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Wessex The fictionalized region of southwest England in which Hardy set all of his fiction. This region was somewhat backward in the late nineteenth century. Although industrialization had made the north of England and the region around London prosperous and modernized, southwest England was still rural, agricultural, and quite poor. Modern advancements in farming techniques were slow in coming to this region, and the transition to modernity was not easy. Hardy, who grew up and lived in the region, is particularly interested in showing the ways in which Wessex is caught between its old, traditional culture and modernization; little details showing this dilemma appear throughout Tess of the d'Urbervilles and his other works. In some ways Wessex is as much a character in Hardy's work as any of the people he depicts-and indeed, Tess is very much identified, physically and emotionally, with her surroundings in Wessex. Pure, purity Purity, both sexual and moral, is an important concept in Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The word is used throughout the narrative with reference to Tess, and the subtitle of the book deems her "A Pure Woman." (Even one of the inns where her father drinks is called "The Pure Drop.") When applied to women in Victorian England, the concept of purity had specific reference to sexual chastity. By this definition, Tess very early on loses the right to be called "pure." The word is nevertheless still applied to her. In this application, there is some degree of Hardy's characteristic irony. But it also means something more. Hardy considers Tess "pure" because, despite her bodily state-that is, her loss of virginity-she is morally pure and innocent, uncorrupted by her hard life. When Hardy wrote this book, he knew that the characterization of a sexually fallen woman as "pure" would shock some readers, and indeed it did, but he thought it was important to show that the loss of virginity did not necessarily thoroughly corrupt a woman's heart and mind.
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