Written in 1891, the byline for Tess of the d'Urbervilles is 'A Pure Woman'. One can guess how Thomas Hardy must have approached this subject in times of extreme sexual repression and gender bias. Tess obviously goes through the stigma of being impure which brings up the question of what is pure and impure.
The story begins with a bang when Tess's father who does not do much for a living except drink, finds out from the local parson that they are not the Durbeyfields as they mistakenly call themselves but are related to the noble d'Urberville family. This does not bring any great fortune to the family except a sense of grandeur. Tess, the oldest of their daughters, somehow manages to kill the only horse they have in an accident and is forced to seek employment to help the family finances. Her mother asks her to go to a well off family who go under the name of d'Urberville to seek employment. Turns out that this family has appropriated the title to elevate themselves socially. Anyway the young man from the family pursues Tess relentlessly and makes her pregnant against her will (rapes her in other words) and leaves her. The girl loses the child, picks up a bad reputation and goes to work in a faraway farm where another young man falls in love with her and she with him. When he proposes marriage she tries to tell him the truth but he refuses to hear and soon after the marriage confesses to her that he has had an affair with an older woman sometime in the past. She confesses to her affair upon which he takes umbrage and tells her that he cannot be married to her and leaves her. Tess is all alone, her father dies and the family is turned out of their house, when the first chap who fathered a child with her, arrives to make amends by asking her to marry him. The husband who went away to Brazil also returns to make amends by which time Tess, the eternally confused, marries the first guy. When the second guy (the husband meets her) she says she hates the first guy and can only love her husband who deserted her, and kills the first guy. The husband and wife run away for five days and spend a great honeymoon before the law catches up with her. Before she is hanged she tells her husband to marry her younger sister who is a pure woman. Thus ends Tess's story.
It's incredible how these guys think and behave, how she easily reduces herself to be their servant, how she is judged and how she judges herself. But those were the times and I am certain that it must have been a controversial one because the woman takes revenge on her perpetrator even though he tries to make amends by giving their family shelter and offering to marry her. Complicated lot if you ask me.
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