Read Tess in high school…didn’t need to nor was it required…but I did.
One of my favorite books of all time.
I read Jude, and I’m in complete agreement with Tamerlane. Could not stand how he moped through life, making himself unhappy at every turn.
Haven’t read Jude the Obscure, but read and enjoyed Tess, Return of the Native, and The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Neither, but Return of the Native was required reading in my 12th grade English Lit class.
I read and mildly enjoyed Far From the Madding Crowd just out of college, so I thought I’d enjoy Tess as well. Boy, was I wrong. I couldn’t stand her and didn’t care what happened to her. (I felt the same was about Katherine of Wuthering Heights fame).
I loves me some Brit Lit, but not that.
Was it written serialized? I know that was pretty common in the 19th century, and might explain the necessity for that.
I’ve read Jude the Obscure several times. I like it, complete melodramatics aside, but then I liked the Mayor of Casterbridge as well. Tess was okay but I’ve never bothered to re-read it.
I read both along with The Mayor of Casterbridge. The only one I was made to read in HS was Tess of the d’Urbervilles. But honestly, I didn’t give a rats ass because they made me do it and just did the Cliff Notes. A few years later I read it on my own and had a far greater appreciation.
Everything about Tess, and everything that happened to her was because she was a woman in 19th century England. I felt immensely sorry for her.
One of the Pages who worked at the library was reading it, and a guy page was trying to impress her by pretending to have read it. I remarked carefully, “But such an ending…”
He replied, “I thought it was a very happy ending.”
“Good god, man,” I spoiled for her, “She was hanged!”
The young lady called me a worm. 
FFtMC and TMoC are among the all time faves of this lifelong reader - top 20 at least. Wessex Tales are also excellent. So beautifully written. Not a fan of Jude, and no love at all for Tess.
But the first 2 I like better that Jane Eyre, anything by Austen, Trollope, etc - tho at least a few by those authors would also make it onto my top 20.
My favorite part from FFtMC - when he shot his dog after the dog ran his sheep off the cliff - (very rough paraphrase) the reward for anyone who carries his duties out to the extreme. 
And you gotta love any plot line that starts off with a guy selling his wife! 
Everything that happened to Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet (and Trollope’s women) happened because they were 19th century British women, too–and I like and admire them. Tess was such a victim, so passive–it irked me. She just seemed to walk around bewildered all the time. It’s been years since I read it so my memories may be faulty, but I won’t waste my time rereading it to make sure.
… and because her parents were idiots and her husband was a hopeless prig.[/fatuous generalizations]
I’ve read both, voluntarily as an adult. I think Hardy writes beautifully and expressively, but his sense of life, as expressed in his plots, seems completely hopeless. Nothing good ever seems to happen to anyone that he wants the reader to care about, nor do they ever seem to be able to do anything good for themselves. I don’t need that negativity, even in exchange for the beautiful writing.
Roddy
Someone should have told him to take a sad song and make it better.