Tess of the d’Urbervilles is a novel by Thomas Hardy. The novel is set in impoverished rural England, Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex, during the Long Depression of the 1870s. Tess is the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated peasants; however, John is given the impression by Parson Tringham that he may have noble blood.
Abused by one man, forsaken by another, Tess is the heroine of Thomas Hardy’s immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty while passionately indicting the injustices of Victorian society.