Naturalism in Tess of the D’Urbervilles

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Tess of the D’Urbervilles belongs to “novels of character and environment” and is one of most influential works by Hardy. Tess, as a pure woman brought up with the traditional idea of womanly virtues, is abused and destroyed by both Alec and Angel, an agent of the destructive force of the society. Naturalism plays an important part in this novel, which is applied in there main aspects—fatalism, character portrayal, and coincidence. In a way, Tess seems to be led to her final destruction step by step by fate. Coincidence adds one “wrong” to another until she is caught up in a dead-end. As Hardy says at the end of the novel “Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess.”