Tess's first encounter with the unnatural artifice of moral dogma coincides with her seduction into the corrupt world of Alec d'Urberville. The Christian slogan in red paint conflicts physically and spiritually with nature, and Tess is the spokesperson for nature:
“ THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT
2 Pet.ii.3
Against the peaceful landscape, the pale, decaying tints of the copses, the blue air of the horizon, and the lichened stile-boards, these staring vermilion words shone forth . . . 'I think they are horrible', said Tess. 'Crushing! Killing!” 7
Tess is tormented by guilt at the thought of her impurity and her liaison with Alec. She imagines her guilt to be a natural consequence of her actions, not only in the eyes of the community but also in the eyes of nature. Hardy dispels this notion. While walking in the hills:
“…she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of innocence. But all the while she was making a distinction where there was no difference . . . She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.” 8
In contrast to Alec d'Urberville and the immediate sense of danger that he presents to Tess, Angel Clare represents a significant sense of idealism and purity. While Alec presses Tess with a forceful sexuality upon his first entrance in the novel, Angel is in a great sense desexualized; one of the milkmaids even thinks that he does not even think of girls.
Angel is a secularist who yearns to work for the “honor and glory of man,” as he tells his father in Chapter XVIII, rather than for the honor and glory of God in a more distant world. A typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel sees human society as a thing to be remolded and improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of man. He rejects the values handed to him, and sets off in search of his own. His love for Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of his disdain for tradition. This independent spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and general attractiveness that makes him the love object of all the milkmaids with whom he works at Talbothays.
However, Angel proved to be not so angelic, as his name suggests. Although sharply contrasted to Alec, whose devilish symbol of existence is the pitchfork, and not the angelic symbol – the harp, Angel nevertheless transgresses against Tess, instead of realizing the suffering of this victimized woman.
At Talbothay's Dairy Angel becomes aware of the closeness to natural rhythms involved in the agricultural way of life. He imagines he can appreciate and adjust to this new way of life, but he cannot become part of it. He sees Tess in idealized terms: “What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!” 9
Angel's fault in regarding Tess lies precisely in the fact that he observes her in her ethereal aspect, and is blind to see and accept her complete being, her real self. Moreover, Hardy often alludes that Angel sees Tess as a saint or a Goddess from some mythological world, and not as a flesh and blood woman:
“The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they walked along together to the spot where the cows lay, often made him think of the Resurrection hour. He little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side. Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes …seemed to have a sort of phosphorence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large… It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman … He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because she did not understand them.” 10
9 Ibid., p.176
10 Ibid., p.187
7 Ibid., p.128
8 Ibid., p.135
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