has undergone is because of her beauty, although this realization has come too late to save her from Alec’s lustful actions and Angel’s idealized ones. Tess seeks shelter one night beneath some bushes to hide from a lustful man and awakens to find pheasants left half - dead by a shooting party. All of these birds are writhing in agony apart from those, which have been unable to bear any more and have died through the night. Tess reprimands herself for feeling self-pity; ‘I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding’ - and although she is not physically marred by the events that have so irrevocably altered her life, emotionally and spiritually she is exhausted. The potent tragedy of Tess’s life is that her decisions have always been made with good and pure intentions but have resulted in damaging consequences. Tess is undoubtedly a victim as misery punctuates her life. She is a victim of circumstance in that her individuality makes little difference to her fate, she is a victim of society in the sense that she is a scapegoat of narrow - mindedness and she is a victim of male ideology on the grounds that her powers of will and reason are undermined by her sensuality. Tess herself sums up her own blighted life best: ‘Once a victim, always a victim - that’s the law!’ ...
