Mollie’s Reviews > Tess of the D’Urbervilles > Status Update

This glimpse into Tess's view of both her own power in the events of her life and religion is so powerful: she is inconsequential; the path in which life wends is unalterable and something happening to her (consistent with her passivity in her own actions and experiences); and she is forbidden to even believe she could do/think anything otherwise. Her viewpoint has been manipulated into seeing life’s events as something that is occurring outside of her and to her without any interaction or influence from her: deterministic and predestined. This is very Calvinistic. To be forbade to believe anything else, and doing so is both a presumption and an ailment to be cured of—which she she has been thankfully cured of by none other than a man.