Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised 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.
《德伯家的苔丝》是英国作家哈代的长篇小说，它描写了一位农村姑娘的悲惨命运。小说讲述了女主人公苔丝生于一个贫苦小贩家庭，父母要她到一个富老太婆家去攀亲戚，结果她被少爷亚历克诱奸，后来她与牧师的儿子克莱恋爱并订婚，在新婚之夜她把昔日的不幸向丈夫坦白，却没能得到原谅，两人分居，丈夫去了巴西，几年后，苔丝再次与亚历克相遇，后者纠缠她，这时候她因家境窘迫不得不与仇人同居，不久克莱从国外回来，向妻子表示悔恨自己以往的冷酷无情，在这种情况下，苔丝痛苦地觉得是亚历克·德伯使她第二次失去了克莱便愤怒地将他杀死。最后她被捕并被处以绞刑。
Originally published in serialized form in 1891, and then as a complete novel in 1892, Tess of the d’Urbervilles is widely considered to be one of the great nineteenth century novels. Through the tale of young woman used and abused by a man of higher social status, it explores Victorian Britain’s perceptions of class, gender, and sexuality, as well as examining broader themes such as the injustice and unfairness of life. The novel begins with an impoverished peasant named John Durbeyfield learning that he may be related to the rich and noble d’Urberville family, a revelation that sets off a string of tragic events. Meanwhile, John’s eldest daughter Tess attends the May Dance where she catches the eye of a young man named Angel Clare, son of Reverend James Clare. She wishes to dance with him but Angel is running late and does not have time. Later, when her father is too drunk to drive their cart to market, Tess takes the reins but falls asleep, causing an accident in which their horse is killed. Deprived of their livelihood, Tess’s parents tell her to visit Mrs. d’Urberville, a rich widow, and present herself as a distant family member in need of support. Here the reader learns that Mrs. d’Urberville’s deceased husband simply adopted the name and was not actually a member of the noble old family, but Tess in unaware of this and, feeling guilty about the horse, she reluctantly agrees to visit the widow and request assistance.When Tess visits the d’Urberville mansion, she meets Mrs. d’Urberville’s lecherous, libertine son Alec, who gets her a position on the estate looking after poultry. Alec is consistently predatory but one night, after Tess has been threatened by one of the man’s ex-lovers, she naively accepts his offer of rescue. However, Alec does not take her to safety as promised but to a deserted grove where it is implied that he rapes her. Later, traumatized, ashamed, and pregnant with Alec’s child, Tess flees back to her parents, where she largely remains in her room in a state of humiliated shock. When the child is born, it is weak and ill and only lives for a few short weeks. On the night before the boy dies, Tess christens him “Sorrow,” performing the ceremony herself because her father will not let a priest come and see their shame. Despite this baptism, Tess is still only able to bury the child in the rundown part of the graveyard reserved for unbaptized babies, in a poor grave marked only by a homemade cross and flowers in a marmalade jar.A couple of years later, Tess takes a job as a milkmaid. Because the dairy is some distance from her village, her history is not known and she is no longer the subject of gossip. Away from the scandal of her past, she is happy and content, making friends with the other milkmaids and once again meeting Angel Clare who is visiting to learn how to run a dairy. Gradually, Tess and Angel fall in love but when Angel proposes, Tess must decide whether to reveal her past and risk Angel withdrawing his proposal when he learns she is not a virgin, or keeping it a secret. After an attempt to tell him the truth goes awry, she decides to keep it to herself. However, on their wedding night, emboldened by Angel confessing to an old affair, Tess reveals everything, with disastrous results. Although Angel acknowledges that Alec was responsible and Tess herself had been wronged, he nevertheless sees her as flawed and damaged, and blames her for not adequately resisting Alec’s assault. Telling Tess that he will learn to forgive her past eventually, he then travels to Brazil to start a farm, promising to collect Tess later when he is ready for her.Tess finds unpleasant, arduous work on an unproductive farm but still struggles to make enough to support herself or her parents. She goes to ask Angel’s family for help but overhears his brothers talking about Angel’s terrible marriage and so leaves without speaking to them. As she travels home, she is surprised to discover that Alec d’Urberville is now a traveling priest, having been converted to Methodism by Angel’s father, Reverend Clare. However, the man’s new-found faith does not last long and he soon starts stalking Tess and begging her to marry him. When Tess’s father dies unexpectedly and the family are evicted from their cottage, Alec offers to support them but Tess refuses and the family find themselves near destitute.In Brazil, Angel has suffered his own hardships, becoming seriously ill for a time and failing with his new farm. He now realizes that he was wrong to reject Tess but, on returning to England, he discovers that she has married Alec, having reluctantly succumbed to the man’s manipulative advances. When Angel leaves, Tess is devastated, heartbroken, and furious. In her fury, she stabs Alec to death, and runs away with Angel, who is happy to assist her but does not believe she truly killed Alec. It is not until the police surround them at Stonehenge several days later that he truly accepts that she killed the man. The night before she was captured, Tess said that she hoped Angel would marry her sister, Liza-Lu, after she dies, and the final moments of the novel show Angel and Liza-Lu walking off hand in hand, having just seen a black flag raised above the prison announcing that Tess has been executed.At the time it was written, Tess of the d’Urbervilles was highly controversial because its sexual themes were at odds with Victorian social mores. The original serialized publication was censored and some critics even suggest that the ambiguity surrounding Alec raping Tess is the result of pressure from Hardy’s publishers. Revaluated over the years, the novel is now widely considered to be among Hardy’s greatest works and, in fact, is often celebrated for the bold manner in which it addresses gender and sexuality.
Tess Durbeyfield is a (totally and completely doomed) country girl living in the late 19th Century in an English village that seems secluded, even though it's only a four-hour journey from London. Her father learns in the first chapter that he is the last lineal descendent of the D'Urbervilles—one of the oldest, most aristocratic, families in all of England. He foolishly assumes that his aristocratic heritage will suffice to pull his family out of poverty, and so he sends Tess off to "claim kin" (i.e., to borrow money on the strength of their distant family ties) from a wealthy branch of the D'Urbervilles.
Tess is a very pretty girl, and very "womanly" (i.e., sexy) for her age, and the son of the wealthy D'Urbervilles, Alec, tries to seduce her. He finds her too proud and modest to fall into his snares, and so he tricks her into accepting a ride from him back to the family house at night, and cuts through the woods. After getting lost (possibly on purpose), Alec leaves Tess to fall asleep under a tree while he tries to find the path. He comes back, and, finding her asleep, takes advantage of their solitude to rape her under the trees.
The next phase of the book ("Maiden No More") opens with Tess back at her parents' house in the village of Marlott. She's had a baby as a result of her connection with Alec, and has secluded herself from her former friends out of a combination of shame and pride. She works a few odd jobs to make money, and things are going okay until her baby suddenly gets sick... and dies. Tess is more worried about the baby's soul than anything else, so she buries it in the churchyard on the sly.
Time passes, and most of her friends and neighbors have forgotten about Tess's troubles. But she hasn't, so she decides to go to a neighboring county to work at a dairy farm where nobody knows her. One of the other workers at the dairy, Angel Clare, is the son of a gentleman. Angel is learning about farming so that he can move to the colonies in America and become a wealthy farmer there. He and Tess gradually fall in love.
Tess wants to tell Angel about her past, but she can't bring herself reveal it to him. Finally, the night before they're supposed to get married, she slips a note under his door confessing everything. When he doesn't say anything about it the next morning, she assumes all is forgiven—but really, he never saw the note. On their wedding night, he confesses to her that he'd had a brief fling with a strange woman in London long before he'd met Tess. So Tess feels like she can tell him about Alec, since that wasn't her fault.
But Angel doesn't see it that way. He's shocked and horrified that she's not a virgin, and runs off to South America to try and forget about her. Tess is heart-broken and wanders from job to job, trying to leave her problems behind her. But her problems keep finding her. Alec runs into her on the road, and even though he's become a Christian, he becomes obsessed with her again. Eventually he persuades her to live with him, even though she's legally married to Angel. But she's given up hope that Angel will ever come back to her.
But he does come back to her, and when she sees Angel, she stabs Alec in their hotel room. Angel realizes that he's partly responsible for the murder, and runs away with her. They flee together across the countryside, and are finally caught by the authorities at Stonehenge, an ancient monument of huge stones in the English countryside that was built by the druids or even earlier. "Justice" catches up with Tess, and she is hanged.