while others consider her to be responsible for her own fate, tragic though it may be. She is an innocent girl when first introduced, and she is raped by Alec D'Urberville. This leaves her pregnant, and while in our own time the victim of rape would not be considered responsible for being pregnant under those conditions, in Victorian England Tess would be seen as a fallen woman, as guilty even though she did nothing wrong. This fact thus defines her life in a way that is out of her control, making it difficult to see Tess as the master of her own fate. She does show some mastery in being able to rebound from this event, a testament to her will to live. She blames herself for what has happened, but still manages to live up to her many responsibilities to her family.
Angel Clare is a hypocritical man who may love Tess, but he abandons her only to return later when he is remorseful over what he has done. It is too late by then, and his return is what causes Tess to kill Alec D'Urberville. In the end, though he claims to love Tess, he and her sister watch the hanging and then go off together. This is what Tess wants, but it still is an example of the peculiar behavior demonstrated by Angel throughout the novel. He did not go into the clergy as his father did and as his father wanted him to do, and there is some sense that he did not do so because of doubts about aspects of the teachings of the church. His name, Angel, evokes a certain sense of goodness that is countered by his inability to make up his mind and to be faithful to the woman who loves him and who ultimately dies for him.
Tess's fate is not completely the fault of Angel, of course, and one of the elements brought forth by Hardy is the idea that Tess is a product of her upbringing and that much of what happens to her later in life can be traced to that fact. To a degree, this is also an issue of social class--the Durbeyfields aspire to be part of the D'Urbervil...