Anti-Realistic Presentation of Female Body in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy is a revolutionary proto-modernist writer who challenges many Victorian conventions in his novels. Tess of the d’Urbervilles, his most well-developed novel, destroys many literary conventions, especially those related to women and sexuality, employed by the Victorian novelists. Realistic representation, narrative, and characterization are among novelistic features challenged in this novel. Regarding characterization, Hardy depicts a fallen woman in this novel who is different from other fallen women depicted in Victorian novels. Focusing on the representation of Tess, this essay aims at showing how Hardy offers no image of Tess's dead body at the end of the novel in order to free her from all constructions and patriarchal conventions imposed on her by a male-dominated society. Doing so, Hardy not only reforms the institutions that misshape women, but also prevents the formation of grief in the reader.