Tess of the d'Urbervilles follows Tess through the last stages of her life. The reader is witness to the starting point of her eventual downfall, Alec raping her and the ramifications of that on the rest of her life. As the novel progresses, the reader learns more about Tess' true nature and how her end comes about because of the imposition of conventional values on her by other people, Alec's misinterpreting her feelings, Angel's religious dogmatism and the views of the people Tess interacts with. The character of Tess does not change throughout the whole book, rather, the full understanding of her character is revealed to the reader as the story unfolds.

The classic notion of a tragic hero occurs throughout the history of literature, Shakespeare's Macbeth, Othello, and even Oedipus Rex. Essentially, a tragic hero is an inherently noble character of great standing who suffers from a fatal flaw, be it pride, ambition or lust. The combination of this fatal flaw and a healthy dose of supernatural intervention results in the downfall of the tragic hero, before which he realises his fault. Tess is of course a far cry from this description; she is but the daughter of "the comm

Ironically, Tess' good qualities indirectly lead to her downfall as they become more a curse than a blessing. Her beauty is what attracts Alec and leads to her rape. Her beauty then attracts Angel, who misinterprets her beauty and sees her as "a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature". She comes to realise the curse of her beauty as she reaches Chalk-Newton, where "she mercilessly nipped her eyebrows off, and thus insured against aggressive admiration she went on her uneven way."

onest feller in the parish" although she does possess many noble characteristics, and an almost equal amount of faults. Though not as obvious as witches or fairies, Hardy suggests throughout the novel that there are greater powers at work, manipulating the Tess' situation, leading her to her doom.

Throughout the novel, Hardy creates an atmosphere of something intangible that influences the events that transpire. There is a sense of the inevitability of death, the individual life of growth and decay takes place amongst other, larger patterns of "flux and reflux - the rhythm of change" which "alternate and persist in everything under the sky". The decay of the d'Urberville family and the "brief glorification" of the gnats are part of the same inevitable process. Tess is linked to the world in her brevity but also identical in the "inherent will to enjoy". With the death of her child, Tess' "spirit within her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was...the invisible instinct towards self-delight." and she is locked throughout the novel in the inevitable struggle between mortality and the will to live. The reader gradually realises that mortality cannot be defeated and Tess' fate cannot be avoided. As Tess is hung at the end of the novel, the reader reads, "...And so the President of the Immortals had finished his sport with Tess."

Laird, J. T., The Shaping of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Oxford, 1975

As opposed to the classic tragedy Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a domestic tragedy and is filled with pathos. Pathos presents its heroine as isolated by a weakness that appeals to the reader's sympathy because it reflects personal experience. More often than not, a domestic tragedy will contain a pathetic female sacrifice, from Clarissa Harlowe to Jame's Diasy Miller. In contrast to classical tragedies where massacres occur to cleanse the whole system, as in Hamlet, domestic tragedy concentrates on a s

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Approximate Word count = 1623
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)