IMHO , You can do this in jquery in two steps :
Step 1) Parse the string into an XML/HTML document.
There are at least two ways to do this:
a) As mentioned by Sinetheta
var htmlString = "<html><div></div></html>";
var $htmlDoc = $( htmlString );
b) Using parseXML
var htmlString = "<html><div></div></html>";
var htmlDoc = $.parseXML( htmlString );
var $htmlDoc = $( htmlDoc );
Please refer http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.parseXML/
Step 2) Select text from the XML/HTML document.
var text = $htmlDoc.text( jquery_selector );
Please refer http://api.jquery.com/text/