Tess of the D'Urbervilles Tess Durbeyfield is a victim of external and comprehended forces. Passive and yielding, unsuspicious and fundamentally pure, she suffers a weakness of will and reason, struggling against a fate that is too strong for her. Tess is the easiest victim of circumstance, society, and male idealism, who fights the hardest fight, yet is destroyed by her ravaging self-destructive sense of guilt, life denial and the cruelty of two men. It is primarily the death of the horse, Prince, the Durbeyfield’s main source of livelihood that commences the web of circumstance that will envelop Tess. Tess views herself as the cause of her family’s economic downfall, however she also believes that she is parallel to a murderess. The imagery at this point in the novel shows how distraught and guilt ridden Tess is as she places her hand upon Prince’s wound in a futile attempt to prevent the blood loss that cannot be prevented. This imagery is equivalent to a photographic proof - a lead-up to the events that will shape Tess’s life and the inevitable “evil” that also, like the crimson blood that spouts from Prince’s wound, cannot be stopped. The symbolic fact that Tess perceives herself to be comparable to a murderess is an insight into the murder that she will eventually commit and is a reference to the level of guilt that now consumes her. “Nobody blamed Tess as she blamed herself... she regarded herself in the light of a murderess.” Her parents, aware of her beauty, view Tess as an opportunity for future wealth and coupled with the unfortunate circumstance of Prince’s death urge Tess to venture from the ‘engirdled and secluded region’ of Marlott to seek financial assistance from the D’urberville’s in nearby Trantridge. It is here that she first encounters the sexually dominating and somewhat demonic Alec D’urberville, whom she is later ...
