Tess of the D'Urbervilles question

For me Angel was the worst villain. He acted all sweet and pious and then stabbed her in the back. Alex was a pig from the beginning so you knew what you getting, even if Tess was too young to recognize it.

Angel Clare is one of the fictional characters I hate the most. If I had been Tess, I would never have gone back to him. He left her to starve. As much as I hated Alec, I hated Angel even more.

I think that Angel and Alec share the blame equally for the downfall and tragedy of Tess. Hardy shows us the treacherous quality of relationships in Victorian England; sorry ladies.....good man, bad man, either one can lead to your ruination, through no fault of your own.

I think the true villain is the society of those times.

Angel was a hypocritical jerk, but that doesn't excuse the fact that Tess should have told him the truth before marrying him. That was a poor choice on her part. She played a part in her own downfall with regards to Angel.

Bless Angel he strikes me as someone who never fully understands whats going on. He seems to think he has revolutionary ideas but in actual fact he really does just conform to victorian morals. I think we can certainly condemn him for his wrong actions towards Tess but I wouldn't go to the extent of calling him the true villain of the Novel. I think there are a whole heap of factors that contribute to the novels ending. Alec, Tess's own mother, Tess herself, Angel and victorian society. On another note does anyone else think Hardy perhaps dragged out the ending and was a bit disappointing. I personally think it should have ended on a high note withe the chapter in which Tess kills Alec, much more of a striking ending leaving Tess in a heroic way rather than a dismal anticlimactic way. Such a shame for such a brilliant character to end in such a disappointing manner.

I think the real villain in the novel is the society's double standard. According to the Victorian mores, to the Dickens' and Austen's books, Tess should be a "pure woman" till the end because of her personality and behaviour which never changed despite being poor and blamed unjustly, and that she deserved to be in Heaven in the end. However, society, not caring to understand and know if she had the fault or not, said that Tess was a "fallen woman" because she "had" sexual relations before getting married, she had a baby outside of marriage, she was "unfaithful" to her husband and she murder someone of great "status".

What we can see in the novel, and in other Hardy's novels, is that laws weren't applied equal to everyone, laws were softer and could forgive people's faults (murder, rape, being lazy, abusive, jobless, etc) if they had a lot of money which they can share.

I agree with James. Angel not the villian, just a jerk. I think I'd sooner cast Victorian society as the villain.

I think there are a lot of valid points for why Angel may be the villain of the novel but I personally have never been able to see him as a villain. Though I do think that to a certain extent Angel was carrying out the mores of society when he rejected Tess I think his rejection was more to do with a misguided feeling that Tess was not the woman he had thought she was ( which was really his own fault for idealising her in the first place!) He even says to Tess that it wasn't about forgiveness " you were one person and now you are another", so in a sense Angel as well as Tess is a victim of the society which he was brought up in despite struggling to escape its influence, and though I think his actions were wrong and hypocritical, he didn't know that he was exposing Tess to the hardships of Flintcombe Ash as he left her money which she either generously gave away to her family or was to proud or embarrassed to accept. Also I always think that Alec is far worse than Angel, Alec rapes Tess, or something close to rape, and cruelly manipulates her ( like when he makes her kiss him to slow down his horse) and uses the needs of her family against her, at least Angel is careful never to take advantage of Tess. I think it's also the mutual love between Angel and Tess which makes it so hard for me to see him as a villain, I always feel like they were meant to be together, so I can't help but see him as something of the hero to her heroine! I just got so caught up in the romance at Talbothays, I couldn't help falling a little for Angel myself!

I believe so.

Alec is a villain too, but Tess initially recognized him as such. Hardy elaborately justified why she fell in his trap, but it was obvious both for her and for us readers that she walked into a cage with a tiger.

Now Angel is really the one who brought her to her end (it's even symbolically shown in the book when he puts Tess in a coffin in his sleepwalking). She loved Angel passionately and believed in his "progressive" views, and it was his judgement that made her feel unworthy, guilty, ruined. He is actually the embodiment of ruthless Victorian society, as he was the only person who actually despised and avoided her once he learnt about her "fall" (her own village people being actually symphathetic to her).

His double-standard and hypocrisy are ridiculous. Alec at least admits openly he's a jerk.

Im not sure if I wanna called him a "villian". But I know he definitely shares the blame with everyone else (alec, tess, her parents, society). When I was reading the book, I never did like angel. I thought he was pretty clueless.

Alec is the obvious villain, but Angel is not a good guy either. I wouldn't call him a villain, but his sudden change of attitude towards Tess is a part of her downfall. To me, it seems that Hardy tries to blur the lines between what makes a "good guy" and what makes a "bad guy", which is part of why this book works in the first place.

I mean, I didn't like Angel or Alec at all. They both were crappy individuals.

Nope, Hardy is for writing it in the first place.

I don't agree that Victorian Society is the villain. While society influences our paradigm, everyone is still responsible for their actions. Moreover, Angel was a rebel (sort of) with his new age beliefs. He was too weak to get over his anger or bitterness about his idealism being shattered and conveniently blamed her. I also don't think that Angel was the villain, he was half- hearted in the whole distancing himself from Tess thing...and he probably knew he was wrong: his behavior after leaving Tess shows that. I just think he was weak...

Those who intensely hate Angel for the harm he inflicted on Tess might be missing a key quality in him. Angel in all his behavior is essentially a conformist with limited ability to think for himself. He falls passionately in love with Tess because she conforms to his image of a Greek mythological goddess he learned about in school. Ignorant of Tess as a real person he assumes she's everything he thinks she "ought" to be as Mrs. Clare. When he discovers his assumptions are wrong, he adopts the conventional view of her and worries more about "What will people think?" than just he and Tess. He occupies himself in Brazil for months never changing his mind about her until he comes upon a British stranger he knows for only a few days. Because this stranger advises Angel Tess' premarital sex isn't of great importance, Angel conforms to the stranger's comment and returns to Tess.

Angel certainly isn't an endearing character but Hardy clearly uses his conformist character to funnel societal wrongs at Tess. Where Alec is independent in ruthlessly pursuing his personal pleasures, Angel is ruthless in applying harsh and unfair social standards at Tess. Alec could qualify as a villain, but Angel lacks the substance to be villain or hero; he's merely an agent for others.

Methinks that the viallain character ever is the society as a whole: its people, its greedy and its "all surroundings". Tess was too "green" to be exploited by everyone. Angel Clare, however, was not really that villain (bad character). He was a savior to some extents. But the society they were both up in (England during the Victorian era) was too rude to them. Angel was a subservent of it accordingly. He could prove once he went back to her at the eand "Peace at Least".

Is Hardy a brilliant writer or what? Here is a story (just fiction) first published over a century ago (1891). And yet the story is so universal, and the characters so real, that we are arguing about them these many years later.

I most strongly disagree with those who blame Tess for her downfall. She is just 16 when the story opens: A sweet kid who is raped, gives birth in shame, loses her beloved child, then falls for a sensitive New Age guy. Angel was her savior. She tries to explain her past to him, in a letter that he never gets. Who can blame her for thinking that the misdelivery is intended and that she should follow her mother's advice about keeping quiet?

And who among us, male or female, has not fallen in love with someone who didn't deserve our adoration? It's part of growing up.

For Angel, 'villain' is too harsh, even though he treated so badly to Tess and caused an important part of the downfall of her. I think the real villain was Alec.

He's just a jerk and a product of his times. She was her own villain.

didn't Wilde say 'Each man kills the thing he loves' ...

I think that Angel is the true villian; in fact I think that he and Alec are just two sides of the same coin, the same man represented from different views. Angel believes he is a good person but destroys Tess. Alec is just the figure who demonstrates the dark side of Angel. He is the dark angel...