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Tess Of D`Urbervilles If written today, Tess of the d'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy may have been called Just Call Me Job or Tess: Victim of Fate. Throughout this often bleak novel, the reader is forced by Tess's circumstance to sympathize with the heroine (for lack of a better term) as life deals her blow after horrifying blow. One of the reasons that the reader is able to do so may be the fatalistic approach …

…appears that Hardy intentionally left doubt as to Tess's playing into Fate or if she is playing against it. But that is why the novel still grabs the reader like a good soap opera. Hardy, through his Fatalistic approach, invokes sympathy and concern for poor Tess that keeps the reader turning each page in breathless anticipation for what's next. Debate as we will, it can not be denied that Hardy wrote a truly gripping novel.