by Thomas Hardy

Written toward the end of the Victorian era, Tess of the D'Urbervilles reflects the confusion of Thomas Hardy's changing society. The novel explores not only the hypocrisy of England's moral standards, but also the nature of that country's changing agricultural economy. As an inhabitant of a rural village himself, Hardy relates from firsthand experience a tale of the declining landed gentry and rural communities undergoing turbulent events.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The changing face of country life. The latter half of the Victorian era-the years between 1860 and 1900-constituted a period of transformation for rural England. More and more country villages lost their inhabitants to job opportunities in industrialized cities such as London and Manchester. Encouraging this "drift from the land," as the migration was frequently termed, was an agricultural depression in the last quarter...