In the book Tess of the d'Urbervilles..is there a message or what's the point?

Question

I had to read it for my English class..I'm done with it and I thought it was a good book I didn't really like the ending though, but I mean Tess lives a life of sorrow but is that all there is to it?

I want to hear your opinions

Answer 1

I think there is more.
It is one of Hardy's best works on Victorian England.
I do not wholly agree with his position as one reader puts it:

"Hardy here is preaching against the attitudes that Victorian England held at the time, that the wealthy control the lives of others. He seems to be making the argument that social position has a devastating effect upon the lives of those who must endure under the weight of class repression."

First, Hardy is concerned with fate and uses chance as a device to achieve his concerns. It is only by chance that Parson Tringham and John Durbeyfield pass on the road, an encounter that gives the parson the opportunity to share information he has about Durbeyfield’s ancestors. Ideally it was simply chance that led Parson Tringham to suspect that the d’Urbervilles and Durbeyfields were connected at all; in fact he simply happened to see the Durbeyfield name of John’s wagon while he (the parson) was investigating the “vicissitudes of the d’Urberville family.” The question becomes, would they have been better off not knowing that they were descended from nobility? Initially, the information seems like a boon to a family that, before the end of these four chapters, is in dire need of help, but it sets off a chain of events that, in the end, bring only tragedy.

good luck

**Personal reflection and some web-source (s) to refresh memory.

Answer 2

The point of the book is to show how women in the victorian
era was treated. However, in my opinion, i think that this book is a deacent book, its just sad that she went trough all that just
to die in the end.

Answer 3

To warn women to keep up their guard with seductive men. To show the methods, motives, and destruction brought by sexual preditors. To persuade women to distance themselves from men, and perhaps even to have sympathy with the feminist movement.