When people dear to us experience misfortune, we may offer them sympathy even as we might be thinking their misfortune was partly their own fault. The Tess novel is largely about a wonderful girl we may come to care a lot about who suffers great hardships. We're led to believe these misfortunes were all the fault of others. Hardy's brilliant writing contributes to the understanding that all of Tess' troubles are the result of bad luck, social injustice and a cruel fate. Tess' miseries and how she bears them seem to exalt her to sympathetic readers.
But, what if Tess' choices made at least some of her hardships likely? Perhaps the most prominent of all Tess' qualities is her uncompromising virtue, a choice. All choices have consequences, including doing the honorable thing. Tess knew she risked everything in her wedding night confession, but she chose to do it because she preferred to risk her happiness and fulfillment rather than compromise her sense of honor. Her choice not only had devastating results for her, it also made Angel miserable. Most of us regardless of how honorable we imagine ourselves, temper our honesty an ethical behavior somewhat to assure our well-being. We all tell white lies, partial truths rather than the whole truth and justify it all thinking if there's no real harm done there's no foul. Tess won't compromise her virtuous conduct to her well-being, and the result is her misery. She bears it so stoically it seems she takes her hardships as if they're due. But these hardships don't result from any compromise she's made with virtue. Rather, her hardships result from not compromising her virtue.
One moral of this novel might be that to survive satisfactorily in her world (and ours) requires some balance between virtue and personal well-being. Perhaps Tess would have done better to move a little towards Joan's example. Both she and Angel might've been happier for the difference.