Hardy draws a distinction between superficial knowledge and a profound understanding that nurtures awareness of others' needs and desires, highlighting a natural law that stands apart from human constructs. Throughout the novel, he frequently insists that Tess's experiences clash not with nature, but with societal norms. After Tess returns home pregnant following her encounter with Alec, she chooses to walk in the countryside during the evening, distancing herself from the judgmental townspeople, yet she feels unworthy of the natural beauty around her. Hardy notes, "She had been made to break an accepted social law," but adds, "no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly." Later, Hardy comments that Tess's sense of shame arose from "a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature." Victorian society, with its strict code of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, was anything but natural.