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.
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 of the century.
Hardy's novel takes place in southwest England, a rural region in which he was born. In real life, farm wages remained low here partly because this region, in contrast to the middle and northern parts of England, had little industry. Without factories to compete for workers, the farm employer did not feel pressed to raise wages.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 4,061 words (approx. 14 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Tess of the D'Urbervilles Access Pass.
