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Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Bantam Classics) (平装)
by Thomas Hardy, Robert B. Heilman
| Category:
Literature, Fiction, Classic |
| Market price: ¥ 65.00
MSL price:
¥ 60.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
MSL Pointer Review:
A great, irrestible book in the English language, this novel is tragic and beautifully written; the writer of Tess of the d'Urbervilles was, and remains, unrivalled in evocation of tragic emotion.
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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A reader (MSL quote), Canada
<2007-03-12 00:00>
Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the best stories I've ever read. Its characters, especially Tess herself, are so alive and memorable that they stay in your mind long after you've finished the book. That being said, though, it's also not a novel for the casual reader. This book is so thought-provoking and, ultimately, heartbraking that it can't be easily forgotten, and will more than likely leave you with an overwhelming sadness for a long time afterward. I read a lot, and material with very different subject matters, so I'm not being melodramatic when I say that this book left me extremely choked up, and almost on the verge of tears. For a guy in his mid-20's who never gets emotional, I think that's saying quite a lot. It certainly left me with a lot of respect for the author. The reader comes to care so much about Tess, and agonize over the way her life turns out, that it becomes almost unbearable at times. For a fictional tale to have that effect on a person is quite incredible. Difficult or not, anyone who is interested in reading a brilliant and moving story that deserves to be called a classic should read Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
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Andy Lau (MSL quote), Hong Kong
<2007-03-12 00:00>
What I have written below is the assignment of my homework. (I'm a 9th grade student)
Tess's life was destroyed by men who loved her. But the right man hesitated, and the wrong man found her first. This was how her life was ruined and how miserable she was. If you want more derails, it is better for you to read the book yourself.
This book is a perfect demonstration that bad things happened to good people. But I have to admitt that it is quite difficult to struggle through the beginning. But after a few chapters, enjoyment continued filling my heart and eventually I could not stop reading untill i have finished it.
Alec d'Urbervill was the man who destroyed Tess's life. Tess met with lots of knotty difficulties in her life. It is fallacious to say that ir was her fault.
Tess is really a complex character. Her life was full of love , hate, depression and misery. Fortunately, she met Angel Clare who filled her heart with happiness.
Good writing do not often go hand in hand. But Hardy did it. THis is a tragic story. Why is the world so unfair?
Hardy used a magical way to write this book. Once you start, you can't stop. As you travel through this book, you will find yourself lost in admiration for the strong, honest woman.
Hardy showed me the true colours of depreesion and hapiness. He did a nice job and i did appreciate it.
It is definitely the most beautifully crafted book i have ever read. This book is truly worth reading and I hope you are not going to miss it.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
I'm many years out of college and thought I should start reading some more of the classics. Previous favorites of mine have been The Sound and the Fury, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice. I saw Tess of the D'Urbervilles on my sister's bookshelf and for about a year I considered reading it. Finally, I picked it up and began. Wow! I read it in about three days. I never expected I would feel so much by reading this book. I cried when she baptized Sorrow herself. Her concerns that he be buried in the churchyard and her efforts to ensure he was were touching. I wanted to help Tess Durbeyfield. I thought she was a very complex character - she was sweet and unworldly but she wasn't actually stupid. And she was strong in many ways - for example, her family relied on Tess for so many things - eventually even their support. In fact, I hated her family for not working harder and making their own sacrifices. All the burden was on poor Tess. I also wanted to shake some sense into Angel. He really did wrong by Tess - although he eventually realizes this, it comes too late. The only thing I really did not care for was the sudden inclusion of a minor character (who we met earlier)into the end of the book and the implication that she would play an important role in the future of a major character. I barely knew this minor character and NOBODY could compare to Tess of the D'Urbervilles. If you are reading this to find a good book, ignore the negative reviews by high-school students and buy this book NOW. It's unforgettable.
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Kazza (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
Having just finished this book a mere few hours ago the pain of it is fresh in my mind, but I'm sure it will distract me for weeks, such is the intensity of this tragedy. The only other novel of Hardy's I have ever read - Jude the Obscure - was a good book, stable and interesting, though not compelling until it's heart-wrenching twist three quarters of the way through the book. It was, in essence, more a social commentary, so it was with some surprise that I absorbed the constant emotion and passion that was this book. The basic storyline is as follows: Tess Durbeyfield, a young woman of a poor country family, is sent to visit her rich cousin, Alec d'Urbeville, after learning of her (perhaps mythical) relation to the ancient family which bears his name. In the obscure randomness that fate casts over life, innocent Tess is then pursued by perhaps the only man she could never tolerate (Alec), who is as his most evil in the early parts of the book. At Alec's house Tess works as a keeper to the poultry and is assaulted by Alec's constant sexual attentions until finally (and this is suggested rather than explained), exhausted and numb, she submits to intercourse with him. She later gives birth to a baby, whom she names Sorrow, who soon dies; and then meets a man she had glimpsed once years before at a dance: Angel Clare. Working together at a milking farm, they become drawn to each other despite Tess's unwillingness to incite the attentions of any man. Their love for each other grows but Tess knows that she dare not enter into marriage considering her past and a society that is both ludcrously religious and prejudiced. The strength of her love finally wears her down and they wed. However, on that very night she confesses her past, and is cruelly thrown aside by Clare, who now begins to view her as an impure woman separate to the Tess he had always loved (despite his past containing a similar history). After suffering years of solitutde and hardship, Tess finally gives up on Clare and falls in the way of Alec d'Urbeville again, relying upon him for the care of herself and her family. Sick and wasted, Clare eventually realizes the mistake he has made in casting Tess aside and finds her at d'Urbeville's mansion: too late. This brings the story to its close where greater tragedy ensues.
The book was brilliant in its emotive persuasion and its depiction of Tess, who is impossible to not feel for, and, indeed, love. The misfortunes of her life are never self-inflicted, and we are left to wonder at the end at the awful nature of a world that would bring such sorrow upon one person. Tess is wonderful, stoic, and pure in her unyielding love for Clare; d'Urbeville is horrible in his initial portrayal as the villain who will singlehandedly destroy Tess's life, though is perhaps a little less repulsive at the end as one understand's the depths of his feeling for her; and Clare is the one who holds in his hands the ability to restore all past wrongness and find joy himself, but tragically fails to do so because of pride and convention.
Overall, there were only two problems I had with the storyline: the first being Tess's succumbing to Alec's sexual persuasion in the beginning - if we are to believe that she is repulsed so many times by Alec's advances so completely and bodily, how are we to believe that she so easily concedes in one (unmentioned) incident? Her strength is greater than that. And the second is one which has been mentioned by another reviewer here: the ending, where a minor, unimportant character is introduced as a means through which to resolve everything, where in fact she is incapable of doing so, since we know nothing about this character, and can therefore put no faith in her.
Despite these minor quibbles the whole of the book, with its engaging plot and brilliant prose, is worth more than the sum of its parts, with the pain of lost love being the principle effect one experiences long after the reading is over. Tess is beautiful.
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Saliero (MSL quote), Australia
<2007-03-12 00:00>
I was supposed to read this book 25 or so years ago in high school. It was heavy going, and pretty meaningless to me at the time. It has come to be one of my favourite books, and I have read it more than once. The thing about hardy is that the sense of place, and time is so evocative. I have lived as an adult in Dorset - hardy Country, and recognise many of the locales he writes so beautifully about. More astounding is that some of the social mores and economic system ( indentured labour, tied villages) still exist. Like Dickens, coincidence plays a heavy hand in Hardy's plot development, a contrivance that is a little agitating to the modern, more cynical reader. Still, I find it entiely appropriate to an era when people were most often trapped in a life dictated by circumstance, when free will didn't play nearly as large a part as it does now, in a Britain where there was no place for a meritocracy, class and social station being everything. Some vestiges of that are still very evident in English life (Royalty representing the apex of the class system). Tess is a classic, well worth the effort on a number of levels - the rhythm of language, and what it says about its time and place.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
There really isn't much I can add to what has already been said about this wonderful Thomas Hardy novel. One of the things that really struck me about Tess was the importance of setting and how Hardy relates Tess's emotional state to the setting in which she finds herself. The contrasting settings of Talbothays Dairy and Flintcomb-Ash seem to represent the opposing forces in Tess's own life.
At Talbothays, the air is "clear, bracing and ethereal," the river flows like the pure River of Life," and the atmosphere "set up (Tess's) spirits wonderfully." For Tess, the valley where the dairy is located is akin to Paradise and she feels an emotional high while she is there.
In the dairy, itself, the milkers form "a little battalion of men and women," often "singing songs to entice the cows to produce milk." Everyone works together to bring about a common goal, a common good. At Talbothays, Tess is able to escape the pressures and prejudices of Victorian England. She is at the peak of happiness in her life and falls in love and marries the intellectual and difficult Angel Clare.
It is when her marriage to Angel fails, that Tess moves to the dreary and desolate Flintcomb-Ash. Flintcomb-Ash is in direct contrast to Talbothays. There is not a single "green pasture," nor anything besides "fallow and turnips everywhere" at the "starve-acre place." Here, Tess reaches a new emotional low and her heart is as empty and dark as the setting in which she finds herself. In contrast to the camaraderie at Talbothays, at Flintcomb-Ash, "nobody come near (Tess)" as she stands "enshrouded in her uniform" working "hour after hour." The other workers at Flintcomb-Ash do not fare much better and most are kept busy in the fields in order to earn enough money to simply survive. There is no time for friendship in this place.
Obviously, Hardy was a master at description and the use of setting to emphasize the emotional state of his characters, Tess in particular. Although this book is a masterpiece of sensual language, Tess is also a wonderful example of the use of contrasting settings to convey strong emotional states in a way that mere words alone never could. Tess is a book that should not be overlooked by anyone.
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Sergio Flores (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
Thomas Hardy seems to have been interested mostly in sad, unhappy characters who lead troubled, disappointing lives, struggle against fate, and lose. There is beauty in artistically represented sadness, though, and notably so if we are only spectators. I am not giving away the ending by writing that Tess is a sad novel. I think most people who choose to read this book do so because they know it is a sad story, or they have read Hardy before. In my case, I had to read it for school, and what truly surprised me is the ambiguity that Hardy so masterfully portrays in order to make his heroine more of a real person instead of a mere character. By the book's end we really do not know whether Tess was raped or seduced by Alec; whether he took advantage of a sleeping girl and forced himself upon her, or she allowed it in a moment of weakness, tired after a strenous day and grateful to him for "saving" her from the other workers. However it happened, Tess's life is radically changed after the fact and this event will have grave consequences for her and Alec.
The ambiguity is troubling with the entrance of Angel, the hypocrite who falls in love with Tess because she looks angelic, virginal, and beautiful as a child, but rejects her when she tells him that she is not a virgin (therefore not a child) anymore. Her other qualities are there, but Angel equates purity with virginity - something many people still do when it refers to women - so he can construct a perfect excuse for his terrible behaviour towards the woman he has said he loved. In spite of the forebodings that Hardy drops before Chapter 35, this particular chapter, at the beginning of Phase the Fifth, is very powerful and almost surprising in its intensity. The level of troubling ambiguity goes up several notches at the end of the novel, when it appears that Angel may indeed get his "little girl" as a replacement for the one he just lost.
Tess is a sad and beautiful story. There is much more to write about this novel, but I have decided to concentrate on what Hardy seems to have intended when he wrote so beautifully about so sad a theme, but in such an ambiguous way. He calls Tess "A Pure Woman," and she is that. But as only a truly great writer would, he does not present her as an outright victim: there are plenty of opportunities for Tess to escape Alec before they have sex, and plenty of opportunities for her to deal in a different way with the cruel hand that fate has dealt her. She does not escape Alec, and she chooses Angel (rotten luck with men). There are tragic flaws in Tess, and that is what makes her human while making "Tess" into a true tragedy. Hardy knows this. His prose is elegant and, at times, it reads more like poetry, going from good to beautiful.
This edition of the novel is helpful, but it could be better. I prefer foot-notes rather than end-notes. If they have to be end-notes, they should have numbers. The Introduction by Simon Gatrell is original, although I do not agree with its main premises: that there are two Thomas Hardys at work in Tess, and that "A Pure Woman" refers not to purity, but to "essential, wholly" woman. This is valid as an opinion but unsupported by evidence. I recommend Tess of the d'Urbervilles. If you have never read Hardy, read this. If you have read him, you know what to expect.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
I had difficulty at first staying with the book but after a couple of chapters I couldn't put Tess down. As her character developed she showed me what a fine line the Victorian woman lived - whether to profess her thoughts, will, love or to abide by society's wishes and be self-sacrificing and totally obedient to the man she loves. Without spoiling the ending, her last act was the crescendo of all of the small ways in which she held herself back. There were times that I pleaded with her to "go to him" or "tell him" but it would have been out of character for a woman of her day. Hardy kept us informed of the landscape, weather and all living things in Tess's environment, which I found breathtaking on many occasions. He painted the picture of his perfect woman. So perfect that he didn't want anyone to have her because he loved her himself. I enjoyed Tess very much.
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Postell (MSL quote) , USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
Tess's father, Mr. Durbeyfield, is told by a minister that his family is the direct lineage of an old, noble family that was once thought to be completely gone. There's nothing left of the family's land and fortune, except the family name (d'Urberville).
However, Mr. Durbeyfield and his wife see this as a chance to move up on the social ladder. They devise a plan to send their daughter to become acquainted with a rich woman who's last name is d'Urberville. From then on, Tess is left to try to maintain her dignity and honor and to pick up the pieces of her broken life that resulted from her parents' need to be important.
This is my first time reading anything by Thomas Hardy. I was warned that he was cynical man, and I'll agree that Hardy's prose is cynical, yet heartrending. I couldn't help feeling bad for Tess through all her troubles. This is not a happy novel. For a moment, you think that things will get better for Tess, but the fates seem to be against her.
The landscape of the novel changes with the mood of what's happening. The land itself almost seems to be a living person that he described.He uses vivid, beautifully described imagery to describe people and places in his novels. There are themes of theology (Hardy had internal conflicts with believing in God), virtue, the boundaries of love. He employs everything from Greek mythology to modern (or what was modern in his day) poetry.
There are no illusions of a happily-ever-after in this story. This was simply a beautiful novel, a novel that portrays its female heroine as the strong woman she was. She could put more modern women heroines to shame.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
What a wonderful piece of literature, and quite a liberal (read: feminist) story for the time period it comes from! Not only are the characters well-drawn and utterly flawed (just like real humans) but the main plot reads as timeless.
The heroine (Tess) takes most of her life as it is thrown at her. When she finally decides to take some small measure of control of her fate, it is her very womanhood - and the lack of choice accompanying it - that is slapped back in her face.
A great love story in many respects, in the end the true love here is Tess' love of herself (and the reader's love for her), and her unwillingness to be a victim her entire life.
Thankfully, you'll find no happy endings in this book. What you will find is a story written by an early feminist, and characters that will stay with you forever.
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1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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