Editing Tess of the d'Urbervilles (section)

=== Morality and society ===
The moral commentary running through the novel insists that ''Tess'' is not at fault, instead imposing mythological, biblical and folk imagery on a story of a young girl seduced and abandoned to create a "challenging contemporaneity".<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Hardy |first1=Thomas |title=Tess of the D'Urbervilles |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LwQUDAAAQBAJ&pg=PR13 |access-date=8 September 2019|isbn=9780199537051 |date=14 August 2008}}</ref> It was controversial and polarizing, setting these elements in a context of 19th-century English society, including disputes in the Church, the [[National school (England and Wales)|National School]] movement, the overall class structure of English society, and changing circumstances of rural labour. During the era of [[first-wave feminism]], civil divorce was introduced and campaigns were waged against child prostitution, moving gender and sexuality issues to the forefront of public discussion. Hardy's work was criticized as vulgar, but by the late 19th century other experimental fiction works were released such as [[Florence Dixie]]'s depiction of [[feminist utopia]], ''[[The Story of an African Farm]]'' by [[Olive Schreiner]], and [[Sarah Grand]]'s work ''The Heavenly Twins''. These raised awareness of [[syphilis]] and advocated sensitivity rather than condemnation for young women infected with it.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Kennedy |first1=Meegan |title=Syphilis and the hysterical female: the limits of realism in Sarah Grand's the heavenly twins |journal=Women's Writing |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=259–280 |doi=10.1080/09699080400200231|year=2004|s2cid=162372430}}</ref>