In Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Tess, the heroine, has hardships andinjustices endlessly heaped upon her, however, she never wallows in self-pity or abandons hope. Pragmatic and selfless, honest and kind, she is clearly shown to thereader to be "a pure woman", as the subtitle of the novel states. Society, humanselfishness, and the "President of the Immortals" are all guilty of dragging her inexorably towards her tragic grave, while she is innocent - or nearly so - andfights against her fate to the end.Ironically, it is because Tess is so pure that she is banished from society, just asJesus Christ becomes a martyr for truth. Again and again she has the opportunity toimprove her own material lot but she is not prepared to compromise her principles.In Chapter XII, on learning of her affair with rich Alec, Tess's mother exclaims,"Any woman but you would have got him to marry thee". Tess, however, will notstoop to a "convulsive snatching at social salvation". Similarly, Tess agonizes over whether to reveal her "Bygone Trouble" to Angel, and is twice warned: Many awoman...have had a Trouble in their time; and why should you trumpet yours whenothers don't trumpet theirs? However, Tess does not follow the advice of her worldly-wise mother. A deeply moral person, she cannot bring herself to concealthe truth, when Angel believes her to be spotless.Though Tess is not entirely without sin and does make mistakes in her life, inspirit her intentions are invariably good. Twice she is seduced by Alec and liveswith him for a period of time, and there is little doubt that the second time at least,as a married woman, she is doing the wrong thing. However, both times she is notthinking of her personal gains or pleasure but of her family, towards whom she stillfeels a debt, and Alec ruthlessly takes advantage of this weakness to seduce her.After her fathers death, the family is evicted and becomes penniless. Tess, given asecond chance, sacrifices her own peace of mind for the well being of her relatives:My little sisters and brothers and my mother's needs - they were the things youmoved me by...and you said my husband would never come back - never!Until the moment of her final crime, Tess is prepared to suffer for others, to theextent of abandoning all hope of personal happiness with Angel; yet her mostaltruistic actions are perversely seen by society as evidence of her immorality.Because of her sacrificial attitude, Tess becomes a natural scapegoat, and thosearound her find it easy to shake off their own responsibilities. In the very beginningof the novel she is propelled from her sheltered existence into the clutches of Alec, because she wrongly feels entirely responsible for the death of the family's horseand thinks it her duty to support the family after this catastrophe. Similarly, it is outof respect for Angel's preposterous wishes that she refrains from writing to him inBrazil to tell him how she misses him, until it is too late. Furthermore, it is becauseshe can sense an air of reproach in her family when she returns home for thesecond time that she casts herself out and endures physical hardship and mental pain at Flintcomb-Ash. Her sensitivity to others' emotions undoubtedly plays a central role in the ruination of her life, and so in absolute terms Tess is at least partly responsible for her fate.There is a slight suggestion in Hardy's writing that Tess's stoicism is derivedfrom pride and self-righteousness. When Angel hypocritically rejects her onaccount of her past, "if Tess had been artful, had she made a scene, fainted, wepthysterically...he would probably not have withstood her", the narrator comments,Pride, too, entered into her submission - which perhaps was a symptom of thatreckless acquiescence in chance too apparent in the whole d'Urberville family.However, this is the only reference in the novel to any self-respect feelings in Tess,and until the bitter end she is depicted as unassuming, pragmatic, and determinednot to give in to fate like her family or the other Talbothays girls. It is because sheworships Angel that she is proud not to contradict him, in the same way martyrsare proud to be tortured for their God.Throughout the novel, then, Tess is shown to be pure in intention and selfless inall acts, until she surprisingly, spitefully murders Alec. This is the single actionthat proves to be her ultimate downfall, a totally unnecessary crime of passion.Perhaps any other person in the same situation would have cracked much earlier, perhaps any other person would not have attempted to abide by the rules of personal morality for so long; nonetheless, Tess has no right to take Alec's life.In terms of the society in which she lives, Tess is to some extent guilty of bringing about her own fate, and is somewhat her own hangman. However, it isthis same society that has so unjustly marked her out as unclean, that has soforcefully put the noose around her neck. This society blindly ignores Christian principles, judging her on deeds and not on intentions, and unwilling to forgive her past. This impure society, argues Hardy, punishes the honest and theconscientious. There is another factor too in Tess's downfall, namely, a fate thathas sought in every step of Tess's life to trip her up, a "President of the Immortals"that plays with Tess in the way a cat plays with a helpless mouse. Tess is alonefighting against these huge forces, the social and the natural, heroically defendingvirtue in the face of rampant vice. It is little wonder she finally cracks. Indeed, itmay well be because she finally cracks, because she is human, that the reader admires her and sympathizes with her to such an extent.From the above analysis, we can get a general knowledge about Tess. In Hardys eyes, though Tess lost hervirginity, she was still a pure woman, and she was therepresentative of all pure women. On the other hand,though she murdered Alec, she was not a murderess but a fighteragainst fate. As a dutiful daughter and passive victim, she is a fighter against fate and other tragic issues. She isa heroic martyr.