What are the main concerns in Tess of the D'Urbervilles?

Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel, Tess of the
d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, can be
read as a cautionary tale that explores women as objects of male consumption. For
instance, Hardy introduces Tess at the May-Day dance, or Cerealia festival of harvest
and fertility. Soon after, this innocent pastoral image is upset by a young man, later
identified as Angel Clare. While Angel’s intentions are harmless, his intrusion and
subsequent assessment of Tess as a commodity makes her vulnerable to the male gaze.
Thus, the qualities innocently commodified by Angel Clare, Tess’s innocence and purity,
set her apart and attract other male buyers.

While Angel’s
gaze is seemingly innocuous, it situates Tess on a symbolic altar where she is subjected
to the male gaze. Tess, therefore, is already in a vulnerable position when Alec
d’Urberville enters the novel.  In The Chase scene, d’Urberville takes advantage of
Tess’s innocence. Hardy emphasizes the contrast of the scene with the previous Cerealia
festival.

In this scene, the night shrouds Tess’ gleaming
white figure as she sleeps on a metaphoric altar of dead leaves. The girl’s white figure
symbolizes purity and innocence, which lies on the dead leaves waiting to be sacrificed
to d’Urberville’s desire. The narrator interposes at this point, questioning, “Why it
was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically
blank as snow yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed
to receive.” In asking this question, and siding with the feminine heroine, Hardy
challenges the dominant discourse of the time, which viewed women as a commodity. In
stating that Tess’s body was “doomed to receive” the ensuing rape, Hardy suggests that
she is blameless. Additionally, he calls for her innocence, arguing that her character
is “practically blank as snow.” This sacrifice strips Tess of her innocence. However, as
noted in the subtitle of the novel, Hardy adamantly suggests the maiden’s purity of
character.

In the final section of Hardy’s novel,
appropriately titled, “Phase the Seventh. Fulfilment,” Hardy reinvents The Chase scene,
placing Tess on another type of altar. Tess and Angel approach the Stonehenge formation
and Tess, tired from walking, lies “upon an oblong slab,” which Angel correctly
identifies as an altar. Earlier in the novel, on a bed of dead leaves, Tess sacrificed
her innocence but retained the purity of her character. After a long struggle, Tess
arrives at Stonehenge to fulfill a more important sacrifice. Superficially, Tess’s
capture can be read as an instance of patriarchal law reigning in unleashed femininity.
However, Hardy shows readers another layer. Tess is taken on her terms. Ultimately, she
murders d’Urberville in order to free herself from the symbolic male buyer. Here, lying
on the heathen altar of the sun gods, Tess sacrifices her mortal life for eternal
freedom.

The sacrifice occurs at daybreak, a moment of
rebirth and renewal that symbolically restores the maiden’s virginity and innocence.
Thus, superficially this final scene appears to support the patriarchal hierarchy. At
the end, Tess is still subjected to the male gaze, the officers stand at attention
watching Tess rise from the altar, and she is subject to the laws of the patriarchal
law. However, Tess subverts these structures in her sacrifice, ultimately reclaiming the
innocence and purity that characterize her femininity.