How is Tess of the D'Urbervilles a modern tragedy?

Tess is a tragedy -- Tess, as a tragic hero, is someone whose flaw -- her willingness to trust? Her weakness in the face of hard decisions? -- leads her to catastrophe. It can be considered a modern tragedy because it has to do with the modern issues of gender, sexuality, and identity.

• Gender: Tess is defined by the males in the novel as a sexual object. For Alec, she is a something to be...

Tess is a tragedy -- Tess, as a tragic hero, is someone whose flaw -- her willingness to trust? Her weakness in the face of hard decisions? -- leads her to catastrophe. It can be considered a modern tragedy because it has to do with the modern issues of gender, sexuality, and identity.

• Gender: Tess is defined by the males in the novel as a sexual object. For Alec, she is a something to be used; for Angel she is something to be exhalted, but in both cases neither man is able to understand Tess for who she is, other than an object of desire.


• Sexuality: Alec's rape of Tess is only one example of how sex is problematized in the book. Tess's misguided decision to confide to Angel on their wedding night that she is not a virgin is even more psychologically damaging for Tess than her rape. In a society in which women are equated with sex, and in which sex can only safely occur within to confines of marriage, Tess's abandonment by her husband effectively alienates her from herself, reducing her already reduced ability to act on her own. She cannot accept Alec when he proposes, unattractive as that proposal might be, because she is already married.


• Identity: The book deeply problematizes the concept of "identity." in fact, for Tess, her identity is something is assigned to her, rather than anything intrinsic to her selfhood. Her father tells her that she is a d'Urberville instead of a Turbeyfield. Alec defines her as a sex obect. Angel defines her as morally and sexually pure. Tess tragically lacks the strength of will to resist these characterizations. Perhaps it is only at the end of the novel, when she finally acts, that she chooses her own identity: murderer.