Discuss "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" as a Tragedy

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Discuss "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" as a Tragedy

Although there is a tendency in 20th century writers, and literary critics, to approach tragedy as a high and daunting ideal, to attempt a tragedy in the 19th century was a frequent undertaking, and it is not surprising that, given Hardy's brooding and unflinching intellect, the genre has a powerful presence in his stories. If his success is finest and most subtle n tragedy, he had attempted and succeeded before, and his experiments continued after "Tess of the d'Urbervilles".

Hardy came to the writing of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" with a full head of steam after deciding about six years earlier that Wessex was his subject and tragedy his genre, and in the midst of a reading and thinking program that made him aware of the latest developments in late-Victorian intellectual cogitation.

Some of the events associated with the cogitations of that age are social and monetary exploitation of down-and-out peasantry by "nouveau riche gentry", terrorism by arrogance, intellectual adventures without a clear sense of purpose or of social obligation; larger social, industrial and agricultural movements that proceed without concern for those persons most materially and physically