In 'Tess,' Thomas Hardy has written the modern classic of misfortune and the finest and most characteristic qualities of his art are focused.
In the portrayal of this primitive tragedy, this spirit-rending story of a girl's struggle with destiny, Hardy has put forth his consummate effort. In 'Tess' the Calvinistic idea of fate, predestination, the treacherous power outside of ourselves which makes for confusion, as opposed to the rational Greek idea of pursuing punishment for sins committed.
The subtle poison of the book lies in the false theory which actuated its production, not in the working out of the theory. Tess is a pure woman; the defiant sub-title becomes realized. Only the inexperienced would wag their heads dubiously over it as they read the tale in sheltered and respectable parlors. Hardy to the contrary, it is society, not the Almighty, which is to blame for the moral faux pas, for the malignant blunders which entrap Tess. Nature is non-moral. She herself would have put no obstacles in the way of the recuperation of this fair-souled, high-minded country lass, knocked into the mud by a lustful hoof. The virginal spirit of the maiden would have regained the birthright violently snatched from her, if conventional opinion in the form of Angel Clare had not intervened. This young man, half seraph, half prig, meets Tess at a dairy, miles away from the scene of her trouble. He is a gentleman's son, and the gentle nature in him is drawn to this rare wild flower sprung from the forgotten graves of the D'Urberville knights. He loves the maiden Tess. On their marriage day he confesses a certain folly of his, a three-days' unholy fever for an unworthy woman. Tess gives back confession for confession. Clare, under the spell of false tradition, throws her from the heights which she has regained back into the limbo of the hopeless. He cannot separate her body from her soul. He the deliberate sinner passes judgment on her, the sinned against. Rejected by love itself as unclean, Tess drifts on to her tragic doom. The mercifulness of nature and of God are alike unknown to her. Her case is against man.
In 'Tess' Hardy has perhaps unconsciously stigmatized the man-made moral order.
Hardy's novels of rustic life will give probably the most pleasure to future generations. The chapters of the dairy life in 'Tess' the idyl of the lush green meadows, will save her tragedy from oblivion. In Hardy's stories of his beloved Wessex country there is the perennial refreshment of nature. His peasantry are primitive. Their quaint humor, their hold upon Mother Earth, might have been characteristic of the homely parents of the race in the first dawn of the world. They are "representative of a magnificent antiquity."
He as much in sympathy with the natural world as he is with those men and women who seem a part of the soil on which they live. He has the love of genius for the open air. Nature is the perpetual background for the scenes of his novels; and as in Shakespeare, the aspect of nature reflects the moral atmosphere of the scene. The happiest time of Tess's life begins in the flowery months of May and June. Her desolate existence, after she has been forsaken by her husband, coincides with the bitter, barren wintertime on the upland moors.
