After writing

Hardy wrote the' fall 'of a rural girl as a cruel footnote to Victorian era social discipline. Tess's tragedy is never a personal 'fault', but a web woven together by class, gender, and moral shackles - in this web, innocence becomes original sin, and suffering becomes' deserved '. The opening Tess is Hardy's "natural daughter": she would walk barefoot on the grass at the May ball and silently assume the title of "noble descendant" due to family difficulties. But this' natural innocence 'was precisely the starting point of her being swallowed up: her parents' vulgarity pushed her to Alec, who packaged her as frivolous under the guise of' nobility 'and used the hypocrisy of' I am a bad person, but you will be safe if you follow me 'to complete the deception of unequal power. Hardy did not portray Tess as a 'weakling', her resistance was hidden in the details - her clenched fists when entangled by Alec, her silence in avoiding crowds after returning home, but ultimately could not withstand the oppression of class: Alec's privileges were tacitly accepted by society, while Tess's struggle was just a footnote to 'restlessness'. Tranrich's "outdoor" scenes have become a metaphor for the hypocrisy of the times. Victorian society promoted "indoor morality" but tacitly allowed men to indulge their desires in the countryside - the "red" on Alec's lips was a dangerous symbol, while the "golden" light and shadow of Tess's labor, which should have been a symbol of innocence, ultimately became tainted "evidence of sin". When she returned home pregnant, the whispers of women in the market and the evasive gazes of neighbors turned the "community opinion" into a soft knife: no one condemned Alec's plunder, but everyone assumed that Tess's "loss of chastity" was a "loss of virtue". Hardy used natural imagery to externalize her trauma: the "tired moon" illuminated her insomnia, the "cold wind" enveloped her trembling, and even the "pale" and "trembling" of her body became imprints of social discipline. The 'Utopia' of the dairy farm is a brief respite in the first 24 chapters, but it also hides new shackles. The "golden butter" and "dancing milkmaid" here poeticize labor and love, and Claire's idealism gives Tess hope - but this "hope" is built on lies: Claire loves the symbol of "pure rural girl", not the real, traumatized Tess. When Tess hesitated to confess her past, the tension of pre marital silence foreshadowed the collapse of trust: in traditional views of marriage and love, "chastity" was the entire value of women, and class differences made Claire's "tolerance" already carry a sense of superiority - his idealism was just another form of moral coercion. Tess in the first 24 chapters is like grass blown by the wind: pushed by family, plundered by power, cut by public opinion, and briefly lifted by love. Hardy did not give her the possibility of "resistance success" because she was never fighting against anyone, but against the entire era that had alienated "female innocence" into "exploitable resources" and attributed "suffering" to "moral flaws". The rehearsal of this tragedy made the subsequent fragmentation even heavier - Tess's fall was never "personal fault", but the inevitability of society forcing people to despair.