Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Adaptation) recap

Tess Durbeyfield's poor family sends her to seek help from wealthy people who use their ancestral name. Alec d'Urberville pursues and sexually exploits her; she returns home, bears a son, and loses the baby. At Talbothays dairy she loves and marries Angel Clare, but his idealized view of her collapses when she tells him her history. Angel leaves for Brazil while Tess struggles through harsh farm work. Alec returns, abandons a temporary religious conversion, and pressures her to accept his support. After Tess's father dies and the family becomes homeless, she gives in for their sake. Angel returns repentant, but Tess believes Alec has destroyed their reunion and kills him. She flees with Angel, is captured at Stonehenge, and is executed. Angel leaves with Tess's younger sister Liza-Lu, as Tess asked him to do.

John Durbeyfield learns that his poor family descends from the ancient d'Urbervilles and begins treating the discovery as a promise of status. His daughter Tess is less convinced. At a village dance she briefly notices Angel Clare, a clergyman's son, but they do not meet properly. When John cannot take the family's beehives to market, Tess drives the cart with her brother Abraham. She falls asleep and the cart collides with another vehicle, killing the family horse. Feeling responsible for the loss, Tess agrees to approach a rich household using the d'Urberville name. The wealthy family bought the name and is not related to her. Their son Alec meets Tess, flirts with her, and arranges work for her at his mother's estate. Tess accepts because her parents need help, though she is uneasy about Alec's attention.

Tess works with the poultry at the d'Urberville estate while Alec repeatedly forces his attention on her. After a late outing leaves her isolated, he takes control of her journey home and sexually exploits her. Tess rejects his offer of continued support and returns to her family. She later gives birth to a son. When the baby becomes dangerously ill and no clergyman comes, Tess baptizes him herself as Sorrow. He dies and is buried at the edge of the churchyard rather than in consecrated ground. Tess lives in seclusion for a time, carrying both grief and the judgment of her community. Determined to work somewhere that does not know her history, she learns of a position at Talbothays dairy and leaves home in search of a new beginning.

At Talbothays, Tess finds welcoming work under Dairyman Crick and forms friendships with dairymaids including Marian and Izz. She meets Angel Clare again, now training in agriculture. Neither initially connects the other with the missed meeting at the dance, but they are drawn together in the dairy's more hopeful surroundings. Angel admires Tess's intelligence, dignity, and closeness to rural life. The other dairymaids also love him, yet understand that he prefers Tess. Tess returns his love but fears that her history with Alec makes marriage impossible. Angel proposes and continues to press his case when she hesitates. Tess tries to tell him the truth, while Angel's idealized picture of her and her own fear of losing him keep delaying a full confession. She finally agrees to marry him, hoping honesty and love can still be reconciled.

Tess attempts to confess in a letter before the wedding, but Angel never sees it. They marry, and that night Angel tells Tess about a past sexual lapse. She readily forgives him and responds with her own history, expecting the same mercy. Although Angel understands that Alec wronged her, he cannot reconcile the truth with the innocent image he constructed. He decides they must separate and plans to seek a future in Brazil. Tess returns to her parents and conceals much of what happened. Angel briefly asks Izz to accompany him abroad, then abandons the idea when her honesty confirms that Tess loved him best. He leaves England alone. Tess avoids depending on the money he provided and eventually takes punishing winter work at Flintcomb-Ash, where Marian joins her. Their physical hardship deepens while no message of reconciliation arrives from Angel.

Tess encounters Alec again, now preaching after a religious conversion influenced by Angel's father. His reform does not survive renewed desire for her. He abandons preaching, blames Tess for his change, and follows her with offers of money and protection. Tess repeatedly refuses and writes to Angel in despair, but Angel is still abroad. When Tess's father dies, the Durbeyfields lose their right to their cottage and the whole family is left without a home. Alec uses their need to strengthen his pressure, arguing that Angel has abandoned her while he can provide immediate security. Tess eventually accepts Alec's support for the sake of her mother and siblings and goes to live with him at Sandbourne. In Brazil, hardship has changed Angel's understanding of Tess. He recognizes the injustice of his rejection and returns to England intending to find her and restore their marriage.

Angel searches for Tess and discovers her living with Alec at Sandbourne. She tells him that Alec persuaded her he would never return and that her family's homelessness left her with little power to resist. Angel departs in grief. Tess then confronts Alec for deceiving her and for destroying the reconciliation she wanted, and she kills him. She follows Angel, tells him what she has done, and asks to spend whatever freedom remains with him. They hide together for several days before traveling west. At Stonehenge Tess lies down on an altar stone and sleeps until the police surround them. She accepts arrest and asks Angel to care for her younger sister Liza-Lu and marry her after Tess is gone. Later Angel and Liza-Lu wait outside the prison and see the signal that announces Tess's execution. They leave together, carrying out Tess's final request.

Angel comes home from Brazil prepared to accept Tess's past, but his return follows the death of her father and her family's loss of their home. He finds Tess at Sandbourne, where Alec is supporting her and her relatives. Tess explains that Alec convinced her Angel would never return. Angel leaves, and Tess kills Alec for destroying the future she might have recovered. She catches up with Angel, confesses, and spends a brief period in hiding with him. They travel as far as Stonehenge, where Tess rests on an altar stone and allows the pursuing police to arrest her at dawn. She asks Angel to look after and eventually marry her younger sister Liza-Lu. Angel and Liza-Lu later see the prison signal announcing that Tess has been executed. They walk away together, fulfilling the relationship Tess asked them to form after her death.