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Tess of D'Ubervilles
custom has obvious relevance to Tess's plight with Alec d'Urberville, who is a false "lord" but claims Tess's virginity nevertheless.
Fallen, fallenness
Middle-class Victorian ideas about women's sexuality were quite rigid and condemned women who engaged in any sort of sexual activity outside of marriage. It was thought that women who lost their virginity before marriage "fell" from their exalted position of chastity. This is one manifestation of the dichotomous view of women as either "virgins" or "whores" that has characterized much Western thought about the nature of women. In Victorian times the specific concept of fallenness took on a great deal of significance. It was thought that a woman who was fallen changed in her very nature-she might become not only more sinful, but more vain, unwilling to work, greedy, or otherwise immoral. This idea that fallen women were intrinsically different from and in all ways morally inferior to their "pure" or chaste counterparts is demonstrated in Tess of the d'Urbervilles when Angel says to Tess that she is an entirely different person to him once he knows of her sexual past.
Religious doubt
The Victorian era was a deeply religious age, and faith was very important to many people in the era. Because of the great cultural significance of religion, the idea of religious doubt became controversial and much-publicized. In the later portion of the century, there were a large number of people who began to doubt the faith they had been taught. To some degree, this widespread doubt-which was particularly common among educated young men-can be attributed to scientific advances, particularly to the publication and general acceptance of Darwin's evolutionary theories. When Angel Clare decides that he cannot believe literally in the principles of Christianity and decides not to become a clergyman, then, the event is not merely a personal decision. For readers, this would symbolize that he is a modern young man, participating in the intellectual and cultural movements of the day, however troubling this participation might have been to older people, for whom faith was still an important part of their culture.
Fate, fatalism
Hardy had a particular view of fate that plays itself out in most of his novels, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles is no exception. Hardy believed that fate was a force that drove events, but that it was internal as well as external to people. In the case of Tess, her fate is largely driven by the discovery that she is a member of the old family of d'Urberville. That fact of her existence is intrinsic to her-and, in Hardy's view, it gives her certain character traits that condition her life-but it is also discovered through an external force, namely Parson Tringham. Because of this combination of internal and external forces, Hardy presents Tess as doomed almost from the very beginning. The novel concentrates very heavily on the ways in which Tess finds it impossible to escape her ultimate fate, because of the historical and cultural context in which she lives. This attitude that fate is inescapable, which [next page]