Few people read Tess from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s“body theory”. In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty states that it is body as the subject that perceives the world; such body is a phenomenal body in contrast to an objective body. Tess’s“being in the world”through the body connotates a new way of looking at the classic Tess. Tess’s way of perceiv?ing and understanding the world also enlightens us about relationship between human and self, human and other, human and soci?ety, human and nature.