Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy • 1891
Devastation Rating
injustice love historical literary fiction loss
Our Take
Hardy writes the destruction of a woman by men and by fate and makes no distinction between them. Tess is pure and the world punishes her for it, and the relentlessness of that punishment across the novel is the whole indictment. The Victorian novel at its most savage and its most honest.
Appears In
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