It's difficult to know whether or not the term "fate" accurately describes the philosophy at the center of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and other works by Hardy. Fate implies a force beyond human control that directs our actions. I would tend to see it as not so much fate as a kind of randomness that causes the decisive (and tragic) turns of the plot in Tess. Added to this is the deliberate and very human folly present in the story.

Whether intentionally or not, Hardy is making a statement about the vulnerability of women in the nineteenth-century world. This is not fate, but the gender dynamic that has been dominant throughout history. Angel Clare cannot accept Tess's having had a previous relationship because this is the way most men thought at the time. The randomness of human events can be considered responsible for his not seeing the letter she has written to him. But even if he had seen it, the result would have been the same—he would have rejected Tess.

The other crucial point is that Tess never tells Angel that her relationship with Alec d'Urberville was non-consensual. The reticence on this point of not only Tess but of Hardy himself as narrator is typical of the time. But the whole story is also a chain of chance happenings beginning with the death of Tess's horse and concluding with Tess's returning to Alec and, finally, killing him. The overall point, however, seems to be that tragedy is caused by both human folly (and its corollary of cruelty) and the randomness of the cosmos.

Near the beginning of the novel, Joan, Tess's mother, consults a book called The Fortune Tellerwhich leads her to believe that her daughter could marry a nobleman. This leads her to say to her husband, "I tried her fate in the Fortune-Teller, and it brought out that very thing!...You should ha' seen how pretty she looked to-day; her skin is as sumple as a duchess'" (12). This reference of consulting a type of magazine is typical of the lower social classes of the day and it is also a foreshadowing of what is to come. However, just believing that marrying a nobleman will fix it so a girl will have a wonderful life is completely the opposite of what actually happens to Tess. From Homer to Shakespeare, anyone believes that a character will end up happy due to Fate's prophecy is usually disappointed. Tess does marry a nobleman, but it doesn't turn out happy for her. Characters in stories seem to focus on the end result rather than the journey and this is where Fate is tricky. Through Tess experiencing one disappointing set-back to another, Hardy shows that Fate is more about the journey rather than the end result. Tess is a figure pitted against the Victorian society in which she finds herself living as a victim, but she never truly knows it.

What is the role of fate in Tess of the d'Urbervilles?

Fate plays a very important part in the story, especially in relation to Tess' life. At every stage it seems that she's propelled by dark, mysterious forces over which she has no control. Right from the moment she entered into this world her every move seems to have been written in the stars.

Tess' mother instinctively understood this, which is why she took her daughter to a fortune-teller. It's determined at an early stage in her life that Tess will go on to marry a nobleman, a prediction that undoubtedly heightens Tess' sense of being special, of having the noble blood of the d'Urbevilles coursing through her veins.

Yet Tess does not simply succumb to fate. At various points in the story she reacts against it, often through feelings of guilt. It is guilt over the killing of a horse that propels Tess to marry Alec d'Urbeville, even though it's far from clear that she's actually responsible.

Even when fate appears to smile on Tess, she doesn't accept it passively. Once again, guilt rears its ugly head as Tess reflects on her good fortune in relation to those milkmaids who are destined to die young or go mad. It is Tess' overriding sense of guilt that provides the catalyst for her fateful (suitably enough) decision to tell Angel about her past, a decision that will have far-reaching and damaging consequences for her.

Discuss the part played by chance and fate in Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles.

Chance plays a big role in the story of Tess. In the first chapter, Tess’s father, John Durbeyfield, has a chance meeting with Parson Tringham in the road. The parson, as a joke, addresses him as “Sir John” and explains to him that he has discovered that the Durbeyfields are descended from an ancient noble line, the d’Urbervilles. This information is what eventually causes Tess to be sent to visit a nearby family of supposed relatives, the Stoke-d’Urbervilles. It’s here that she meets Alec. Everything that happens to Tess in the novel can be traced back to this encounter.

Fate is a more problematic concept. While it is possible to see what happens to Tess as “fate,” or the inevitable result of someone straying out of her social class, I think Hardy’s view of such things is more complex. Hardy’s characters are memorable because they do struggle to make the right choices; Tess, for all her faults, struggles to assert her personal agency in the novel. Her decision to murder Alec and her resulting execution, in this way, can be seen less as the workings of fate and more as her attempt to make her own future.

Discuss the part played by chance and fate in Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles.

The notions of chance and fate are inexplicable in universe by mere humans. Thomas Hardy portrays both universal elements as mean and hateful as they throw incredible obstacles in the way of Tess's happiness in Tess of the d'Ubervilles. Chance and fate seem to tease Tess with obtaining happiness with benevolent opportunities for her to help herself and her family emerge from a lower class system in England, but something always gets in the way so that she cannot truly be happy. Here are a few examples of circumstances that Tess cannot control, thereby being under fate's will: First, she is born to parents who are unreliable and superstitious. (Her mother consults the "Fortune Teller" book to find out if Tess should marry a gentleman.) Then, as Tess is trying to do her father's job, their only horse dies and she blames herself. If the horse hadn't died, then she never would have gone to Alec d'Uberville's for help. Fate also tempts Tess as she seeks happiness with Angel Claire, but then takes it away after she tries to resolve her past before she marries him (e.g. slipping a confessional note under his bedroom door that he never gets). Ultimately, Tess is pushed over the edge of Fate's joke and kills Alec in order to be with Angel once and for all. Sadly, it never works out for her.

What is the role of fate and destiny in the novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy?

It seems in Hardy's novel that murder and betrayal are not controlled directly by the characters in the novel. The plot is mired by tragedy after tragedy, all of which appear to be completely out of the control of Tess. Fate seems to be against her. The roll of fate in the novel is pervasive. It is in control of nearly every action the poor girl makes.

It is important to know also that Thomas Hardy considered himself to be a fatalist. He believed that everything in life was predetermined by fate.

How does Hardy's novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, show the omnipotent power of destiny or fate over human beings?

Though the concept was not fully worked out until Hardy's later poetic work on Napoleon, The Dynasts, Hardy came to believe early on, even before his days in London as an assistant architect, that events in human lives were not ordered by the will of man nor by the Providence of God but by the power of coincidence, accident, fate, bad luck and the forces of history. Published in 1891, Tess of the D'Urburvilles shows directly and indirectly this belief in what might be called the "omnipotent power of destiny or fate."

[Angel Clare] observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess's life as if they were vital features.

This quote of the narrator's words is in reference to Clare's musing remonstrances of himself for hesitating to tell his parents more about Tess when he went to them for counsel on marrying. It indicates clearly how Hardy directly incorporates his belief in a controlling fate of accidental and coincidental circumstance intertwined with good or bad luck as Clare considers "the accidents" of Tess's life, though he as yet does not know the reality of the details of the worst of these accidents.

Some references to this principle of Hardy's, which he later called Immanent Will, are indirect; they are implied by character thoughts and statements or events or surroundings. An instance of this is when Tess is remonstrating with herself over being too diffident to write to Clare during their estrangement while he is in Brazil. She meets greater suffering and tragedy than she might have otherwise because of accidental consequences from not exerting herself sooner and more directly:

[Tess]: "I won't dally like this any longer! I have been very wrong and neglectful in leaving everything to be done by him."

Tess has delayed and thus by accidental neglect sets up the opportunities for greater troubles that lead to despair and the eventual abandonment of her good principles that might have (not surely, but perhaps) led her down a less fateful course.

It is through characterization such as this and through events surrounding them that Hardy incorporates his principle--which may be described as the "omnipotent power of destiny or fate"--that fate's luck, accidents, coincidences, and historical impetuses arbitrarily and mercilessly order the affairs of human lives.