Tess of the Duhuberviles is the single worst thing ever written. It’s like a fart in prose.
And not a silent, odorless fart, it’s like a loud stinky sulpherous fart that destroys one’s appetite in the same way that Tess can destroy one’s love of reading for months.
I hated Tess-the-Character. I hated Hardy-the-Writer for writing about Tess. I loathed our teacher for making us read Hardy’s writings about Tess.
Frankly, we would have been better off reading any generic Harlequin Romance novel–at least the pacing, prose and dialogue would have been improved and the plot would have remained pretty much the same.