Tess of the d'Urbervilles a tragic novel by nature initially it was named

as “A Pure Woman” is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a

Tess Durbeyfield The novel’s protagonist. Tess is a beautiful, loyal young woman living with
her impoverished family in the village of Marlott. Tess has a keen sense of responsibility and is
committed to doing the best she can for her family, although her inexperience and lack of wise
parenting leave her extremely vulnerable. Her life is complicated when her father discovers a link to the
noble line of the d’Urbervilles, and, as a result, Tess is sent to work at the d’Urberville mansion.
Unfortunately, her ideals cannot prevent her from sliding further and further into misfortune after she
becomes pregnant by Alec d’Urberville. The terrible irony is that Tess and her family are not really
related to this branch of the d’Urbervilles at all: Alec’s father, a merchant named Simon Stokes, simply
assumed the name after he retired.

Angel Clare An intelligent young man who has decided to become a farmer to preserve his
intellectual freedom from the pressures of city life. Angel’s father and his two brothers are respected
clergymen, but Angel’s religious doubts have kept him from joining the ministry. He meets Tess when
she is a milkmaid at the Talbothays Dairy and quickly falls in love with her.

Alec d’Urberville The handsome, amoral son of a wealthy merchant named Simon Stokes. Alec
is not really a d’Urberville—his father simply took on the name of the ancient noble family after he built
his mansion and retired. Alec is a manipulative, sinister young man who does everything he can to
seduce the inexperienced Tess when she comes to work for his family. When he finally has his way with
her, out in the woods, he subsequently tries to help her but is unable to make her love him.

Mr. John Durbeyfield Tess’s father, a lazy peddler in Marlott. John is naturally quick, but he hates
work. When he learns that he descends from the noble line of the d’Urbervilles, he is quick to make an
attempt to profit from the connection.

Mrs. Joan Durbeyfield Tess’s mother. Joan has a strong sense of propriety and very particular
hopes for Tess’s life. She is continually disappointed and hurt by the way in which her daughter’s life
actually proceeds. But she is also somewhat simpleminded and naturally forgiving, and she is unable to
remain angry with Tess—particularly once Tess becomes her primary means of support.

Mrs. d’Urberville Alec’s mother, and the widow of Simon Stokes. Mrs. d’Urberville is blind and
often ill. She cares deeply for her animals, but not for her maid Elizabeth, her son Alec, nor Tess when
she comes to work for her. In fact, she never sees Tess as anything more than an impoverished girl.

Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty Priddle Milkmaids whom Tess befriends at the Talbothays Dairy.
Marian, Izz, and Retty remain close to Tess throughout the rest of her life. They are all in love with Angel
and are devastated when he chooses Tess over them: Marian turns to drink, Retty attempts suicide, and
Izz nearly runs off to Brazil with Angel when he leaves Tess. Nevertheless, they remain helpful to Tess.
Marian helps her find a job at a farm called Flintcomb-Ash, and Marian and Izz write Angel a plaintive
letter encouraging him to give Tess another chance.

Reverend Clare Angel’s father, a somewhat intractable but principled clergyman in the town of
Emminster. Mr. Clare considers it his duty to convert the populace. One of his most difficult cases proves
to be none other than Alec d’Urberville.

Mrs. Clare Angel’s mother, a loving but snobbish woman who places great stock in social class. Mrs.
Clare wants Angel to marry a suitable woman, meaning a woman with the proper social, financial, and
religious background. Mrs. Clare initially looks down on Tess as a “simple” and impoverished girl, but
later grows to appreciate her.

Reverend Felix Clare Angel’s brother, a village curate.

Reverend Cuthbert Clare Angel’s brother, a classical scholar and dean at Cambridge. Cuthbert,
who can concentrate only on university matters, marries Mercy Chant.

Eliza Louisa Durbeyfield Tess’s younger sister. Tess believes Liza-Lu has all of Tess’s own good
qualities and none of her bad ones, and she encourages Angel to look after and even marry Liza-Lu after
Tess dies.
Sorrow Tess’s son with Alec d’Urberville. Sorrow dies in his early infancy, after Tess christens him
herself. She later buries him herself as well, and decorates his grave.

Mercy Chant The daughter of a friend of the Reverend Clare. Mr. Clare hopes Angel will marry
Mercy, but after Angel marries Tess, Mercy becomes engaged to his brother Cuthbert instead.

Tess Durbeyfield
Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate
intensity, Tess is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also
more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine. Her name,
formally Theresa, recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her her
life. Other characters often refer to Tess in mythical terms, as when Angel calls her a “Daughter of
Nature” in Chapter XVIII, or refers to her by the Greek mythological names “Artemis” and “Demeter” in
Chapter XX. The narrator himself sometimes describes Tess as more than an individual woman, but as
something closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood. In Chapter XIV, he says that her eyes are
“neither black nor blue nor grey nor violet; rather all these shades together,” like “an almost standard
woman.” Tess’s story may thus be a “standard” story, representing a deeper and larger experience than
that of a single individual.

In part, Tess represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in England in the late nineteenth
century. Possessing an education that her unschooled parents lack, since she has passed the Sixth
Standard of the National Schools, Tess does not quite fit into the folk culture of her predecessors, but
financial constraints keep her from rising to a higher station in life. She belongs in that higher world,
however, as we discover on the first page of the novel with the news that the Durbeyfields are the
surviving members of the noble and ancient family of the d’Urbervilles. There is aristocracy in Tess’s
blood, visible in her graceful beauty—yet she is forced to work as a farmhand and milkmaid. When she
tries to express her joy by singing lower-class folk ballads at the beginning of the third part of the novel,
they do not satisfy her—she seems not quite comfortable with those popular songs. But, on the other
hand, her diction, while more polished than her mother’s, is not quite up to the level of Alec’s or
Angel’s. She is in between, both socially and culturally. Thus, Tess is a symbol of unclear and unstable
notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain, where old family lines retained their earlier glamour, but
where cold economic realities made sheer wealth more important than inner nobility.

Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen humanity in a religious sense, as the frequent
biblical allusions in the novel remind us. Just as Tess’s clan was once glorious and powerful but is now
sadly diminished, so too did the early glory of the first humans, Adam and Eve, fade with their expulsion
from Eden, making humans sad shadows of what they once were. Tess thus represents what is known in
Christian theology as original sin, the degraded state in which all humans live, even when—like Tess
herself after killing Prince or succumbing to Alec—they are not wholly or directly responsible for the sins
for which they are punished. This torment represents the most universal side of Tess: she is the myth of
the human who suffers for crimes that are not her own and lives a life more degraded than she
deserves.

Alec d’Urberville

An insouciant twenty-four-year-old man, heir to a fortune, and bearer of a name that his father
purchased, Alec is the nemesis and downfall of Tess’s life. His first name, Alexander, suggests the
conqueror—as in Alexander the Great—who seizes what he wants regardless of moral propriety. Yet he
is more slippery than a grand conqueror. His full last name, Stoke-d’Urberville, symbolizes the split
character of his family, whose origins are simpler than their pretensions to grandeur. After all, Stokes is
a blunt and inelegant name. Indeed, the divided and duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very
end of the novel, when he quickly abandons his newfound Christian faith upon remeeting Tess. It is hard
to believe Alec holds his religion, or anything else, sincerely. His supposed conversion may only be a new
role he is playing.

This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec and its consequences for Tess so severe, that he
becomes diabolical. The first part of his surname conjures associations with fiery energies, as in the
stoking of a furnace or the flames of

hell. His devilish associations are evident when he wields a pitchfork while addressing Tess early in the
novel, and when he seduces her as the serpent in Genesis seduced Eve. Additionally, like the famous
depiction of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Alec does not try to hide his bad qualities. In fact, like Satan,
he revels in them. In Chapter XII, he bluntly tells Tess, “I suppose I am a bad fellow—a damn bad fellow. I
was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in all probability.” There is frank acceptance in
this admission and no shame. Some readers feel Alec is too wicked to be believable, but, like Tess
herself, he represents a larger moral principle rather than a real individual man. Like Satan, Alec
symbolizes the base forces of life that drive a person away from moral perfection and greatness.

Angel Clare
A free thinking son born into the family of a provincial parson and determined to set himself up as a
farmer instead of going to Cambridge like his conformist brothers, Angel represents a rebellious striving
toward a personal vision of goodness. He is a secularist who yearns to work for the “honor and glory of
man,” as he tells his father in Chapter XVIII, rather than for the honor and glory of God in a more distant
world. A typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel sees human society as a thing to be
remolded and improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of man. He rejects the values handed
to him, and sets off in search of his own. His love for Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one
expression of his disdain for tradition. This independent spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and
general attractiveness that makes him the love object of all the milkmaids with whom he works at
Talbothays.

As his name—in French, close to “Bright Angel”—suggests, Angel is not quite of this world, but
floats above it in a transcendent sphere of his own. The narrator says that Angel shines rather than
burns and that he is closer to the intellectually aloof poet Shelley than to the fleshly and passionate poet
Byron. His love for Tess may be abstract, as we guess when he calls her “Daughter

of Nature” or “Demeter.” Tess may be more an archetype or ideal to him than a flesh and blood woman
with a complicated life. Angel’s ideals of human purity are too elevated to be applied to actual people:
Mrs. Durbeyfield’s easygoing moral beliefs are much more easily accommodated to real lives such as
Tess’s. Angel awakens to the actual complexities of real-world morality after his failure in Brazil, and
only then he realizes he has been unfair to Tess. His moral system is readjusted as he is brought down to
Earth. Ironically, it is not the angel who guides the human in this novel, but the human who instructs the
angel, although at the cost of her own life.