Tess is seduced by Alec and taken advantage of, and as a result she is seen as a social outcast. At the time of her seduction or rape, Tess had been rescued from the aggressive Car D’arch and was emotionally and physically tired after the persistent chase by Alec. The sad result that she became pregnant as a consequence of this sexual liaison with d’Urberville is a further suggestion that her cruel fate is all planned in advance by merciless gods.
The institutionalised Christianity during the reign of Queen Victoria, meant that Tess was seen as an outcast. She had given birth to a bastard child an the rigid social attitudes of Victorian society meant she was frowned upon even though she took good care of the child and clearly loved it intensely. Tess then commits a blasphemous act when she baptises the infant and names it sorrow. It seems that the cruel and inflexible religious laws of the time would not even allow her to secure a place in heaven for her innocent child. Even worse, this innocent child is not allowed to be buried in hallowed ground.
The death of her child may seem like a blessing as it means she can now move away from the Blackmoor Vale and attempt a new start. It almost seems like a new beginning, but it is clear that tragedy is never far away from Tess Durbeyfield.
When Tess arrives at Talbothays, “a land flowing with milk and honey”, everything seems perfect. Here she is just another innocent young milkmaid, but her own fatalistic beliefs start to creep into her mind whenever she meets Angel. She feels that the cruel beings who control her life on this “blighted planet” will punish her for daring to enjoy some happiness with Angel.
We see the influence of Victorian social boundaries when the other dairymaids talk about how Angel could never marry Tess because of his higher class. Yet, they are pressurised into a relationship by the environment, the summer fertility of Talbothays. The lush surroundings and the fertility oozing from the surrounding countryside magnify the feelings Tess and Angel have for one another. This is another clear example of how the environment plays a role in dictating Tess’s course of life. In such a fruitful and picturesque Tess and Angel have no choice but to fall in love.
At this point in the novel fate takes over. Tess feels she should confess all her past sins to Angel but she slips the note in whish she had written all her past history under his door and it goes beneath the carpet. At this time I think it is safe to say that Tess’s decline is imminent. It almost seems as if she was born to be tortured. Anything in her life so far that could have gone wrong, has. The death of her horse, getting pregnant and now falling in love again with someone who is not as Angelic and perfect as he seems to be, proves this. It is not surprising then that she marries Angel and cannot keep the knowledge of her past inside her.
Sexual double standards come into play again when Angel admits to experiencing a “48 hours dissipation with a stranger”, an older woman. Is this not worse than what Tess did as she was taken advantage of and did not willingly partake in the sexual encounter with Alec? Nevertheless, Angel’s social snobbery and Victorian prudery, which hadn’t really been apparent before, stops him from being able to face up to the fact that everyone can make mistakes and that Tess is still the same person he fell in love with. All Tess’s fears had come true. She had thought all along that if she were to marry anyone it should be Alec. Her conscience told her that physically she belonged to d’Urberville. She felt she would be “scourged” or punished for daring to achieve happiness with Angel.
After her cruel abandonment by Angel, Tess is once again left o fend for herself. The only way she can survive is to work as a manual labourer at Flintcomb-Ash. The sheer coincidence that she ends up working for the very farmer that Angel struck, can only mean that Hardy saw human life as presided over by cruel cosmic forces which manipulate human events. As Barbara Dennis says in ‘The Victorian Novel’, “In Hardy, the fates bring about what is already determined, and Hardy’s view of what the ‘President of the Immortals’ intends is deeply pessimistic” This can only mean that Tess is firmly set on her path to death and she is going to have to put up with more pain and suffering on her way.
The harsh environment of Flintcomb-Ash is suggested by its name. Flint is very hard and ash invokes thoughts of burning and lifelessness. The climate has changed and there is snow on the ground. The lush green fields of Talbothays are replaced by the dull brown wasteland of Flintcomb-Ash. Tess, however, keeps on working and waiting for Angel to come and rescue her from this barren land. When Tess decides to visit Angel’s family, it comes as no surprise that they are not at home. It is expected that Tess will have a wasted journey even before she sets out. The cruel gods seem to have determined that Tess will never meet with good fortune. Even worse, on this weary and fruitless journey they actually make her meet once again her cruel seducer, Alec d’Urberville.
It is then, at Tess’s lowest point, tat the evil Alec rears his head once more and begins to exert his familiar unrelenting pressure upon her. He comes at just the right time to take advantage of her when she is exhausted by arduous manual labour, persecuted by Farmer Groby, virtually penniless through helping her “shiftless” family and abandoned by a heartless husband.
When Tess’s sister comes to fetch her and tells her the news of her sick mother, Tess wastes no time at all. She packs up her belongings and starts walking in the direction of home.
Ironically Tess’s mother recovers but her father dies. This is yet another example of a cruel fate at work as the Durbeyfield family home held a three-life lease. Jack Durbeyfield was the last tenant on the three-life lease and because of the family’s dubious behaviour and especially because of “the daughters queer unions” their heartless villagers do nothing to support them. When Alec again comes to see Tess she really has no option but to accept his offer of a cottage and employment for her homeless family. As always, Tess puts her family first and quite simple here she ruins her own soul to save her family.
It is not surprising then whenever Tess kills Alec immediately after the arrival of Angel. Following the pattern of the rest of the book, Angel arrives “too late” to save Tess and in her naïve way of looking at things the only way to secure her happiness with her husband Angel is to kill Alec. She seems to have no awareness of the sire consequences of her act.
For a few days, during their doomed flight together, Angel and Tess enjoy some of the happiness that should have came earlier. But it is a doomed happiness, and Tess, with her streak of fatalism, realises it is too good to last. When they reach Stonehenge it is obvious that Tess’s life of never ending pain and suffering will soon be over. Stonehenge is significant as it was a place for sacrifices in pagan times. The cruel “Immortals” have at last brought Tess to the place of sacrifice – they will soon end their sadistic “sport”.
I conclude that Hardy wrote this book to show that “individuals have no control over their lives, but are at the mercy of impersonal and inexorable forces”, as stated in the resource notes to the Cambridge edition of the novel. From the beginning Tess’s destiny was mapped out. She was born to suffer and eventually die. Tess was in the end a victim of the circumstances of late Victorian rural society, with all its cruel discrimination against erring females, but even more so of cruel supernatural forces who had marked her out as their victim from the beginning.
