There is something more to be said in fiction than has been said about the shaded side of a well-known catastrophe. - T. Hardy In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which now in its second century of existence still attracts a wide audience, author Thomas Hardy took a common Victorian moral issue of ruined innocence and displayed it in a light that caused some controversy at the time. This analytical study of his classic novel takes a pagan perspective, highlighting its similarity to ancient Greek and Celtic mythology, looking closer at the religious criticism and the relationship between the story’s heroine, Tess, and the tenderly portrayed natural world so full of potence and symbolism.