A pure woman (pulled down to ruin by family and love)
             The subtitle of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles' is "A
             Pure Woman." By choosing this title, the author suggests that the ideas
             society has about purity are fundamentally misguided. Society says that
             Tess is not pure because she is not a virgin. However, Hardy suggests that
             Tess is the only pure and good human being in any of the societies in which
             At first, Tess only wishes to help her family's fortune, doing her
             father's bidding against her better instincts, by going to work for Alex
             d'Urbervilles. However, at the end of her tenure with him she is "a maid
             no more" in Hardy's words, after experiencing sexuality with this
             supposedly distant relation. Hardy is quite cagey about whether what
             transpires between Alex and Tess is a rape or not. Tess tells Alex that
             the "sin" was more his than hers. But although this opacity may be
             frustrating to a modern reader, her reaction suggests that it does not
             matter in society's eyes whether she was raped or yielded willingly. In
             the view of society, all that matters is that Tess is no longer a virgin.
             What is even more devastating, however, is the fact that not only
             does it not matter in the eyes of gossiping women. It also matters,
             whether Tess is a virgin or not in the eyes of Angel Clare, the man she
             comes to trust and love later in the novel. What is so hypocritical about
             the way that Tess is regarded as a sexual being, too, is that Angel himself
             admits that he too, in his past, has sinned. However, although Tess
             forgives him for his transgression, he cannot forgive her. He presses her
             to confess what may have transpired in her past, "It cannot--O no, it
             cannot!" She jumped up joyfully at the hope. No, it cannot be more
             serious, certainly,' she cried, because 'tis just the same! I will tell
             you now.' (Hardy 252, http://www.literaturepage.com/re...