The vale0% in

John Durbeyfield

Marlott

The vale

In the quiet vale village of Marlott, Tess's feckless father learns that the Durbeyfields are the last of the ancient d'Urbervilles, and sends her off to claim kinship with a rich family of the name. Hardy opens in the deep, unspoiled country of the Blackmoor Vale, the ordinary rural world whose peace the empty vanity of a lost name is about to shatter.

Phase the First

inspired byTess's home village of Marlott, in the Vale of Blackmoor, is drawn from Marnhull in Dorset; sited there in Hardy's Wessex.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

The ruin25% in

Alec

Trantridge

The ruin

At Trantridge, Tess goes to work for the newly rich Stoke-d'Urbervilles, and the caddish Alec pursues her until, one night in the Chase, he takes her by force. Hardy sets the wrong that shadows the rest of the book in this false d'Urberville estate, where an old name bought with new money brings only her undoing.

Phase the First

inspired byThe d'Urberville estate at Trantridge, where Alec seduces and ruins Tess, is drawn from the country around Pentridge in Dorset; sited there.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

The love50% in

Angel Clare

Talbothays Dairy

The love

In the green, teeming dairy country of Talbothays, Tess finds work and, briefly, happiness, falling in love with the gentleman-farmer Angel Clare in the fertile summer of the Frome valley. Hardy makes this the book's one idyll, the ripe abundance of the dairylands cruelly framing the confession of her past that will destroy the marriage on its wedding night.

Phase the Third

inspired byTalbothays Dairy, in the lush Vale of the Great Dairies where Tess meets Angel Clare, is drawn from the Frome valley near Dorchester; sited there.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

The suffering75% in

Tess

Flintcomb-Ash

The suffering

Cast off by Angel after her confession, Tess toils through winter at the starve-acre farm of Flintcomb-Ash, grubbing turnips on the frozen chalk uplands as Alec reappears to torment her. Hardy sets her lowest suffering in this harshest of his landscapes, the barren downs mirroring a world and a society that offer the ruined woman no mercy.

Phase the Fifth

inspired byThe bleak upland farm of Flintcomb-Ash, where the abandoned Tess does brutal labour, is drawn from the chalk uplands of Dorset; sited there.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

The capture100% in

Tess

Stonehenge

The capture

Having murdered Alec and fled with Angel for a few stolen days, Tess is taken at last at Stonehenge, asleep on the altar-stone as the sun rises, and is hanged soon after. Hardy ends with the terrible line that the President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess, laying her on the ancient pagan stones as a sacrifice to a fate that never gave her a fair chance.

Phase the Seventh

explicitTess is captured at dawn at Stonehenge, the real prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain, after killing Alec; sited there, just outside the Dorset heart of the setting.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗