Chapter 2 of Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) opens by describing Marlott, the village where Tess was born. But the passage goes beyond mere description by providing the reader with important aesthetic directives. After locating the village geographically in “the Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor” and noting that tourists and landscape painters have usually avoided the valley, Hardy's narrator predicts that its beauty will attract future visitors. Yet he quickly chills the enthusiasm of such prospective viewers. After initially asserting that the fertile spot never succumbs to dried-up springs or brown fields, he now calls attention to the “droughts of summer” only to recite further obstacles: poor ways to travel, difficult roads, and consequent disappointments one might want to avoid. The narrator then reverses himself again by insisting that any traveler from the coast will inevitably be “delighted” by contrasts between the calcareous downs and lush cornlands (T, ii, p. 18).