Pattern and Design in the Structure of the Novel: A Study of Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Abstract

A close study of how Hardy has shaped the narrative of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) will allow us to bring together many of the ideas considered separately in other chapters of this book. Hardy’s novel has a narrator who comments freely on the action. His novel is apparently conventional enough: it tells a story, it displays characters in action, it has a paraphrasable ‘plot’ which may be linked to tragedy or to those more naive ballad tales of simple country girls who come to grief because of some misfortune in their lives. What closer study will show is that Hardy’s design is more complex than has so far been suggested and that the apparent simplicity of the story is qualified by the contrasting elements of the overall pattern which Hardy has devised for his novel. Let us begin by presenting, in summary form, what might appear to be ‘the story’ of the novel.