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Tess of the D'Urbervilles & Her Downfall

In Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the characters of Angel and Tess are tightly bound together, their fates intertwined. Their downfall can be traced to the fact first that Tess loves Angel with great intensity while Angel is a rigid and uncharitable man who abandons Tess when she needs him the most. This act leads to her downfall on the gallows. The true failure in the novel is the failure of Angel to remain with the woman he loves and to live up to his name, a name that also reflects the fact that at one time he was bound for the clergy, and in many ways he remains throughout the novel a fallen man.

The central character of the novel, of course, is Tess, and the story follows her from the age of sixteen until her death. Tess is a young woman of contradictions, and this has extended to the way she is viewed by various readers. Some see her as a victim of her society and of the changes coming over that society in her time, while others consider her to be responsible for her own fate, tragic though it may be. She is an innocent girl when first introduced, and she is raped by Alec d'Urberville. This leaves her pregnant, and while in our own time the victim of rape would not be considered responsible for being pregnant under those conditions, in Victorian England Tess would be seen as a fallen woman, as guilty even though she did nothing wrong. This fact thus defines her life in a way that is out of her control, making it difficult to see Tess as the master of her own fate. She does show some mastery in being able to rebound from this event, a testament to her will to live. She blames herself for what has happened, but still manages to live up to her many responsibilities to her family.

Angel Clare is a hypocritical man who may love Tess, but he abandons her only to return later when he is remorseful over what he has done. It is too late by then, and his return is what causes Tess to kill Alec d'Urbervil...

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Tess of the D'Urbervilles & Her Downfall. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:14, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1693043.html