In Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the central character of the novel, of course is Tess, and the story follows her from the age of sixteen until her death. Tess Durbeyfield has been told that her family is related to the wealthy D'Urbervilles. She goes to work for that wealthy and prominent family and learns that she is not related at all, but she also learns that the family is not as worthy as many believe when she is raped by the son, Alec. Pregnant, she returns home to work in the fields, and when her baby dies, she moves elsewhere and meets Angel Glare, whom she marries. She does not tell him about the rape and the death of her child until after they are married. Following the hypocrisy of the age, since he had an affair before the marriage, he gets angry and leaves for America. Alec finds her and pressures her to marry him, saying that Angel will never return. Angel does return, however, and Tess murders Alec to be with Angel. She is caught, tried, sentenced, and hanged, and Angel follows her wishes and marries her younger sister. The characters of Angel and Tess are tightly bound together, their fates intertwined. Their downfall can be traced to the fact first that Tess loves Angel with great intensity while Angel is a rigid and uncharitable man who abandons Tess when she needs him the most. This act leads to her downfall on the gallows. The true failure in the novel is the failure of Angel to remain with the woman he loves and to live up to his name, a name that also reflects the fact that at one time he was bound for the clergy, and in many ways he remains throughout the novel a fallen man. Tess is an innocent who is ill-used by those around her and whose crime is more their fault than hers.
Tess is a young woman of contradictions, and this has extended to the way she is viewed by various readers. Some see her as a victim of her society and of the changes coming over that society in her time,...