 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about Tests of the Dubrovils, a novel by Thomas Hardy. My name is Bani and in this video we will look at Tests of the Dubrovils, specifically beginning with some context related to the author Thomas Hardy as well as ideas at the time this novel was written that you will need to be aware of. We will then look into the novel's plot in detail and examine the necessary information you will need to know about it before looking at each character in the novel in depth, key themes related to this novel as well as important symbols. This video is really useful especially if you are studying Tests of the Dubrovils as part of your English coursework or exams as we will go into the details you need to know to get top marks. So let's get started. Overview Tests of the Dubrovils, a pure woman faithfully presented, is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a censored and serialized version published by the British Illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891, then in book form in three volumes in 1891 and as a single volume in 1892. Though now considered a major 19th century English novel and possibly Hardy's fictional masterpiece, Tests of the Dubrovils received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. Moving on to the novel's plot summary, Tests Derby Field is a 16-year-old, simple country girl, the eldest daughter of John and Joanne Derby Field. In a chance meeting with Parsons Ringham along the road one night, John Derby Field discovers that he is the descendant of the Dubrovils, an ancient, moneyed family who had land holdings as far back as William the Conqueror in 1066. Upon this discovery, the financially strapped Derby Field family learns of a nearby relative and John and his wife Joan sent Tests to claim kin in order to alleviate their impoverished condition. While visiting the Derby Fields at the slopes, Tests meets Alec Derby Field who finds himself attracted to Tests. Alec arranges for Tests to become the caretaker for his blind mother's poultry and Tests moves to the slopes to take up the position, while in residence at the Derby Fields, Alec seduces and drapes Tests. Tests returns home, gives birth to a son, Sorrow, the product of the rape and works as a field worker on nearby farms. Sorrow becomes ill and dies in infancy, leaving Tests devastated at her loss. Tests makes another journey away from home to nearby Talbothe's dairy to become a milkmaid to a good-natured dairyman, Mr. Crick. There she meets and falls in love with the travelling farmer's apprentice, Angel Clare. She tries to resist Angel's place for her hand in marriage, but eventually marries Angel. He does not know Tests' past, although she has tried on several occasions to tell him. After the wedding, Tests and Angel confess their pasts to each other. Tests forgives Angel for his past in discussions, but Angel cannot forgive Tests for having a child with another man. Angel suggests that the two spit up, with Angel going to Brazil for a year and Tests going back home. Tests agrees and returns to her parents' house. Tests eventually leaves home again for work, in another town at Flintcomb Ash Farm, where the working conditions are very harsh. Tests is reunited with some of her friends from Talbothe's and they all settle at Flintcomb to the hard work routine. Tests is determined to see Angel's family in nearby Aminster, but loses her nerve at the last minute. On a return to Flintcomb, Tests sees Alec again, now a practising evangelical minister, reaching to the folks in the countryside. When Alec sees Tests, he is struck dumb and leaves his position to pursue her. Alec follows her to Flintcomb, asking her to marry him. Tests refuses in the strongest terms, but Alec is persistent. Tests returns home to find her mother recovering from her illness, but her father, John, dies suddenly from an unknown ailment. The burden of her family's welfare falls on Tests' shoulder. Tests are duty now and homeless, they've been evicted from their cottage, the Derby Fields have nowhere to go. Tests knows that she cannot resist Alec's money and the comforts her family can use. Furthermore, Alec insists that Angel will never return and has abandoned her, an idea that Tests has already come to believe herself. In the meantime, Angel returns from Brazil to look for Tests and to begin his own farm in England. When Angel finds Tests' family, John informs him that Tests has gone to Sandbone, a fashionable seaside resort in the south of England. Angel finds Tests there, living as an upper class lady with Alec Derbyville. In the meeting with Angel, Tests asks him to leave and not return for her. Angel does leave, resigned that he had judged Tests too harshly and returned too late. After her meeting with Angel, Tests confronts Alec and accuses him of lying to her about Angel. In a fit of anger and fury, Tests stabs Alec through the heart with a carving knife, killing him. Tests finds Angel to tell him of the deed. Angel has struggled believing Tests' story but welcomes her back. The two travel the countryside via back roads to avoid detection. Their plan is to make for a port and leave the country as soon as possible. They spend a week in a vacant house, reunited in bliss for a short time. They are discovered, however, and the trail ends at Stonehenge, the ancient pagan monument, when the police arrest Tests and take her away. Before she is executed for her crime, Tests has Angel promise to marry her sister, Lisa Lou, once she's gone. Angel agrees and he, along with Lisa Lou, witness a black flag raised in the city of Wintonster, signifying that Tests' death sentence has been carried out. The two Angel and Lisa Lou leave together and the tragic tale of Tests ends. Moving on to a detailed summary. Phase I Chapter 1-4 The setting is in Vessex in the south of England, during the late 1800s. John Derbyfield is on his way home after working as a haggler. He encounters a local parson who tells him of his family history. The Derbyfields are descended from the once famous, Durbovilles, a wealthy family dating back to the time of William the Conqueror. John, feeling a rush of superiority, hurries home to tell his family of the good news. The family has had a difficult life, with John a poor provider and his wife barely managing to keep the family fed and clothed. There are seven children in all. Tests or Theresa is the oldest. John, John's wife, hatches a plan to send the 16-year-old Tests to claim kin at a nearby relation, a woman of wealth and position. When John has had too much to drink, Tests and her brother Abraham set out with the family horse to deliver bee hives at a nearby farmer's market. While en route, Tests and Abraham fall asleep in the wagon, and the horse, Prince, is killed accidentally by the local mail cart. Because Tests had allowed Prince to wander into the oncoming lane, and had inadvertently caused the accident between the mail cart and the Derbyfield wagon, she feels it is her responsibility to make matters right. It is at this point that John Derbyfield introduces the plan for Tests to visit their Derbyfield relations. Tests initially objects to the plan, but with the family horse now dead, she relents and calls to the Derbyfield family to seek money or work. John Derbyfield hatches the plan to send Tests off to a wealthy relations to claim kin. Tests wants no part of the plan, and John Derbyfield also expresses his doubts about the plan. Feeling a sense of guilt about the death of the family horse, Prince, Tests agrees to visit the Stoke Derbyfields. Tests takes a van or common carrier of the time to visit. She notices that the home called The Slopes is not old and established, as she had expected. Instead, the house is a recently built. Tests meets Alec Derbyfield, the young son of Mrs Derbyfield. Alec is immediately taken by the young, beautiful maid, and he agrees to find a place for her at The Slopes. A few days later, a new horse is sent to the Derbyfields along with an invitation for Tests to assume a post as caretaker for a flock of Mrs Dobroville's chickens. Tests's departure is a great sorrow for her family, but she agrees to go to Tantridge to help boost her family's fortunes. Upon her return to The Slopes, Alec takes Tests on a wild carriage ride in order to scare her and prove himself master over her. She does not give in to his demands and walks a greater portion of the distance to her new home. Chapter 9-11 Tests makes a new home in an old house that had once been the primary house at The Slopes. It is now a chicken coop. The new house is the centrepiece of the estate. Tests must, along with the other staff, bring the chickens one by one to Mrs Dobroville for inspection. When Mrs Dobroville, a blind 60-year-old woman, asks Tests whether she can whistle, Tests says she can. When she tries later, though, she realises whistling is a talent she no longer possesses, and so she begins to practise so that she may regain her skill. Alec sees Tests practising, finds her attempts humorous and offers to coach her. Tests declines his offer, but he persists until, just to be rid of him, she agrees to let him assist her. Alec, taken by Tests and unaccustomed to being denied, begins to spy on Tests, watching her as she works in the house, even hiding behind the bed curtains on his mother's bed to catch her whistling to the birds. Tests makes friends with other housekeeping staff members and they introduce Tests to the dances that they attend on the weekends. The staff goes to nearby Chaseborough to drink at the pub or dance in the dance hall. Vicki's Tests does not have a partner to dance with, she watches the other staff dance. This particular September evening, the cottage staff opt instead for a private dance in the barn of a supplier to the Dobroville estate. Alec surprises Tests by appearing at the barn dance. He offers her a ride home, which she turns down. Later, when the cottage staff return home, Tests and Carr, another girl who works at the slopes, get into a fight over Carr's jealousy at Alec's attention towards Tests. Alec rides up and rescues Tests from a small mob of resentful women. He takes her away from a beating she surely would have suffered at the hands of the cottage staff women. Instead of returning directly to the slopes, Alec meanders along, hoping to take advantage of Tests in a vulnerable state. He finally actually loses his way in the dense fog. He leaves Tests in the woods as he goes to find a cottage for directions back to Trantridge. When Alec returns to Tests, he finds her asleep and rapes her, knowing that his one downed Tests tests his defence over the last few months. Pays the second. Chapter 12-15 In October, four months after her arrival in Trantridge, Tests leaves the doberville estate to return home. Alec pursues her, offers her a ride home, and she accepts. He admits to his mistake and begs Tests' forgiveness, but to no avail. She leaves Alec in the road near her home, walking the remainder of the way. Along the way, she encounters a sign painter who signs preach against vice and sin. Tests' mother is the first to encounter Tests when she enters the family home, and the two talk about Tests' experiences. Here, Tests asks her mother, why didn't you tell me there was danger in Manfolk? Joan still believes that a daughter might have a chance to marry Alec doberville and become a real lady, but she is too simple or ignorant to understand Tests' dilemma. Joan's response is to make the best of it, I suppose. Tests has visits from her village friends, but these visits are not enough to raise her impending depression. Even Church affords no comfort to her as a churchgoers whisper and gossip about her. After suffering the fall and winter at home, Tests is next seen the following August, working as a field labourer, harvesting corn. We see for the first time that Tests has a baby and stops to breastfeed him during the lunch break the harvesting crew takes. Later that night, the infant falls in, all sense that the child will die sometime in the next few days. Tests realising that a baby has not been baptised, gathers her siblings and baptises the infant herself. During the ceremony, we learn that the child's name is Sorrow, after the phrase in Genesis 316, in Sorrow thou should bring forth children. Sorrow is buried in a nearly forgotten part of the church graveyard, where the unbaptised infants, notorious drunkards, suicides and others of the conjecturally damped are laid. The fall turns to winter and winter turns to spring. In May, Tests, now 20, sets out again on a second excursion to find work in a nearby town at Talbothe's Dairy. She warns solitude and time away from home, where she might be happy in some nook which she had no memories. Her journey takes her to a beautiful valley called Blackmoor, on the river Froom, where a new phase of her life begins. Chapter 16-20 Having arrived for the position of milkmaid at a dairy in Talbothe's, through a friend of her mother's, Tests leaves home for a second time. At 20, she is now more experienced in the world. It is late in the afternoon when she arrives at the dairy, and she is in time for the afternoon milking of the cows. She introduces herself to Mr. Richard Crick, the dairyman, and immediately begins work. In the milking bala, Tests does not actually meet the other workers, which she hears them as they perform their chores. There is discussion among the other workers about some cows going as you or dry. Superstitiously, the workers believe that because there is a new hand come among us, the cows are not as likely to give as much milk. A tale from medieval times is told to entertain the workers, and the song is sung to make the work easier, and to coax the cows to be generous with their milk. All the kinds of banter one would expect in the milking bala. Finally, a strange voice shims in, and we are introduced to Angel Glea. Angel, at age 26, is the youngest son of an area parson. He has come to Talbothe's to learn the business of the dairy farm, so that he may one day become a farmer himself. Tests recognizes Angel from the May dance in chapter one. She fears that he will discover her past and shun her. Tests learns of Angel's past when she shares a room which is over the milking room with three other milkmates. Hardy interrupts Tests' story to explain Angel's history. Angel hopes to have a farm of his own, either in England or in an English colony. Angel's desire came as a surprise to his father, the reverend James Glea, who learned of his youngest son's intentions only when books about farming were delivered to the Glea home. When his father questioned Angel about how he can be interested in such books when he plans to become a minister of the gospel, Angel informed his father of his plans, claiming that he cannot support all of Church doctrine. He can only accept those tenets that he himself cannot bridge. Angel went to London to see the world and to discover a new profession for himself. In London he fell in love with an older woman who almost entrapped the young Glea in marriage. He was extricated from the situation and settled on farming as a profession. Tests and Angel's relationship starts off slowly, but begins to develop when he lines up Tests' cows for her, the ones that are hard to milk. The two later meet while Angel is playing a second hand harp for entertainment and a conversation ensues. Angel finds Tests rather mature, mysterious. Tests decries her lack of education and Angel volunteers to tutor her in any subject she might choose. Tests replies, I shouldn't mind learning why, why the sun do shine on the just and unjust alike. Angel shouts her for being so negative about life. chapters 21 to 24. The entire dairy is paralysed when the milk does not begin to turn to butter. It is suggested and the butter won't come because perhaps somebody in the house is in love. Mr Crick doesn't believe the superstition, but instead tells a rather rocky story about a man who had just gotten a young girl pregnant. Tests hears the tale and while others laugh at the story, she rushes outside because a story of Jack Tollip is too real for her. Eventually, the butter begins to form in the churn and all settles down at the farm. The resident milkmaids, Betty Pradul, Ishut and Marion take turns caulking at Angel by peeking at him from their room as he moves through the farmyard. Tests does not engage in the girl's sport and Marianne suggests that Angel is in love with Tests. That he likes Testerbefield best. All the maids are in love with Angel, but even they seem to sense that Tests and Angel are beginning to show signs of love for each other. It is mid-July and the weather has turned quite warm, both morning and night in the Blackmore Valley. One Sunday the four maids ready themselves for judge. On their way, as a heavy summer downpour had flooded the rivers and creeks, an overflowing creek stops them. Coming from the direction opposite the church is Angel. He volunteers to carry each girl across the swollen current so that their Sunday rocks are not ruined. All of them, including Tests, are shocked and delighted that Angel would spontaneously extend an opportunity for each of them to be held so close to their ideal man. As Angel crosses the creek with Tests, he hints at his feelings for her, telling her that he has undergone three quarters of the labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter, meaning that he carried the other three girls across so that he could carry Tests across too and that he did not expect such an event today. When Tests replies that she also had not anticipated the heavy rains and swollen creek, Angel realizes that Tests does not realize his meaning. Knowing that he is taking unfair advantage of an accidental situation, Tests carries her the rest of the way across and deposits her with her friends. When Angel again leaves, Tests' companions tell her that although Angel likes her best, he is meant to marry another woman, chosen by his family. During the hot summer at Albothays, the relationship between Tests and Angel grows as hardy notes, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate. The ready possums existing there were impregnated by their surroundings. Angel secretly watches Tests as she works and musters the courage to tell her of his love for her. Phase IV Chapter 25-30 Angel has turned a new corner in his life, feeling that he belongs on the dairy as a farmer and that Tests is the right choice as a wife. Angel leaves the dairy to visit his family and to tell his parents about Tests. Angel's brothers, Felix and Cuthbert disapprove of Angel marrying Tests, but do little to discourage him. His parents had intended Angel to marry Ms. Mercy Chant, a real lady and local teacher. Angel is against this union and proposes to his parents that Tests' tubby field would be a much better choice. Angel and his father debate the merits of Mercy and Tests as suitable wives for a farmer. Angel's wishes went out with his father's concern, expressed by his question. Is she of a family such as you would carry to marry into? A lady in short. His parents warned Angel not to rush into a hasty marriage with an unknown woman, but his descriptions of her are enough. Reverend Clare relates a story of a convert, one Alec Tuberville, who has become a lay minister and street preacher. Angel returns to the dairy and asks Tests to marry him. Tests says that she cannot. Angel persists, not being too aggressive in his tactics to convince Tests, but she insists, I am not good enough, not worthy enough. Alone, Tests wonders why her past has not got up to her at Talbothais and she feels both positive pleasure and positive pain as she wrestles with her feelings for Angel and the past that is bound to catch up to her. She resolves to give in to Angel's proposals. I shall give way. I shall say yes. I shall let myself marry him. I cannot help it. Tests rethinks her position, even suggesting that any of the other milkmates would be worthy wives for Angel. Angel refuses Tests's suggestions and when Mr Crick needs a volunteer to drive the milk, now late for delivery, straight to the train station in Eggdon Heaths, Angel volunteers and Tests goes along for the ride. It is during this ride, in a downpour of rain, that Angel learns that Tests comes from the Tuberville family. They suggest that she adopt the Tuberville spelling and equels her fears about his hating old families. Relieved, Tests accepts Angel's marriage proposal, if it is sure to make you happy to have me as your wife and you feel that you wish to marry me, very, very much. Then Tests kisses Angel and he discovers what an impassioned woman's kisses were like upon the lips of one whom she loved with all her heart and soul as Tests loved him. Tests insists that she write her mother in Marlott, an Angel that remembers that day four years earlier, during the May Dance, that he had seen Tests but had not danced with her. Tests writes to her mother and receives a response by the end of the week. Joan Derbyfield tells Tests not to tell of her past. Joan also mentions that a barrel of alcoholic cider will be sent for a wedding present. Tests decides not to tell Angel of her history. Everyone at the Derbyfield seems to know that Tests will someday marry Angel. Even when the maids feel some jealousy toward Tests at the possibility of marriage, they cannot bear her any ill will. Tests tells the young maids, you are all better than I. Tests cannot bear to keep silent on the matter of her past and she vows to tell Angel all of her history, despite her mother's advice not to. Tests sets the date of their wedding as December 31. The time for Tests' services at the Derby are at an end. Angel is also finished with the apprenticeship at the Derby and seeks a new aspect of farming for study. He settles on the flower mill at Wellbridge to learn about milling flower. He then proposes a tour of other farms during the first year of the year. Stopping to visit his parents in March or April, Tests' bridal ground arrives a simple dress and the wedding arrangements are completed. Angel and Tests travel to the nearby town, Whale of Blackmoor on Christmas Eve, to do some last minute shopping. There Tests sees two Tantridge men who know of her past and speak of it loud enough for all to hear. Angel confronts the men who admit their possible mistake of confusing Tests with another woman. The incident disconcerts Tests, who asks Angel if the wedding can be postponed. He asks her to forget the incident. Tests writes a four-page note to Angel that explains her history and slips it under his door. However, the note becomes lodged under the carpet and he never reads it. Tests later finds the note and destroys it. The pair remain as guests at Talbothe's until the day of their wedding. No one from Derby Field or Clare families attends the ceremony. Instead, the cricks and all the workers at Talbothe's attend the services. After they leave the wedding ceremony, Tests tries to confess her past sins, but Angel will not hear of it. When Tests says that the carriage they're riding in seems familiar to her, Angel recalls the legend of the Derbyville Coach. During the 16th or 17th century, a Derbyville supposedly committed a dreadful crime in the family coach, and that, since that time, only the Derbyville family members can hear the coach, whose appearance foretells a tragic or bad event. Upon leaving Talbothe's, an old white rooster crawls in mid-afternoon, in the world of the farm and omen for bad fortune. The house the newlyweds take in Wellbridge is an old Derbyville home, complete with old Derbyville portraits on panels in the walls. The luggage from Talbothe's is late, but Tests receives a package from the Clare family of heirloom jewels, which Tests immediately puts on. The luggage arrives via Jonathan Kale, a Talbothe's dairyman, who tells the new couple that Reti had tried to commit suicide. Marion gets dead drunk, and is, is moping around the house depressed. Tests feels guilty that she had some hand in the incidents that happened to her friends. Then Tests and Angel confess their sins. First Angel, then Tests. Phase the fifth. Chapter 35 to 38. Angel cannot forgive Tests for her past. Oh Tests, forgiveness is not applied to the case. You were one person, now you're another. Tests is dumbfounded by Angel's reaction and seeks to have him understand her plight. He cannot see her past as she sees it. Tests suggests that they will no longer be able to live together and that she could end his suffering through divorce or her own suicide. Angel rejects both propositions. He adds injury to insults saying, Decrepit families imply decrepit wills, decrepit conduct. Tests is nearly speechless. Instead of remaining with his wife on their honeymoon night, Angel sleeps on the couch downstairs. The next morning, Angel is the first to speak, suggesting a reconciliation, but it is a false hope. The couple, sure of marital bliss, now must decide what is to happen next. Tests tries to make her point clear to bring Angel around to her viewpoint. She accepts her punishment. She took everything as her deserts. She asks Angel, you're not going to live with me. Long, are you Angel? He responds, I cannot. Finally, Angel suggests that Tests go home to her family in Marlott. She agrees. During that night, Angel, in a deep sleepwalking state, comes to Tests' room and carries her out into the night. He mumbles that his wife is dead, dead, dead. Tests dare not disturb this sleep episode. Angel seems to be recalling the incident in which she carried the milkmates at Talbothais in chapter 23, taking Tests over a river and into a small ruin chapel where he lays her in an empty stone coffin. He lies down beside her, continuing to sleep. Tests rouses him carefully and leads him back to the couch in their house. The next morning, Tests does not tell Angel of the evening's events as he begins to pack their belongings for their trip to Talbothais. And from there to Marlott, Tests is home. At Talbothais, the couple do not disclose their discord. Angel gives Tests a good sum of money before he leaves her and tells her to write to him via his parents if she needs anything. Then he leaves Tests near the entrance to her hometown. Tests enters the town through a back route, going unnoticed into her family's home. When Tests tells her mother of a plight, the two cry over the events. Joan suggests that Tests hide in the house when her father returns so that Joan can prepare John for the shock of a marriage begun and ended in three days. John is indeed astonished and Tests resolves to remain only a few days at home. During the short period that she is home, Tests receives a letter from Angel telling her that he is in the north of England, searching for a farm. Tests gives her mother half her money from Angel and leaves home. Chapter 39 to 41. Angel returns home to his parents in Aminster. He brings up the possibility of going to Brazil to be a farmer with his family. Naturally, they are taken aback at his suggestion of so sudden a move far away to another land. Angel's idea is to work for a year in Brazil and to bring Tests later when he is established. His parents ask about a character and physical attributes which Angel says are the best. Angel meets his former intended bride, Mercy Chant, on his way home. They discuss his upcoming journey to Brazil where he says to her, I think I'm going crazy. Angel puts away the jewelry and money for Tests with a local banker and meets Ishut on his way back to his house. He asks Is if she will join him for the tip to Brazil and she agrees. He realizes his impetuous actions and reconsideres asking Is to leave with him. Five days later, Angel leaves for Brazil. Eight months pass and Tests is in dire straits with little income in irregular work. She gives half of her money to fix the roof on her family's home at Mallet and uses the rest for food and clothing. She is down to her last pennies when she remembers a letter from Marion and prospects for a job as a fieldwoman. Crueling work at best. Tests' journey takes her from Mallet to Flintcom Ash, not far from her home. On the way, because she hasn't even enough money for lodgings, she sleeps in a forest where she encounters wounded pheasants shot by hunters who have lost track of the injured creatures. To put them out of their misery, Tests kills the suffering birds. Chapters 42 to 44. To ward off the men who might find her attractive, Tests puts on handkerchief as though she has a toothache and clips her eyebrows. She arrives at Flintcom Ash to find Marion already at work. Marion calls the farm a starve agriculture place. Not like the lush dairy at Targothay's. The work is didding. The work is digging rutterbaggers, harvesting corn and making the thatch for roofs. It is indeed difficult work for men and women alike. Tests agrees to work until 6th April, also known as Old Lady Day. The two friends work in the rain and snow at the farm. Marion writes to Is, who later comes to Flintcom Ash for work as well. One day when it is too cold to dig Swedes, the ladies are sent by the farmer to make roof thatching in a nearby farm. Also working there are Darkcar and the Queen of Diamonds, both former employees of the Dubervilles at the Slopes. These two Amazonian sisters do not remember Tests from their previous encounter. Tests meets her employer, the farmer, the same man who had insulted her in town in chapter 33 and who appears again in a second chance encounter in chapter 41. He is mean and vengeful towards Tests, telling her, but we'll see, which is master here. He urges the girls to work harder and Tests stays behind to finish her work with Is and Marion. Tests is overcome by exhaustion and fades. As she recovers on a haystack, she overhears Is tell the story of Angel asking her to accompany him to Brazil. Tests decides to contact Angel's parents to ask about Angel. The next Sunday, Tests sets out for Eminster, a 30 mile round trip walk for her. A year has passed since her marriage to Angel and she is determined to make her flight known to her in-laws and to see if they've heard from Angel. She removes her walking boots, stashes them in a nearby bush and puts on her dress boots to impress her in-laws. Angel's brothers discover Tests's boots, not knowing she is nearby and takes them back to Claire's vicarage. Tests loses her nerve to see the Claire's and returns to Flintcombe ash, dejected and depressed. On the way back to the farm, Tests encounters Alec Dubable, now in Evangelical, fire in brimstone street preacher. Phase the sixth. Chapters 45 to 49. Tests is disturbed greatly by Alec Dubable's parents once again, now as an evangelic minister. He is taken on the appearance of a common person, not like his appearance earlier as a man of both. Alec stops his sermon when he sees Tests. He tells Tests of his conversion and his mother's recent death. He apologizes for his past once he learns what happened to Tests after she left Tantridge and he makes Tests swear never to tempt him again. Alec finds Tests working in the field at Flintcombe ash the next morning and asks her to marry him. She refuses. He tells her that she is a deserted wife and that her husband will not return. Alec leaves her and returns the same afternoon to ask her to leave with him again. She does not and he blames her for his regression to his former self. In a later visit, Alec repeats his pleas for Tests' hand and she slaps his with a heavy work glove. He returns that same afternoon and offers to take Tests away from the hard labor on the farm. He also offers to help a family which is Tests' one-week spot. Tests leaves Alec to begin an impassioned letter to Angel to urge him to come to her at once. The letter reaches the clairs in Aminster who forward it to Angel. Angel has had his share of misfortune as well, becoming ill in the wild of Brazil and having buried a fellow farmer who had died from disease. He feels remorse for his treatment of Tests now having a change of heart from his previous position. When Tests nears the end of a time at Flintcombe ash, her sister, Lisa Lou, arrives to tell her that both of her parents are ill and that Tests must come home. Tests immediately leaves for Marlott that evening. Chapter 50 to 52. Tests travels the Wessex countryside and arrives at Marlott at 3 a.m. She finds a neighbour sitting with her parents both of whom are ill. Tests also finds that the allotment for the family garden has not been planted. She and Lisa Lou begin work at once on the garden while the parents recuperate. Tests even works by moonlight to complete the spring gardening task. Alec finds Tests in the garden and approaches her to tell her that he has left a gift for her at the house. Lisa Lou returns to tell Tests that their mother has recovered but their father, John Derbyfield, has died. With John dead, the family is evicted. Another larger family has procured the home. Tests and their family, however, feel as though the eviction has been precipitated because of Tests' past and the scorn of the villagers. The family hires a cart and horse to take them to a nearby town. Alec appears again to lend his support but Tests refuses his help. Tests spends a passionate letter to Angel as she feels she cannot resist the temptation of Alec and his willingness to aid her family. The next day, as the family makes its way to the nearby town, Tests meets Marianne and Is who have now begun work for another farmer. She relates what has happened to her father. Upon her arrival, the family learns that their intended house has been rented to someone else. All of their goods are unloaded in the church yard while a new house is procured. As the family beds down under the stars for the night, Tests goes into the church and finds Alec lying on her tomb. He frightens Tests when she sees his body on top of a crypt. Meanwhile, Marianne and Is write a letter to Angel urging him to come at once. Chapter 53-56 Angel's parents await his arrival from Brazil anxiously. He returns, looking older and thinner from his journey to Brazil. He reads Tests' letters, immediately writing to her mother, Joan, to see if she is well and living at home. Joan's skirt short letter tells him she is not at home and Joan does not know Tests' whereabouts. Further, Angel finds that Tests had not visited his parents nor had she asked for any money in his absence. Angel makes pleas to leave at once to find Tests when he reads a letter from Marianne and Is. Angel first goes to Flintcombe Ash and Mollot to locate Tests. Instead, he finds Joan's grave and pays a sexton or churchyard cake taker for the balance owed on Joan's tombstone. He finds that the family is in Kingsborough and sets out for the Derby Field House. There he finds Joan and asks her about Tests only to find she is now living in the fashionable seaside resort of Sandbone. Angel treks to Sandbone arriving late at night, too late to find any information. The next morning, Angel finds Tests at an inn called the Herons, from information provided by a mailman. He goes to the inn and asks for Tests where she is now known as Teresa Duberville. Tests has been living with Alec and the pair has travelled to the resort for relaxation. Angel sees Tests only to be told that she cannot go with him, that Alec has won her. Repeatedly, Tests tells Angel it is too late. She sends Angel away, urging him not to return as she now begins to belongs to Alec. Angel leaves the inn, wandering the streets aimlessly. Tests returns to her room to confront Alec. The innkeeper, Mrs. Brooks, watches the Dubervilles throw a keyhole and from her office below their room. Tests realises Alec's deception, blaming him for lying to her about Angel's future return so that he could once more have her. In her fury, Tests stabs Alec through the heart with a carving knife. She leaves the inn immediately to find Angel. In the interim, news of the murder moves quickly through the resort. Chapter 57 to 59 Angel hears from his parents via telegram that his brother, Kathbert, is engaged to Mercy John. He leaves his hotel to go to the train station for a return trip home. At the station, Tests finds him and confesses to murdering Alec. Immediately, Angel formulates a plan to walk to the north of England, avoiding the more travelled roads until they can reach a port city after the events surrounding the murder are forgotten. The two warp for miles, finally happy to be in each other's company. Along the way, they discover a vacant house with only a caretaker occasionally stopping by. The great house called Bramshurst Court is empty of a renter so the couple takes up residence. They spend five days in the house until the local caretaker sees them sleeping in the large bedrooms. Once discovered, Angel and Tests move directly north until they reach the ancient monoliths of Stonehenge. Tests feels that her freedom is limited and her end is near so she has Angel promise to marry Lisa Lou after her death. Now that it is night and the two are tired, Tests sleeps on one of the altars of the stone. Near daybreak, the two are surrounded by police who take Tests into custody. For her part, Tests is glad that the end has come and she goes with the police willingly. In the final chapter, Angel and Lisa lead a journey together to Wintonster to see that Tests's sentence left by hanging is carried out. They do not actually witness the deed but know the enterprise is done when a black flag is hoisted over the town's tower. The two then return the way they came as soon as they arose, joined hands again and went on. Moving on to character analysis, Tests derby feels intelligent, striking the attractive and distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate intensity. Tests 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, formerly Teresa, recalls Saint Teresa of Evela, another martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her her life. Other characters often refer to Tests in mythical terms as when Angel calls her a daughter of nature or refers to her by the Greek mythological names Artemis and Demeter. The narrator himself sometimes describes Tests as more than an individual woman but as something closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood. In Chapter 14 he says that her eyes are neither black nor blue nor grey nor violet rather all these shades together like an almost standard woman. Tests' story may thus be a standard story representing a deeper and larger experience than that of a single individual. However behind that beauty Hardy paints a picture of a tortured mind. Tests could not be described as an exuberant person. She seems to border between marginal happiness to deep depression and her personality is hidden like an enigma even from those close to her. Joan, her mother, says in response to a question Angel asks I have never really known her. In part Tests represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in England in the late 19th century possessing an education that her unschooled parents lack since she has passed the sixth standard of the national schools. Tests does not quite fit into the folk culture of a 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 Derby Fields are the surviving members of the noble and ancient family of the Duberwills. There is aristocracy in Tests' blood visible in a graceful beauty yet she is supposed to work as a farm hand and milk mate. 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 Alex or angels. She is in between both socially and culturally. Thus Tests is a symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in 19th century Britain where old family lines retained their earlier glamour but where cold economic realities made sheer wealth more important than inner nobility. Alec Duberwills a non-calant 24 year old man heir to a fortune and bearer of a name that his father purchased. Alec is a nemesis and downfall of Tests' 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 Duberwills symbolizes the split character of his family whose origins are simpler and more grandiose. 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 re-meeting Tests. It is hard to believe Alec holds his religion or anything else for that matter sincerely. His supposed conversion may only be a new role This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec and its consequences for Tests so severe that he becomes diabolical. The first part of his surname conjures associations with fiery energies as in the stalking of a furnace or the flames of hell. His devilish associations are evident when he wields a pitchfork while addressing Tests early in the novel and when he seduces her 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 He bluntly tells Tests 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 of submission and no shame Some readers feel Alec is too wicked to be believable but like Tests herself he represents a larger moral principle rather than a real individual man Alec symbolizes the base forces of life that drive a person away from moral perfection and greatness Angel Clair a free thinking son born into a family of a provincial parson He lives up as a farmer instead of going to Cambridge like his conformist brothers Angel represents a rebellious driving toward a personal vision of goodness He is a secularist who yearns to work for the honor and glory of men As he tells his father in chapter 18 rather than for the honor and glory of God in a more distant world A typical young 19th century progressive Angel sees human society 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 Tests a mere milk mate 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 milk mates with whom he works at Talbothez As his name 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 Tests may be abstract as we guess when he calls her daughter of nature or Demeter Tests 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. Derby feels easygoing moral beliefs are much more easily accommodated to real lives such as Tests Angel awakens to the actual complexities of real world morality after his failure in Brazil and only then he realizes he's been unfair to Tests. His moral system is readjusted as he's 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 Moving on to theme analysis The Theme of Unfairness Unfairness dominates the lives of Tests and her family to such an extent that it begins to seem like a general aspect of human existence in Tests of the doobervills Tests is not mean to kill Prince but she's punished anyway just as she's unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec Nor is there justice waiting in heaven Christianity teaches that there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this life but the only devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend Mr. Glam in his life anyway For others in their misery Christianity offers little so less of heavenly justice Mrs. Derbyfield never mentions otherworldly rewards The converted Alec reaches heavenly justice for earthly sinners but his faith seems shallow and insincere Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is not Christian justice at all but pagan injustice The force says that true human life are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well disposed to us The pre-Christian rituals practised by the farm workers at the opening of the novel and Tests's final rest at Stonehenge at the end remind us of a world where the gods are not just and fair but whimsical and uncaring When the narrator concludes the novel with the statement that justice was done and the president of the immortals had ended his sport with Tests we are reminded that justice might be put in ironic quotation marks since it is not really just at all What passes for justice is in fact one of the pagan gods enjoying a bit of sport or a frivolous game Social class in Victorian England Tests of the Duberville's presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in 19th century England and the difficulty of defining class in a simple way Suddenly the Derby Fields are a powerful emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in Victorian times as it would have been in the middle ages i.e. by blood alone with no attention paid to fortune or worldly success Indibutably the Derby Fields have purity of blood yet for the person and nearly everyone else in the novel this fact amounts to nothing more than a piece of genealogical trivia In the Victorian context cash matters more than lineage which explains how Simon stalks Alex Father was smoothly able to use his large fortune to purchase a lustrous family name The Duberville's pass for what the Derby Fields truly are Authentic nobility simply because definitions of class have changed The issue of class confusion even affects the Claire Clan whose most prominent promising son Angel is intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid thus bypassing the traditional privileges of a Cambridge education and a Parsonage His willingness to work side by side with the farm labourers helps and dare him to test and their acquaintance would not have been possible if he were a more traditional and elitist aristocrat Thus the three main characters in the Angel test Angel are all strongly marked by confusion regarding their respective social classes an issue that is one of the main concerns of the novel male domination One of the recurrent themes of the novel is a way in which men can dominate women exerting a power over them linked primarily to their mailness Sometimes this command is purposeful in the man's full knowledge of his exploitation as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure Alec's act of abuse the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel is clearly the most serious instance of male domination over a female But there are other less blatant examples of women's passivity toward dominant men When after Angel reveals that he prefers Tess Tess' friend Reti attempts suicide and her friend Marianne becomes an alcoholic which makes their earlier school girl type crushes on Angel seem disturbing This devotion is not merely fanciful love but unhealthy obsession These girls appear utterly dominated by a desire for a man who we are told explicitly it is not even realized that they are interested in him This sort of unconscious male domination of women is perhaps even more unsettling outward and self-conscious cruelty Even Angel's love for Tess as pure and gentle as it seems dominates her in an unhealthy way Angel substitutes an idealized picture of Tess' country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses to get to know When Angel calls Tess names like daughter of nature and Artemis, we feel that he may be denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he prefers Thus, her identity and experiences are suppressed albeit unknowingly This pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tess's murder of Alec in which for the first time in the novel a woman takes active steps against a man Of course, this act only leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men when the crowd of male police officers arrest Tess at Stoneridge Nevertheless, for just a moment the accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant men is interrupted and Tess's act seems heroic Moving on to some important quotes Quote Don't you really know, Dubby Field that you are the linear representative of the ancient and nightly family of the Duberville's who derived the descent from Sir Pag in Duberville that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William the Conqueror in the years by Battle Abbey Roll Never heard it before, Sir In this passage from chapter 1 the local parson informs Mr. Dubby Field of his grand lineage thus setting in motion the events that change the fate of Tess's Dubby Field forever Interestingly, the parson's tone is casual as if he is unable even to conceive of how his news might lead to tragedy later For the parson it is genealogical trivia but for Dubby Field it feels like fate the deepest truth about itself like Oedipus's discovery of his own identity The fact that this prophetic news is delivered on the road in an open field right at the beginning of the work is reminiscent of the opening of Macbeth's There the witches address Macbeth as a Thane of Corder and King of Scotland just as the parson addresses Dubby Field as Sir John The noble address leads to disaster and death In this case, the death of the rightful Dubrivel, Alec Hardy emphasizes the irony of Dubby Field's situation not only by contrasting the common peddler on the road with the image of the renowned knight who was his forebear but also by contrasting the modes of address of Dubby Field and the parson The parson has just addressed him as Sir John which sets the whole conversation in motion but we see here that the parson soon lapses back into the familiar tone more appropriate to one addressing a social inferior Don't you really know Dubby Field? Dubby Field does the same Despite his discovery that he is Sir John it is he who calls the parson Sir here The ironies multiply making questions of glass and identity complex and unstable and Hardy intends to depict them Quote Claire came close and bent over her Dead, dead, dead he murmured After fixedly regarding her for some moments with the same gaze of unmeasurable woe he bent lower enclosed her in his arms and rolled her in the sheet as in a shroud then lifting her from the bed with as much respect as one would show to a dead body he carried her across the room murmuring my poor poor desk my dearest darling desk so sweet, so good, so true The words of endearment withheld so severely in his waking hours were inexpressibly sweet to her forlorn and hungry heart If it had been to save her very life she would not by moving or struggling have put an end to the position she found herself in Thus she lay in absolute stillness scarcely venturing to breathe and wondering what he was going to do with her suffered herself to be born out upon the lightning my wife dead, dead, he said In chapter 37 Angel Claire begins to sleepwalk on the third night of his estrangement from desk having rejected her as his wife because of her earlier disgrace Like Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene Angel's nighttime somnambulism reveals an inner conflict within a character who earlier seems convinced of a moral idea in control and inflexible For Lady Macbeth her earlier gold protestations that killing a king is justifiable are belied by her unconscious fixation on being bloodstained For Angel the situation is reversed Angel maintains a conviction that desk is bad, corrupt and cannot be forgiven but his unconscious sleepwalking self reveals the tender love and moral respect for her so good so true that he feels somewhere inside him This revelation foreshadows his final realization too late that his condemnation of desk was wrong headed Angel's words hint at desk's future death They also signal Angel's conception of desk She is alive physically but for him she is dead morally as dead as an idea of purity that he once revered What, under the trees several pheasants lay about their rich plumage dabbled with blood some were dead some feebly twitching a wing some staring up at the sky some pulsating quickly some stretched out all of them in agony except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more with the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself desk's first thought was to pull the still living birds out of their torture and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could find leaving them to lie where she'd found them to the gamekeepers should come as they probably would come to look for them a second time Poor darlings to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in sight or such misery as yours she exclaimed her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly unquote desk stumbles upon the pheasants feeling like a haunted soul the dying bird symbolize her own condition it is a strange and unexpected image since throughout all the scenes of farm life we have witnessed in the novel there has never been any killing farming is always associated with production never with loss or sacrifice but hunting is different it kills creatures and does so unnecessarily the image of silently suffering victims of violence evokes desk's quiet acceptance of her own violation at the hands of alec in a literary sense these flightless birds stand in shock contrast to the high flying birds a romantic poetry we recall that angel is compared to shelly who wrote an ode to a skylark romantic birds leave the earth below to soar into a higher plane of existence but the birds here have no such luck having been shot down as desk has been desk's killing of these suffering birds suggests that she is killing off that part of herself that has quietly accepted many years of agony after this scene desk begins to show a more active resolution that culminates in a final murder of alec her newfound activity may not save her indeed her punishment for the murder presumably death by hanging will snap her neck just like she snaps the necks of these pheasants it may be preferable to her earlier passivity providing her with a noblow way to face her fate justice was done and the president of the immortals had ended his sport with desk and the doobable knights and dames slept on in their tomes unknowing the two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth as if in prayer and remained there a long time absolutely motionless the flag continued to wave silently as soon as they had strength they arose joined hands again and went on the tired and unimpassioned tone suggests that narrator's veriness with the ways of the world as if quite similar with the fact that life always unfolds in this way nothing great is achieved by this finale as a loon angel went on at the end just as life itself will go on ignorance rules rather than understanding the doobable ancestors who cause the tragedy are not even moved from their slumber blithely unaffected by the agony and deaths of one of their own life Tess's tale has not been a climactic unfolding but a rather humdrum affair that perhaps happens all the time moving on to a biography of Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy was born on 2nd June 1840 in Dorset, England and died on 11th January 1928 in Dorchester was an English novelist and poet who set much of his work in Bessex his name for the Counties of South-Western England Thomas Hardy's early life in works Hardy was the eldest of the family of Thomas Hardy a stone mason and jobbing builder and his wife Jemima he grew up in an isolated cottage on the edge of open heathland though he was often ill as a child his early experience of rural life with its seasonal rhythms and oral culture was fundamental to much of his later writing he spent a year at the billet school at age 8 and then moved on to schools in Dorchester the nearby county town where he received a good grounding in mathematics in Latin in 1856 he was apprenticed to John Hicks a local architect and in 1862 shortly before his 22nd birthday he moved to London and became a draftsman in the busy office of Arthur Blomfield a leading ecclesiastical architect driven back to Dorset by ill healths in 1867 he worked for Hicks again for the Weymouth architect G. R. Crickmay though architecture brought Hardy both social and economic advancement it was only in the mid 1860s that lack of funds and declining religious faiths forced him to abandon his early ambitions of a university education and eventual ordination as an Anglican priest his habits of intensive private study were then redirected toward the reading of poetry development of his own poetic skills the verses he wrote in the 1860s would emerge in revised form in later volumes example neutral tones and reddies phases but then none of them achieved immediate publication Hardy reluctantly turned to prose in 1867-68 he wrote the class-conscious novel The Poor Man and the Lady practically considered by three London publishers but never actually published George Meredith as a publisher's reader advised Hardy to write a more shapely and less opinionated novel the result was the densely plotted desperate remedies published in 1871 which was influenced by the contemporary sensation fiction of Wilkie Collins in his next novel however the brief and affectionately humorous Idol under the Greenwood tree published in 1872 Hardy found a voice much more distinctively his own in this book he awoke within the simplest of marriage plots an episode of social change that is the displacement of a group of church musicians that was a direct reflection of events involving his own father shortly before Hardy's own birth in March 1870 he was sent to make an architectural assessment of the lonely and elapidated church of St. Juliet in Cornwall there in romantic circumstances later poignantly recalled in prose and verse he first met the rector's vivacious sister-in-law Emma Lavinia Gifford who became his wife four years later she actively encouraged and assisted him in his literary endeavors and his next novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873 drew heavily upon the circumstances of their courtship for its wild Cornish setting and its melodramatic story of a young woman somewhat resembling Emma Gifford and the two men friends become rivals who successively pursue, misunderstand and fail her Hardy's break from architecture occurred in the summer of 1872 when he undertook to supply Tinsley's magazine with the 11 monthly installments of a pair of blue eyes an initially risky commitment to a literary career that was soon validated by an invitation to contribute a serial to the far more prestigious Cornhill magazine the resulting novel Far from the Madding Crowd published in 1874 introduced Wessex for the first time and made Hardy famous by its agricultural settings and its distinctive blend of humorous melodramatic, pastoral and tragic elements the book is a vigorous portrayal of the beautiful and impulsive Bathsheba Everdeen and a marital choices among Sergeant Troy, the dashing but irresponsible soldier William Bouldwood, the deeply obsessive farmer and Gabriel Oak her loyal and resourceful shepherd middle period of Hardy's life Hardy and Emma Gifford were married against the wishes of both their families in September 1874 at first they moved rather restlessly about living sometimes in London, sometimes in Dorset his record as a novelist during this period was somewhat mixed the Hand of Ethel Bertha published in 1876 an artificial social comedy turning on versions and inversions of the British class system was poorly received and has never been widely popular the Return of the Native published in 1878 on the other hand was increasingly admired for its powerfully evoked setting of Egdon Heath which was based on the somber countryside Hardy had known as a child the novel depicts the disastrous marriage between Eustatia Why who yearns romantically for passionate experiences beyond the hated Heaths and Klim Yobrite the returning native who is blinded to his wife's need a naively idealistic seal for the moral improvement of Egdon's impervious inhabitants Hardy's next works were the trumpet major published in 1880 set in the Napoleonic period and two more novels generally considered minor it was not easy for Hardy to establish himself as a member of the professional middle class in a town where his humbler background was well known he signalled his determination to stay by accepting an appointment as a local magistrate and by designing and building Maxgate the house just outside Dorchester in which he lived until his death Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge published in 1886 incorporates recognizable details of Dorchester's history and topography the busy market town of Casterbridge becomes a setting for a tragic struggle at once economic and deeply personal in the powerful but unstable Michael Henchard who is risen from workman to mayor by sheer natural energy and the most surely calculating Donald Farfray who starts out in Casterbridge as Henchard's protege but ultimately dispossesses him of everything that he had once owned and loved in Hardy's next novel The Woodlanders published 1887 socio-economic issues once again become central as the permutations of sexual advance and retreat are played out among the very trees from which the characters make their living and Giles Winterbone's loss of livelihood is integrally bound up with his loss of Grace Melbury and finally of life itself Wessex Tales published 1888 was the first collection of short stories that Hardy had long been publishing in magazines the subsequent short story collections are a group of noble teams published 1891 Life's Little Ironies published 1894 and A Changed Man published 1913 Hardy's short novel The Well Beloved serialized in 1892 revised for volume publication in 1897 to space a hostility to marriage that was related to increasing frictions within his own marriage Hardy's Late Novels The closing phase of Hardy's career in fiction was marked by the publication of Tess of the Tubervilles in 1891 and Jude the Obscure in 1895 which are generally considered his finest novels though Tess is the most richly poetic of Hardy's novels and Jude the most bleakly written both books offer deeply sympathetic representations of working class figures Tess Derby Field The Erring Milkmaid and Jude Follet In powerful implicitly moralized narratives Hardy traces these characters initially hopeful, momentarily ecstatic but persistently troubled journeys toward eventual deprivation and death Though technically belonging to the 19th century these novels anticipate the 20th century in regard to the nature and treatment of their subject matter Tess profoundly questions society's sexual moors by its compassionate portrayal and even advocacy of a heroine who was seduced and perhaps raped by the son of her employer She has an illegitimate child suffers rejection by the man she loves and marries and is finally hanged by murdering her original seducer In Jude the Obscure the class-ridden educational system is challenged by the defeat of Jude's earnest aspirations to knowledge while conventional morality is affronted by the way in which the sympathetically presented Jude and Sue change partners live together and have children with little regard for the institution of marriage Both books encountered some brutally hostile reviews and Hardy's sensitivity to such attacks partly precipitated his long contemplated transition from fiction to poetry So, that's all for now If you found this video useful we would really love it if you could give it a thumbs up Also, do subscribe to our channel where we offer lots of free material that you can use as part of your studies to get a better understanding of specific areas that you might find challenging Also, if you need more information either on this novel or more generally for other areas in your course make sure to visit our website which is www.firstratetutors.com There you will find useful revision guides model answers and tools that you can use to get top marks in your coursework or exams Thank you for listening