Wessex

Wessex is not a fictional place. It's just an old place. Though Hardy changed the specific names of cities, geographic areas, and other noteworthy locals, you can clearly see the similarities between the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of West Saxon, Hardy's Wessex, and the modern shire of Dorset, (and so could Hardy's audience).

Anglo-Saxon Wessex:

 Hardy's Wessex:

Modern Day Dorset: (corresponding to "The Wessex of Tess of the d'Urbervilles" in the Oxford University which I couldn't find a digital image of)

The use of Wessex in Tess highlights the motif of a noble family's decline, of Tess's "decayed aristocratic lineage" (Oxford Univeristy xviii), echoed in Hardy's own family's genealogy, where "the setting and themes of the novel are called up by his diary notes recording visits to the Vale of Blackmoor and reflections upon the social decline of the Hardy family" (Oxford University xvi). 

Wessex, or the kingdom of West Saxon, is an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, at the height of its power before the invasion of William the Conquerer and the Normans. What I referenced in class the other day was something we had talked about on the first day of "Writing Medieval Gender." King Alfred the Great was the King of Wessex, and he was the first to "unite" England, circa 937, with the battle of Brunanburh. Alfred made Wessex a center of culture, of learning, and literature. What London and Southern England became later, Wessex was then. Further back, Wessex comes up in Beowulf, with references and parallels to King Aethelwulf, circa 855. 

Reviving the kingdom of Wessex in Victorian England connotes ancient glory and nobility, and I think elevates the narrator's description of the type of intelligence inherent to the region, as coming from the historical inheritance of the Anglo-Saxons and challenging the supposed superiority of those concepts and philosophies which are not localized in Wessex-origin. Tess, as the Clarendon introduction states "expressed most clearly... Hardy's maturing concept of Wessex and its social history" (Clarendon 20). But despite the Anglo-Saxon references and rich history, the noble family to which the Durbeyfields belong does not originate in Wessex. Rather the family Hardy chooses to follow, the d'Urberville knight, "Sir Pagan d'Urberville, that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William the Conquerer" (Hardy, Oxford University 14) is a Norman invader (naming him "Pagan" also bears looking into). I think the ennoblement of original Wessex still stands though. The problems for Tess occur when her Norman lineage is revealed or stressed, and valued over her natural connection to Wessex as herself, or the subverting of her matrilineal feminine heritage in favor of her patrilineal d'Urberville genealogy.