In Tess of the d’Urbervilles there is a freak accident, where a mail cart collides with Tess’ wagon. Her horse, Prince, is impaled by a cart shaft and killed. This is an example of a news story read by Hardy and incorporated into his fiction. Because the event seems so unlikely, it functions very well as a devise to capture the reader’s imagination and carry the plot in an unexpected direction.
Central to Hardy’s overall ambition as a novelist was to tell stories about people in the landscape, making it all too obvious that living people are only ever custodians of the world for future generations. Dorset is filled with ancient sites of human activity and prehistoric evidence of a past without humanity. Hardy wanted to make it clear that we each have a window of opportunity in life to make our mark. That is why he had little time for people whom he considered to be fatuous or self interested, because he was acutely aware that it is the impression that we make on others and in their memories that counts the most, both during life and after death.
Quite apart from anything else, Hardy had an eye for the tragedy of life. He was a humanist, who cared about the underdog and expressed this by dealing with those who were more privileged in his prose. His own life was not entirely filled with happiness, as he became estranged from his first wife and was then deeply affected by her death. Many of his female characters have a dangerous beauty to them, suggesting that Hardy’s view of women was perhaps coloured by his own experience and that he felt men fall for the charm and allure of women, but end up beguiled and unhappy as the result of their infatuation.
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Explanatory Note to the First Edition