Just finished this book. It’s so slow I feel like it only gets more interesting (to me) after Angel (God I hate this guy) fought with Tess because of her past.
I personally think the language used is great despite so many old unfamiliar words (old lady lady what does tht mean lol). That being said my God the plot is devastating. I thought this book is going to be a light romance or just a romance but I spoke discovered all the main characters irritate me to no end.
Angel Clare was just a fool I have no idea why he was seen as this hero when he’s not. As soon as he fond out his wife was in trouble he should have immediately gone to help. But nah, let’s just wait awhile me because my wife messed up a billion years ago.
Tess is also super whiny and insufferable. I thought we would have a character development with her seeing the red flags with Clare but nah, turns out she’s still stupidly head over heals with him( not even a cute beautiful manner it’s more like stupidity to me, like how a kidnapped victim would fall in love with her captor). I wont recommend a younger person to read this book as they would have thought this is a romantic story because none of the main characters in the love triangle (Angel, Tess, Alec) were even good example of how a love should be. How Tess is willing to KILL Alec who have helped him JUST because Angel is willing to return AFTER years (which really shouldn’t make him a good person, that’s like saying I love someone for doing the bare minimum), I kid you not I almost do not finish the book. It is such a stupid move , an unexpected twist but one that fill me with annoyance .The characters annoy me more than all the character of Wuthering Heights. I literally have to spent a LOT of chapters listening to her whine for Angel only to find out she has a horrible character development and still in love with Angel after he has treat her terrible for so long. I wouldn’t welcome someone back if that person suddenly decided to be nice to me after years. Angel don’t even do anything all he did is just show his ass and Tess is suddenly ‘hmm at least Angel returned let me kill Alex who actually literally helped me out of trouble because WHY not’. Anyone could see Angel is a terrible husband and would have said the same, doesn’t mean they’re lying. This woman is incapable of logical thinking.
Alec is a bit better out of the main trio, but the way he’s being so harsh with Tess while saying she should be his wife is also a red flag. The fact that he also blame the religious group because of his own mistakes too. like nah boy, you got horny it ain’t those people’s fault you can’t fulfill your promises to them and do your job. Shouldn’t have joined if you don’t think you can take it.
What actually DISTURBING is the ending chapter. It is creepy the fact that Angel decided to be with Tess’s sister who was literally a LOT younger. She was a child when Tess last saw her before Tess went to the farm. like how BIG is the age difference? the writer literally implied too that she was half girl half woman.
A lot of red flags and it’s definitely a devastating book overall. I feel like I wasted my time reading this book because I was looking for character development and to find out there is none and all is the same and Angel literally got out unscathed is infuriating.
It’s not even an enjoyable read. You spend majority of the book listening to Tess whining about Angel , her fool husband.
I’d give this book 2/5.
Please take note too that this is my opinion. You don’t agree with me , if you like the book then ok. But I truly despise this book and this is coming from someone that don’t even despise Wuthering Heights. That’s how annoying the whole book and characters were for me.
I can respect that you don’t appreciate the book but the use of red flags for describing the relationships and the attitudes towards Tess’ lack of development make me wonder if it is worth translating her into a modern setting.
The book and Hardy are criticising the hypocrisy of the British class system (which is a horrible system) and how women in particular got into a kind of double bind in circumstances where their vulnerabilities were exploited and with little way to defend themselves.
A modern day Tess may be more like an undocumented migrant woman whose family sends her out to supposed friends who are middle class and documented. Alec would then be someone who either uses his position and privilege to coerce her into sex or who rapes her (in one edition he gives her a tonic that is soperific).
Tess and her family would, in this scenario, also belong to a culture where virginity and sexual purity were valued and have her family honour tied to it. So her experience would be internalised as shameful.
This would destroy her chances and she would go and work in agriculture, away from her family, and try to start a fresh. Her past a secret. Angel would be a person who is documented, belonging to a similar culture, and who loves Tess but who also idealises her, in accordance with the ideas based on sexual purity.
Tess still carries that shame and blame for her situation. Angel on finding out can’t reconcile his ideals with Tess, the real woman. He is an idiot imo.
Tess has no way out of her situation. So she lives with Alec to stabilise her immigration situation and help her family. This is at a great cost as she cant love Alec but she can’t become a bigamist and marry another guy. She is doing this to survive, and transactionally.
When Angel comes back and apologises, she is confronted with a person who sees her goodness again this is painful. She kills Alec because he is a predator and he is the person who ruined her life. In the social circumstances of that time she had few options but to do this.
Angel runs away with her as his kind of penance and Tess must die. It is the punishment of women in stories who are not sexually ‘pure’. But Hardy is telling us that Tess is still pure (read the subtitle) and she was unlucky about the fate (one of the themes in the book) that she was condemned to, which wasn’t so much her fault but the sum of her actions in the shitty society she was living in.
I totally get that OP doesn’t connect to the levels of internalised shame that Tess felt and the pride she clung to in an attempt to keep her dignity. Or the horrible decisions she had to face. But back then things were brutal and many of those themes still relate to people today. If you are in the US there is still purity culture and programmes like Jane the Virgin. We are lucky that religion is no longer as much in politics and we are generally more forgiving. But we just need to go to the 50s to see dramatic tales of ‘fallen women’. It is not so far from where we are.
I feel like we underestimate the intelligence of women in 19th century too much. Women back then are still capable of choosing a good men. Sure unhappy marriages happen here and there but happy marriages also exist.
The entire problem with Tess is the husband literally leaves her and she waits for him out of ignorance and naivety that ‘one day he will come back’. While if you compare to Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (which was published before Tess), Helen stays with her husband just because of reputation while she is described as recognizing the red flags with her husband and remarked that she wants to leave if she could. Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the better book that actually does describe the women at the time, while Tess of D’urbelvilles just put it down to ‘love’ and Tess gets ‘rewarded’ in the end with Angels return.