If we consider the figurative meaning of Clare's laying Tess in a stone tomb while walking in his sleep, we can suppose that he will unconsciously cause Tess's spiritual death, in addition to her physical ill-treatment previously caused by Alec. This image of tomb and sacrifice occurs frequently in the novel, emphasizing her tragic role of a martyr. Tess is constantly being victimized, either by her parents, or by the society she lives in, or by the man she loathes. Above all, she becomes tortured by the man she adores and for whom she was prepared to lay down her life if necessary. Hardy emphaticaly writes: “Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing favoured her.” 17
On seeing converted Alec, the destroyer of her innocence, Tess can hardly believe that “he who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit, while she remained unregenerate.” 18 Agonized by the unfairness of life, Tess exclaims to Alec: “Whip me, crush me…I shall not cry out. Once victim, always victim – that's the law!” 19
It took a lot of time for Angel to begin to “discredit the old appraisements of morality. He thought they wanted readjusting. Who was the moral man? Still more pertinently, who was the moral woman?” 20 But the time he took was long enough for Tess to die spiritually, to lose her strength for fighting the harsh conditions of her life and to finally succumb to Alec, who, once again, manipulated her innocence. “Her husband, Angel Clare himself, had, like others, dealt hard measures to her, surely he had! She had never before admitted such a thought; but he had surely!” 21
It is too late when Angel realizes that “his had been a love ‘which alters when it alteration finds'” 22 , alluding to Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, which beautifully defines what true love is. Tess is already numb with pain, for “his original Tess had spiritually ceased to recognize the body before him as hers – allowing it to drift, like a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its living will.” 23
And it is also too late when Angel, upon realizing that Tess has killed her torturer, says: “I will not desert you! I will protect you by every means in my power, dearest love, whatever you may have done or not done!” 24 However, it is a sad thing to notice that, when the two of them dead awaken, they realize that their time to live and love is too short.
By killing Alec Tess freed herself from the man who twice separated her from her lover, and allowed herself and Angel a few days of happiness together. But in Hardy's view this kind of happiness, between two enlightened people who take upon themselves responsibility for their own moral conduct, cannot be but short-lived.
It is on the ancient, heathen altar of Stonehenge that Tess is finally sacrificed to spiritually-empty modern society. In the Christian world of moral justice Tess could find neither happiness nor peace; however, on the pagan “ Temple of the Winds” Tess finally feels at home and refuses to go any further.
It is not a mere chance that Hardy picks this holly place in nature for Tess's true home. As Tess explains, one of her mother's people was a shepherd on this area. That place 'belonged' to her mother's people. We should pay attention to the fact that Hardy makes a shift from the male and guilt-ridden Christian world to the pagan world in which women had their rightful place. That's why we can draw a conclusion which is best summarized in the famous statement of Robert Graves', that “there is one story and one story only.”
20 Ibid., p.421
21 Ibid., p.440
22 Ibid., p.456
23 Ibid., p.467
24 Ibid., p.475
17 Ibid., p.375
18 Ibid., p.384
19 Ibid., p.411
