The novel is about in an impoverished rural England, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex, in the course of the Long Depression of the 1870s. Tess is the oldest toddler of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated peasants. However, John is given the influence with the aid of using Parson Tringham that he might also additionally have noble blood, as "Durbeyfield" is a corruption of "d'Urberville", the surname of an extinct noble Norman family. Knowledge of this straight away is going to John's head.