New York : Signet Classics, c2006.
xxi, 407 p. : map ; 18 cm.
It had been quite awhile since I read a Thomas Hardy novel, but I have such fond memories of reading his Jude the Obscure during a summer when I was in college. Hardy's writing style is a bit florid at times (after all he was writing in the late Victorian period) but the payoff is that his writing is poignant, lush and very attuned to the beauty of the English countryside and the complicated texture of human relationships.
Tess was no exception and did not disappoint me. The novel shocked his contemporaries with its frank treatment of the double standards of sexual morality experienced by the main character, Tess. Tess is clearly the heroine of this novel, and the tragedies she suffers expose the hypocrisies of social attitudes toward sexuality, class, marriage and gender.
One of the things that makes a Hardy novel so enjoyable is its lively and riveting plot. There are many scenes where the dramatic impact of the plot hinges on one circumstance that - if slightly different - could have dramatically changed the outcome of the novel and the fortunes of its characters. In that sense it is sometimes like reading good history where the reader is always thinking, "If only...."
Tess is a very readable, engaging novel and should appeal to any high school student who is looking for something readable, but "literary."
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