As we all know, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is one of the great novels of the Victorian era.
About the life of attractive young Tess, seduced by high society (i.e. toff) heir Alex d’Urberville, she is cast through a sexist society as future love interests reject her for previous societal ills. The text rocked Victorian era society…
Tess of the d’Ubervilles is a radical modern retelling. And it’s as reviled as Grate Expectations (the reworking of a Dickens classic).
Tess is a taxi driver for Uber and documents her daily fares on TikTok (oh yes, and she’s also a mortifying demonic monster thing with Satanic intentions).
Tess of the d’Ubervilles and the Need to Get From A-B in Style
Other than some terrible wordplay on the original text’s name, Tess of the d’Ubervilles bears no resemblance to the original novel.
It’s a shameless homage to taxi company Uber and, essentially, one giant product placement of a book.
It’s the RIVETING tale of a taxi driver also possessed by a devious monster. One who delivers customers to their destination with utmost professionalism, before carrying out devious and terrifying antics (such as stealing ketchup sachets from fast food restaurants and munching on the tasty innards).
Whenever a customer provides a NEGATIVE review to Tess (NB: Uber encourages users to rate drivers from 1-5) she transforms into Terrifying Tess.
Terrifying Tess is her six foot monster alter-ego, complete with berserk yellow eyes, massive sharp teeth, and a generally terrifying visage.
When in this state, Tess is a menace to society. She:
- Commits petty crimes
- Drives erratically
- Refuses to pay for parking spaces
- Cuts people up at junctions
- Drives at 31mph in 30mph speed limit zones
- Cusses out other drivers (i.e. road rage)
- Climbs up large hills and howls to backdrops of a full Moon
Do note, such behaviour does encourage further negative reviews in Tess’ Uber account. Thus, she enters a continuous process of self-defeating behaviour.
Over the course of 1,000 pages the reader comes to understand Tess’ plight. She’s not a bad person. She’s just not a very bright one.
There’s no major character arc. It’s just 1,000 pages detailing her various exploits—taxi trip, something goes wrong, then she transforms and cuts someone up at a junction etc.
Repeat for 1,000 pages.
Although a harmless novel and far from terrible, most critics and readers noted how intensely boring and uninspired the whole work is.
The work, written by an anonymous self-publishing writer, is available on Amazon at the cost of a mere £100 per 250 pages. Although we must note the work’s author got bored after 1,000 pages and abandoned the narrative.
As such, you’ll get very frustrated at the end of the novel. All that way (all that reading) and then it just abruptly cuts off.
Whilst some would consider that a bit of a rip-off, we’re taking a haughty and pompous approach here—Tess of the D’Ubervilles is a MASTERPIECE of prose and you should be GRATEFUL to have read this work! Not vexed!
The Taxi Driver Community’s Reaction to Tess of the D’Ubervilles
There have been nationwide riots in the UK due to this book.
Taxi drivers are so enraged by the depiction of a taxi driver they’ve taken to driving around city centres honking their horns.
Professional Moron caught up with one of them. Although he wished to remain anonymous, he told us this:
“Hi yeah I’m Frank from Bolton, live right near the train station, me. What do I ****in’ hate about this book?! Everythin’! It’s a wrong ‘un! Never in all me days has I, Frank from Bolton near the train station, me, seen a work that harms the good work of hardworking souls like us ‘ere taxi drivers. Whoever wrote this book should be BOILED ALIVE in Bolton city centre where Frank, me, live next to the train station.”
We were updated that Frank, that same night, got drunk at a local pub and engaged in fisticuffs that resulted in a broken nose (his). We wish Frank a speedy recovery.
This outcome, once again, highlights the danger of taking classic works of fiction and spinning them into weird, lowbrow spin-offs.
It should be illegal and we’ve started a petition to ensure it never happens again: The Banning of Rewriting Great Novels so That They Become No Longer Great at All. We have hopes the petition will become a bill to be seen in government before 2030.
