TESS OF THE DURBERVILLES

Thomas Hardy's beautiful and spirited heroine is driven to her tragic end by three men who betray her trust: John Durbeyfield, her drunken, feckless father; the seducer Alec d'Urberville, who leaves Tess pregnant at 16 with a son that dies in infancy; and Angel Clare, the unforgiving husband who rejects her. Abandoned in so many ways, Tess suffers all the hypocrisy and injustice of Victorian morality that Hardy himself despised. When Angel returns from abroad, humbled and hoping for reconciliation, Tess makes a fateful bid to be reunited with the one person she has never ceased to love.