ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Tess of the D‟ Urbervilles, subtitled “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented“, published in 1891 can be considered as his tragic masterpiece which relates the story of a simple, sensuous and passionate girl Teresa “Tess” Duberfield.

Detailed explanation-2: -It was subtitled A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented because Hardy felt that its heroine was a virtuous victim of a rigid Victorian moral code. Now considered Hardy’s masterwork, it departed from conventional Victorian fiction in its focus on the rural lower class and in its open treatment of sexuality and religion.

Detailed explanation-3: -In the 1912 preface to the Wessex edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy defends his novel: “Respecting the sub-title fA Pure Woman.

Detailed explanation-4: -On the first page shown here, Hardy has extended John Durbeyfield’s first spoken dialogue to include ‘t’ye’ and ‘well as I know ‘ee by sight’. The same page also reveals Hardy’s original title for the novel, later crossed out: ‘A Daughter of the D’Urbervilles’.

Detailed explanation-5: -By presenting Tess as ‘a pure woman’ Hardy criticises Victorian notions of female purity. The nineteenth-century society treated women as second class citizens. Although they did have certain legal rights, those were not respected in real life.