Fatalism in Tess

If written today, Tess of the d'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy may have been called Just Call Me Job or Tess: Victim of Fate. Throughout this often bleak novel, the reader is forced by Tess's circumstance to sympathize with the heroine (for lack of a better term) as life deals her blow after horrifying blow. One of the reasons that the reader is able to do so may be the fatalistic approach Hardy has taken with …

…MacMillan, 1991. Kettle, Arnold. Introduction to Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Ed. Albert LaValley, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969. 14-29. Van Ghent, Dorothy. On Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Ed. Albert LaValley, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969. 48-61. Waldoff, Leon. Psychological Determinism in Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy. Ed. Dale Kramer, London: MacMillan Press, 1979. 135-154.