Hardy’s ‘Tess of the d’urberville’s’ is the story of the country girl Tess in her discovery that she is of upper class descent. It follows her love affairs and social ruin as she just tries to keep on her feet getting jobs at various dairies. Most of ‘Tess of the d’urberville’s’ played out as a typical victorian period classic, just Hardy placing a lesser emphasis on the upper class areas, but the twist in the ending genuinely subverted my ideas about the whole book and I was pleasantly surprised, bumping my rating up a little bit. 

I haven’t read anything else by Hardy yet but with knowledge of the titles of his other books was impressed to find an overlap with a focus in the areas os Wessex and Casterbridge, and am intrigued to see how much, if at all, the universes of the novels intertwine. Tess as a protagonist character wasn’t written awfully, more a standard you can expect from Male Victorian writers towards women. As protagonist she had some agency but her main character conflicts were as a result of her attempts to conform to patriarchal standards of which she willingly obliged to. She was by no means a groundbreaking female lead. 

Aside from the last couple of chapters, ‘Tess of the d’urberville’s’ was not bad but nothing remarkable, very much as I expected in terms of the plot, style and my engagement with the story.