How does Hardy make the opening chapters of “Tess of the D'Urbervilles” such a dramatic and engaging start to the novel?

Set in the heart of Wessex, a ‘dream country’ that is almost literally a world apart from modern civilization, with such redolent names a Casterbridge or Kingsbere, Hardy’s edenic imitation of the South West of England shows a land where time seems to have stood still from the age of ‘Oliver Grumble’. Tess’s own village of Marlott lies in the Vale of Blackmoor, ‘an engirdled and secluded region’. The use of ’engirdled’ is in itself quite revealing, for Marlott is again presented as separated, a veritable paradise, yet one sadly soon to be lost. His description of the features of the land are even more vivid, from ‘dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass’ to an atmosphere tinged with ‘azure’. The use of colour symbolism recalls nobility, akin to Tess’s hidden past, with its undulating purple and blue tones. This world, built on a ‘smaller and more delicate scale’, is juxtaposed with the looming threat of industrial Britain. There is an untold beauty here, unmarred by the pollution of industry and the toxins of modern life. Echoes of Miltonic themes run concurrent throughout the novel - despite its purity on the whole, underneath lies the arrival of seedier, darker desires, as represented by the reprehensible Alec D’Urberville, from the ‘junior branch of the family’, a parvenu born out of industrial Northern riches, infecting the untouched land of Wessex. The Edenic nature of both the land and Tess's veritable innocence are in sharp contrast to the nouveau-riche and Alec's propensity to disguise himself within devilish tones, a fact evidenced even in the places they live.
Hardy chooses to introduce Tess during the scene of the May Day dance, a festival of fertility celebrating the advent of spring. In Tess’s case, there is a baleful meaning too, one that is linked to her tragic fate - the day upon she realises she is a D’Urberville. She is first seen amongst a cohort of girls ‘all dressed in white gowns’- most of which are marred in some way or another, but all inherently conforming to this ideal of purity and innocence as symbolised by the white, reinforcing their own peasant simplicity, and the narrow circle their lives encompass. However, it is the girl with the ‘peony mouth’ and the ‘large innocent eyes’ that stands out. Even with the superficial description of her, she is different from the rest. Hardy’s use of the peony is intriguing and symbolic. In classical terms, it was believed that nymphs would hide themselves bashfully amongst their petals, very much a characteristic of Tess, in her interactions with men, and in her quiet, composed manner. But the peony is also associated with shame – a key emotion in Tess’ sad destiny. Tess is the only member of the company to be wearing a red ribbon - very much a touch of the individual, of a spirit that sets her apart from the drudgery of and plainness most of the country lasses are content with. Again, the colour symbolism hints at an undercurrent of sin, of a sexuality, present in the contrast between the chaste white dress and the brazenly red ribbon. This foreshadows the moral battle Tess will wage to be a “pure woman” in a corrupt world. Her difference in appearance is not only noted by herself, but by the passing look of Angel, who, after realising he did not dance with her notes how she was ‘so modest, so expressive [and] looked so soft in her thin white gown’. The repetition of ‘so’ is a way for Hardy to mark her out from the rest as unique or extreme. She is portrayed not just as a natural beauty but as part of nature itself. For Tess is as familiar with ‘every contour of the surrounding hills as her relatives’; she is as much part of the soil as the dirt she treads upon, a true Wessex beauty, and a hearkening back to the druidic tradition of Britain; Hardy constructs a world where both his principal character and her own raison-d'etre are intrinsically twinned together.