In Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, we are presented with a heroine whose vulnerability and social environment contribute to her fate, rather than a heroine who is solely controlled by her fate. Tess is forced by family circumstances to work for the wealthy D’Urbervilles. The son of the house, Alec, rapes her and leaves her pregnant. When the child dies, Tess finds work for herself on a dairy farm. She falls in love with a rector’s son named Angel. On their wedding night they exchange confessions for past misdeeds. Tess forgives Angel his transgressions, but he cannot forgive her past. Tess eventually returns to Alec because she convinces herself there is no future between she and Angel. When Angel returns able to forgive Tess and finds her with Alec, Tess kills Alec by stabbing him. Though Tess and Alec are able to avoid the law for awhile, Tess is captured and hung for her crime.
Many view Tess’s dilemma as determined fate, a dilemma from which she had no possible escape. They view her rape at the hands of Alec as the product of the socio-economic conditions and patriarchy of her time. They view her confusion over Angel’s real love for her as vulnerability. When she stabs Alec, they view it as an act of desperation. However, Tess is as culpable in all of these alleged acts of fate as any other factors which contribute to them. The fault, as Shakespeare might remind her, lies no in the stars but in herself. Tess is alienated from her rural community society. She is a dreamer and her own father calls her queer. Because of this, Tess looks for some kind of escape from reality. She often cannot accept reality because she is seeking something more or better than the reality she finds. We see this when she talks about stars representing different worlds:
“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?”
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