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| | Amazon.com: Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Bantam Classics): Books: Thomas Hardy,Robert B. Heilman (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-27) |
 | | Tess is the only truly well-developed character in the novel, which, coupled with the fact that Hardy renders the landscape of Wessex as to make it a character itself, gives one the sense of a real struggle between humanity and nature. |
 | | As the novel begins, Tess Durbeyfield's irresponsible wastrel of a father is casually and jokingly informed by the local minister that he is a descendant of a long-degenerated and disenfranchised noble family, the D'Urbervilles, whose influence stretches back to the Norman invasion. |
 | | Tess, ostensibly a simple country girl, is forced to reckon with the accumulated weight of human knowledge and thought, no small burden for a girl with only the kind of basic education available in a small rural town. |
| www.amazon.com /dUrbervilles-Bantam-Classics-Thomas-Hardy/dp/0553211684 (1880 words) |
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