Ted Whitehead

Young country girl Tess Durbyfield goes to work for her aristocratic relatives, the D'Urbervilles, in an attempt at helping her family to raise some money. Her cousin Alec falls in love with her and seduces/rapes her. (imdb)

A farmhand makes the impulsive, drunken decision to sell his wife and child to the highest bidder, but soon lives to regret it, vowing to give up alcohol and become a wealthy, powerful man. Twenty-one years on, he has done just that, taking up office as the Mayor of Casterbridge - only for his life to be turned upside down by the reappearance of the wife and daughter he sold years before.