Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles: faithfully presented by Roman Polanski?

Abstract

There are many versions of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The work was first published in the Graphic from 4 July to 26 December 1891, in a bowdlerized version omitting the seduction, the birth of Tess's child, and its baptism. In this serialization Tess went through a form of marriage with Alec d'Urberville in order that the morality of her liaison with him should be less disturbing for a family readership; and in the sequence where Angel Clare helps the churchgoing dairymaids across the flood, he was provided with a wheelbarrow to avoid the impropriety of carrying them in his arms. When Tess was published in three volumes in November 1891, Hardy incorporated these episodes, and continued to make modifications to the text of the novel at least as late as 1920.