Crossings (Number 4) 151 Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Tragedy, Sacrifice and the Fallen Woman Sabrina Lynne Zacharias Inception This essay was originally written for the midterm essay assignment for Dr. Carla Manfredi’s class, “Victorian and Edwardian Literature and Culture: Sex and the City.” Abstract This essay argues for an understanding of the main character, Tess Durbyfield, as a Classical tragic character, taking on the role of sacrifice to encourage the reader to think about the ways that the figure of the Fallen Woman is portrayed and treated within the confines of Hardy’s contemporary Victorian society. It makes connections between Ovid’s Poetics, and the Tragic framework outlined therein and draws on Classical examples such as Persephone in classical myth, and Euripides’ Iphigenia to demonstrate the ways the Tess’s situation throughout the narrative echo that of Classical tragedy. Further, this essay explores how Tess herself embodies the Classical role of sacrifice. In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Tess is a tragic character, contextualized by the construction of the narrative’s framework and the recurring allusions to ancient Greek culture and religion. Hardy's novel gestures to Classical tragedy through narrative elements such as prophetic happenings, reversals of