USA ponders new law to stop robot racism

"Justice was done", the narrator comments ironically when Tess is hanged. In a legal sense, justice has indeed been served: Tess has killed, and must therefore be killed. But we are also subtly encouraged to see Tess' actions in killing Alec as a kind of vigilanteA person who tries in an unofficial way to prevent or punish crime. They do not have any legal authority. justice, just as her execution is a de factoSomething that happens in practice, in contrast to that which happens de jure, or according to the law. punishment for Angel too, whose actions have led to the death of the woman he loves. Justice is a complicated concept in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but it is clear that it has little use for wronged women.

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The book's first major act of violence is Alec's rape of Tess, which is closely associated with death. Although Tess falls pregnant, her child is sickly and dies almost immediately. Alec receives retribution at the end of the novel when Tess stabs him, a penetrative image which echoes the loss of her virginity. Violence begets violence, Hardy seems to claim, a sense only enforced when Tess herself is executed. But not all acts of violence are equal. Alec's act of violence is an act of evil, where Tess' violence is characterised by many as a bid for freedom. Sometimes, violence can also be an act of mercy. Empathising with a dying flock of pheasants writhing in agony, Tess decides to kill them "with the impulse of a soul who could feel for her kindred sufferers as much as for herself". This positions Tess' actions of violence in a separate paradigm to those of the people around her, suggesting that they tend more towards justice and compassion than towards malign impulse.

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The novel is set in an impoverished town in rural England. Desperate to lift themselves out of poverty, the Durbeyfields enlist Tess to commune ("claim kin") with her rich "relatives", the d'Urbervilles. What they do not know is that the d'Urbervilles have adopted the surname in order to distance themselves from their humble roots as tradespeople. This proves class as an ever more mutable concept: whilst Tess and her family supposedly have aristocratic blood, they are impoverished, and though the d'Urbervilles are merely posers, they are wealthy. Despite the fact that her material circumstances remain the same and Tess can bring Angel no financial or social benefit, Angel's mother is placated to learn that Tess has noble blood.

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At the age of 16, Hardy witnessed the hanging of Elizabeth Martha Brown, a desperate woman who had murdered her violent and abusive husband. His imagination was piqued Aroused or provoked someone's curiosity. by the experience, and he began to contemplate the ills of patriarchy. Tess' association with Stonehenge at the end of the novel positions her as a sacrificial, doomed victim of patriarchy: not only is she raped by and forced to bear the child of a man, due to no fault of her own, but she is subsequently ostracised due to the stringent patriarchal norms which dictate that a woman should remain "sexually pure". Hardy combatted these ideas in his personal correspondence, where he referred to Tess as "purer than many a so-called unsullied virgin". But this depiction caused controversy, proving the progressiveness of Hardy's sympathy with Tess.

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Hardy's writing is said to explore the "ache of modernism", and Tess of the d'Urbervilles is no exception. Tess' natural connection to the environment and close association with nature is pitted against modern farm machinery, urban environments, and industrialisation: the former is associated with innocence, the latter with the moral desecration of modernity.

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