“It is too easy to assume that Angel and Alec are moral opposites; each is in fact as bad as the other.”
Thomas Hardy’s novel titled “Tess of the D’Urberville” was first published complete, in three volumes, in November 1891. I will be using a Wordsworth edition of the novel printed in 1993; to evaluate both Angel and Alec’s character. I will then compare and contrast them, using quotes from the book to prove my points. By the end of this essay I hope to have given enough information to determine whether Alec and Angel are moral opposites or are both as bad as each other.
Thomas Hardy first gives us the impression that Alec and Angel are moral opposites, but this impression changes once Angel discovers Tess’s past relationship with Alec. After this event Angel becomes cold and distant towards Tess whereas, with Alec, there is a lot of attention and lust. Both men are hypocritical towards Tess; Angel admits to Tess that he has had past relationships with other women, but when Tess reveals her story of her encounters with Alec to Angel he loses his respect and infatuation for Tess: “Tess you were one person and now you are another. My god how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque – prestidigitation as that?” and “I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you”. Previously in the novel Angel and Tess have been having a romantic relationship, in which Tess is wooed by Angel. Angel later on proposes to Tess and soon after, they get married; it is only after they are married that Angel allows Tess to tell him about her affair with Alec. The result of this is Angel declaring that he no longer loves Tess, as it was not her he fell in love with.
Both Alec and Angel destroy Tess; Alec rapes Tess and in doing so impregnates her; which casts a shadow upon Tess, leaving her feeling alone and ashamed. Tess blames herself for the way in which Alec treats her; Tess believes that she should have known what men were like and what they were capable of and she blames her mother for not telling her about men. Angel, however, woos Tess with words and wisdom and then becomes hypocritical and insensitive to her feelings. When Angel’s name is translated from French (Angel Clare) to English it means “Bright angel” or “Angel of light”. The angel of light turns out not to be as angelic as he may first appear, he has many more names, some of which are: Lucifer, Satan, The Devil, Prince of Darkness, and Ruler of Hell. These names are by no means pleasant. Many people think Hardy chose this name for Angel for its many interpretations and how it tended to match Angel’s character: in the beginning of the book we think Angel Clare is a messenger of God, a guardian spirit or guiding influence; after reading further into the book we realise that Angel is not any of these things. Our impression of Angel, like his name, changes once we see how he reacts to Tess’s confession of her similar experiences before they met. Angel has rejected religion and his father’s beliefs; he also refused to attend university, unlike his brothers, which gives us the impression that he is ‘the black sheep’ of his family. In Angel’s mind, he is a non-conformist, but this caricature is soon destroyed when we see how he treats Tess after her confession. His father does not wish him to become a farmer but Angel refuses to listen to his father, which shows that he is independent and that he will let nobody change his opinions or ideas. Angel thinks he knows a lot about everything and he uses this to impress Tess; Angel makes Tess believe that he loves her, but after they are married he realises that what he loved was his image of Tess as “an ideal of unspoilt, virginal womanhood.”
