Review On The "Tess Of The D’Urbervilles" By Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles is a novel written by Thomas Hardy about a young girl struggling to make ends meet with her family due to circumstances from her past. Throughout the novel sacrifice and family are major themes. Tess Durbeyfield gives up her life to try and help her family not thinking of herself. Tess’s major sacrifices in the novel are herself to uphold her values of keeping her family happy and well.

In the beginning of the novel Tess’s first major sacrifice is leaving home to work for Alec d’Urberville to get money for her family from her “relatives”. “I hope it’s a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of chance. You had better not say nothing of that silly sort about parish”(43). Tess’s family, especially her mother is wanting Tess to go to the d’Urbervilles for money, but also for her to come back a “lady” with a good husband like they believed Alec to be. Tess only wants to go to the d’Urbervilles to earn money to replace the horse she had accidentally killed. She did not want to get married. Her family knew if Tess married Alec they would be provided for by him as well. Tess tells her mother their is no chance of a marriage happening, and she doesn’t want her talking about it. Tess sacrifices her own happiness and goes out of her comfort zone to to help her family financially.

Later in the novel Tess is working as a dairy maid alongside a man who she saw before she even met Alec, his name is Angel. Whilst working with Angel they both develop feelings for one another. Tess, after having a child before marriage is no longer seen as pure. With Angel not knowing of her past, he sees her as perfect. “Your father is a parson, and your mother wouldn’t like you to marry such as me. She will want you to marry a lady.”(171). Tess knows if she tells Angel of her past he will no longer want to be with her. Tess wants Angel to be with someone as pure as Angel seems to think she is. Wanting to come up with excuses as to why she can’t marry Angel, she tells him it’s because she is not enough of a lady, which is true but not to the full details. Tess is seen sacrificing her love for Angel because she believes she is not good enough for him.

Along with Angel, Tess does eventually agree to marry him. Before the wedding Tess wants to tell Angel of her past so if he wants to, he can back up. Things kept getting in the way of her breaking the news and they end up agreeing to admitting their faults after the wedding. After the wedding Angel admits his and then Tess admits hers. Angel is extremely upset by the matter and tells Tess she’s a different person than she thought. Angel ends up saying that they can’t be together while Alec is alive and decides they should separate. “I agree to the conditions, Angel, because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only--only--don’t make it more than I can bear!”(255). Tess agrees to leave Angel because she believes what he says is true. She wants to make Tess happy, so she lets him go for him. She’s showing again the sacrifice of her own well being to please another.

When Angel leaves Tess to gather his thoughts he gave her money to help her along. He didn’t want Tess to have to send a letter often for help, which Tess didn’t want to do either. When Tess goes home she ends up giving half of the money to her family before setting off on her own. “Still further to screen her husband from any imputation of unkindness to her, she took twenty-five of the fifty pounds Clare had given her and handed the sum over to her mother, as if the wife of a man like Angel Clare could well afford it, saying it was a slight return for the trouble and humiliation she brought upon them in years past”(261). Tess wants to protect Angel from being hated by her parents by showing he was a good husband. She also tells her parents she received a letter from him to go off with him again. She told her parents the money was to try and repay them for the humiliation she caused them by being with Alec when she was young. Once again Tess is sacrificing her own well being by giving up her money to help her family, but also to still try and help Angel even though he left her.

As Tess had already been separated from Angel for sometime, she still held on to hope that she and Angel would be back together. She also didn’t want to betray her husband. Tess would still defend Angel for everything because she did believe it was her fault he left her even though they both knew that it wasn’t true. Alec comes back into Tess’s life claiming to have become a better man and can finally be there for her. Tess declines many times. Once Tess’s father dies of a heart attack she and her family are evicted from her home with Alec still wanting to help. She finally gives in when her family can’t find a place to stay. “He has won me back to him”(386). Angel finds Tess again and begs her to come back. She tells him he won her back. Alec won because her family was in time of need, and offered to help. So she abandoned Angel for him. She sacrificed her love for Angel, and her happiness again, to help her family.

Shortly after Angel had left Tess because she was now with Alec, Tess and Alec are heard arguing upstairs. Later, once everything gets calm Mrs. Brooks sees blood coming through the ceiling and Alec is dead while Tess fled. “I have done it--I don’t know how,’she continued.’ Still, I owed it to you and to myself, Angel”(392). Tess kills Alec to be able to be with Angel. She knows she wants to be with him so she risks everything to do so. Tess knows that when killing Alec she will end up being arrested and executed, she sacrifices herself for love.

With killing Alec Tess knows that the end for her is near. She kills Alec to be able to be with Angel without the burden of Alec over her shoulders. Tess and Angel run away together in hopes of starting a new life and getting away before Tess is caught. But in their last night together Tess asks Angel to marry her sister if something were to happen to her. “She is so good and simple and pure. Oh, Angel-- I wish you would marry her if you lose me, as you will do shortly. Oh, if you would!”(401). Tess still wishes to look over her family as she knows she will no longer be around. Tess wants Angel to marry Liza-Lu so she will become a good woman. She sacrifices Angel once again to help her family, but thats after she sacrifices her own life to be with him.

Tess Durbeyfield, later known as Tess Clare sacrificed her own happiness many times in the novel to make others happy. The main leading factors were her family and Angel. She did not want to disappoint her family while she knew she could do things to help. You see Tess’s biggest value throughout the novel is to make sure her family is happy and healthy and that she isn’t a proper lady through the churches eyes. In the end you see her try and break that trend as she marries Angel, kills Alec, and wanting to run away from home. But the last you see her worrying of her younger sister, and wants her husband to be with her as her final attempt to make her family proud.