Reconstructing Tess

"Reconstructing Tess" argues, in the context of a discussion of Victorian virginity's religious, medical, social, journalistic, and pornographic discourses, that Tess of the d'Urbervilles's narrative logic or illogic attempts to resolve Angel Clare's apostasy, centered on article four of the Thirty-Nine Articles, through a sexualized reconstruction of the resurrection and particularly through the reconstruction of Tess's virginity. Her virginity's reconstruction is figured in the recuperative allegory of Tess's mouth and in the person of her sister Liza-Lu. Representing the rebuilt tabernacle of Angel's religion of unbelief, Liza-Lu displaces the Christian resurrection for Angel in favor of a material resurrection centered on a reconstructed Tess.