Thomas Hardy has long been critically constructed as ‘poet of Wessex’ and ‘novelist of Character and Environment’. This volume offers to deconstruct such a mythic ‘Hardy’ in selecting contemporary critical essays which re-present Tess from very different critical perspectives. Feminist, cultural-materialist and poststructuralist approaches in particular explore gender, class and language by way of the novel’s riven textuality. In the process, the Introduction claims, Tess emerges as a potent postmodern text.