When, on their wedding night, Angel Clare confessed to his new wife, Tess, in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, that he had sown his wild oats before marriage, she replied with relief by telling the story of her own seduction by Alec D’Urberville and the short-lived child she bore him. She thought the transgressions balanced. “Forgive me as you are forgiven! I forgive you, Angel.” “You—yes you do.” “But do you not forgive me?” “O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are another. My God—how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque—prestidigitation as
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