Tess of the d’Urbervilles and the Fin de Siècle

Whilst there has been a proliferation of critical readings of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, relatively little attention has been paid to its role as a novel of the 1890s, a period self-identified by the term fin de siècle, which witnessed the emergence and efflorescence of the Decadent movement throughout western Europe. In his idiosyncratic journalistic best-seller Degeneration, which appeared in English translation in 1895, Max Nordau reflected upon the emergence in modern times of ‘vague qualms of a Dusk of the Nations, in which all suns and all stars are gradually waning, and mankind with all its institutions and creations is perishing in the midst of a dying world’. This dramatic sense of decline resonates with the dialogue between Tess and her young brother Abraham, prior to their collision with the mail-coach: