Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hardy tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, a beautiful young woman living with her impoverished family in Wessex, the southwestern English county immortalized by Hardy. After the family learns of their connection to the wealthy d’Urbervilles, they send Tess to claim a portion of their fortune. She meets and is seduced by the dissolute Alec d’Urberville and secretly bears a child, Sorrow, who dies in infancy. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer Tess love and salvation, but he rejects her — on their wedding night — after learning of her past. Emotionally bereft, financially impoverished, and victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social morality, Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.
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About the Author
Sweet Tess, one of the most lovely of heroines, is a provincial girl with a cursed beauty. In a deceitful world, the innocent Tess is drawn into two treacherous romances. Eventually, she is forced to keep a secret that will either tear her heart in two, or worse, forever destroy her chances of happiness. Narrator Imogen Stubbs brings to life the complicated characters that surround Tess. Stubbs's voice can be both bright and innocent or gruff and detestable as the story switches between joy and sadness. Her skilled performance of Hardy's classic endears us to Tess all over again. L.P. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine