At the end of the day, as we do with all fine and heartfelt Marxist criticism—even while she shares with other feminist critics a reservation about the recurrent portrait of passive, helpless women—we leave Hedgecock’s study with a sense of huge social forces swamping human will, of individuals struggling and yet more often than not failing to resist grinding forces. Most of the time, the characters lack great stature and are merely trying to make their way, to escape the dark shadows of life and taste a little of the warm sun. However, in Tess, Hedgecock soars and shows how fate and the tragic can poignantly reach down to envelop even a common dairymaid. It is a heart-rending, but oddly soul-satisfying reading.
Victor Comerchero, PhD
California State University, Sacramento