Victorians, Hardy and Fallen Women

Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

In this course, Ms Karen Hewitt (University of Oxford) explores Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. As we move through the course, we think about the social context of the novel—particularly Victorian ideas about female sexuality—and the ways in which Hardy approached, evaded and dealt with these problems in his early portrayal of Tess. After that, we think about Hardy’s poetic imagery, the way he sees the world, his attitudes to nature and man’s impact on the world around him, before ending with religion and the meaning of life—particularly the response of Tess and those around her of what Tess calls “the ache of modernism”.

Victorians, Hardy and Fallen Women

In this module, we think about an aspect of later nineteenth-century society that would have impacted how the original audience would have reacted to Tess of the D’Urbervilles—female sexuality.