moves in to focus on
Tess.
This example sets up a conflict for us. Tess is the absolute focus of
attention here; we cannot keep our eyes off her because she is
exceptional. Yet she is supposed to be an ordinary field-woman
Literary context
Hardy’s literary antecedents include the Romantics, realists like
George Eliot and the ‘rural’ authors of his day. Hardy seems to move
beyond many of his forebears.
Hardy is critical of the Romantics’ view of nature: “Some people
would like to know whence the poet whose philosophy is in these
days deemed profound ... gets his authority for speaking of
‘Nature’s holy plan’”
While, in a way, he returns to their view of nature, he also sets out
to place it within a modern context and undermine their conception
of Providence in nature
