While coincidence impacts everyone, few experience its effects as intensely as Tess. Angel's serious illness in Brazil intensifies Tess's poverty and despair over his delayed return. Their extended separation leads to her father's death, her family's eviction, and Tess unwillingly becoming Alec's mistress to prevent her siblings from becoming homeless. Meanwhile, during a discussion with a free-spirited British settler in Brazil, the ailing Angel finally recognizes his own self-righteousness and the negative influence of the Victorian values he detests. He forgives Tess and eagerly seeks reconciliation. However, his illness delays his return and receipt of crucial information, including Tess's initial letter expressing her grievances about his harshness and her concerns about her material and spiritual well-being. At one point, Hardy explicitly laments Tess's struggle against the forces of fate: "Tess hoped for some accident which might favor her, but nothing favored her."

The way Hardy balances personal responsibility and fate is best demonstrated in a scene many critics consider key to the plot and theme of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. While at Talbothay's farm, Tess wrestles with her doubts about the growing love between her and Angel. Despite feeling unworthy of his affection due to her past with Alec, she is unable to confess directly. As their love progresses toward marriage, she makes several attempts to reveal her past, but each time she is either reassured by Angel's optimism about their future or held back by her own conflicting desire to remain silent. Less than a week before their wedding, Tess chooses a less direct method by writing a letter to Angel about her past and sliding it under his door. Mistaking his silence on the matter as forgiveness, Tess proceeds with the wedding, feeling more at peace than she has since realizing the mutual nature of their love. The day before the wedding, she accidentally discovers that the letter had slipped beneath a carpet and was never seen by Angel. This twist of fate, the unread letter, triggers Angel's extreme reaction to Tess's confession the day after their wedding.

It is truly unfortunate that the letter went unnoticed. Nevertheless, Tess had understandably postponed her confession for several weeks, hoping for a favorable outcome. In any Hardy novel, things rarely end well. She considers following her mother's pragmatic, albeit morally dubious, advice that what Angel doesn't know won't harm him (or Tess). However, the key issue is that Tess does have options. She can insist on confessing or remain silent, hoping Angel will ignore any rumors. Her choice to take an indirect approach to confession sets off the disastrous events leading to her downfall. Although Tess's options are heavily restricted by fate and circumstance, it is crucial to Hardy's tragedy that she makes decisions, often poor ones, that direct her toward a sorrowful end. If she were simply another victim of the "President of the Immortals," we might feel sympathy for her, but the novel would lack the tragic catharsis of emotions such as pity and fear. By recognizing her as, in Conrad's memorable phrase, "one of us," someone trying to live ethically within restrictive conditions, and seeing that her well-meaning choices frequently result in disastrous consequences, Tess of the D'Urbervilles captures the essence of true tragedy.