<p><strong>The novel is set in impoverished rural Wessex during the Long Depression.</strong> Tess is the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield uneducated rural peasants. One day Parson Tringham informs John that he has noble blood. </p><p><br></p><p>Tringham an amateur genealogist has discovered that Durbeyfield is a corruption of D'Urberville the surname of a noble Norman family.</p>