Men have learned to master nature, but they have yet to transcend it. The laws of nature powerfully affect human behavior, and these laws are often antithetical to those of society. Thus, the conscientious human being is constantly in motion – both pulled by primitive and civilized forces. In Tess of D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy portrays Tess Durbeyfield as a character subject to this type of constraint. She and the men who love her are unable to reach a compromise between their animal desire and their civilized sensibilities – and their collective inability ultimately destroys her happiness. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Hardy shows that Tess has primal desires. In the May Day procession, she is the distinctive maiden with a dark red mouth, a movable face, a red ribbon and a plentiful endowment. Her silhouette exudes sexuality. Hardy even places Tess in a setting that matches her sensual and natural attributes. Following the sound of the Angels' jaw harp, she crosses a garden "damp and covered with juicy grass, which sent up mists of pollen at the mere touch... on her bare arms [were] sticky sores which, although white as snow on the apple. -tree trunks, made even more garish spots on his arms" (97). The heavy and mature description of this passage screams sex. The humidity and pollen are conducive to reproduction, the arms are bare and the spots are snow white on the trees --- alluding to semen Through this scene, Hardy suggests Tess's capacity to be sexually aroused, although this arousal may only be in her subconscious, as she does not. not particularly notice her surroundings The use of natural imagery shows that Tess's desire came with her traits --- as gifts from nature Tess's sixth standard education and Christian morality are only thin. varnish, because ultimately she cannot resist the biological urge to procreate. The season also reflects this urge, as Tess's passion for Angel grows like the heat of summer, "[in] the middle of the year. oozing fat and hot ferments from Froom Vale, at a season when the trickling juices could almost be heard beneath the hiss of fertilization” (113). The author explicitly links Tess to the intense fertilization activity of the valley around her. It shows that nature forces Tess to search for Angel, just as nature would force two rivers in the same valley to merge. Hardy also describes the attraction between Alec and Tess as natural. When they first meet, Alec gives Tess strawberries, and she eats them in a “half-pleased, half-reluctant state” (30). Alec also showers Tess with roses. Strawberries and roses are symbols of passion; Tess accepts them happily. Hardy reveals that Tess has animal instincts that her more refined sensibilities cannot hope to suppress. This sense of inevitability is implicit in Hardy's description of The Chase: "Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase...around them flew the hopping rabbits and hares" (58). Apparently, everything is fine: life in the woods continues. Hardy's mention of rabbits and hares is not just a pretty detail, as these animals are known to be prolific breeders. Tess and Alec are in good company. Throughout this scene, Hardy emphasizes that the half-forced, half-consensual sexual act, crude to human sensibility, is completely normal in the natural order of things. This is where the conflict lies. Despite Tess's strong desire for Alec and Angel, she cannotreconciling her feelings with social laws that require women to be physically and mentally chaste. As Tess climbs the lonely hills surrounding Marlott, shortly after returning from Trantridge, she reflects on her actions and condemns herself for them. The narrator then comments that Tess "had been made to break an accepted social law, but no known law of the environment in which she considered herself such an anomaly" (68). In other words, Tess gives in to the sexual drive that nature gave her. In contrast, social laws seem arbitrary and unrelated to the reality of life on Earth. Yet these are the social laws that Tess consciously tries to obey, even if her attempt inflicts guilt and unhappiness on her. Tess is also a victim of sexual double standards. The night Angel and Tess arrive at D'Urberville Manor, Angel obtains forgiveness from Tess for her affair with a London lover. Ironically, Angel is unable to find the same compassion in himself when Tess recounts her own misdeed. The double standard stems from the Victorian-era belief that virile young men should be allowed tolerances. Additionally, men were the initiators of sex. Women were expected to passively accept male desire. Yet one might expect Angel to transcend these prejudices. The irony of the confession scene lies in the contrast between what we expect of Angel and what he does. Angel is a person who rejected Christianity in favor of humanism. Hardy reports that Angel said that it "could have had far better results for humanity if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine" (126). For this view, one might expect Angel to recognize morality as relative to circumstances. However, Angel obeys a harsh and dogmatic morality, even more reprehensible than that of his parents, whose “hearts rushed towards extreme cases” (242). Angel's parents would have felt pity for Tess: they would have seen her as someone to love and save. It is therefore doubly ironic that Angel rejects Tess: he is neither faithful to his parents nor to himself. Through Angel's rejection, Hardy convincingly demonstrates the power of society to shape morality and therefore behavior. Although Angel can forget both his humanism and Christian forgiveness, he cannot escape the powerful bond of the oppressive social code until it is too late. Tess, instilled with the same Victorian values, accepts Angel's judgment of her: "I will obey you as your miserable slave even if it means lying down and dying" (184). Tess doesn't fight back; she accepts that her past actions have taken away her right to self-determination. Like Angel, she believes that lust and convenience cannot coexist in the same person. Once again, the conflict between nature and society destroys Tess's hope for a happy relationship. Tess's men cannot reconcile their own attitudes toward love, given by nature and instilled by society. But the conflict between nature and society prevents this fusion, because men are incapable of combining sexual passion and Victorian morality: they choose one or the other. Alec is the character whose love is paramount --- representing the force of nature. Nature requires only the proliferation of life, the physical act of sex. Sophisticated love does little to propagate a species. Angel is the antithesis of Alec. His love is not physical, it is idealized and spiritual. Together, they make the ideal lover for Tess, who needs both types of love. But in love, two halves do not make a whole. Alec plays his part from the start, calling Tess "my beauty", "my pretty.