Conservative? Progressive? Hard to pin down Hardy

Ultimately all you can say about Angel Clare is: what a glass of water, what a prick. After his ardent courtship of Tess ("Tess of the D'Urbervilles") in which he literally bullies her into not telling his why she hesitates to marry, he coldly and cruelly drives her out when she does confess to her "sin" : basically raped be a horrible man and bore his child. So this guy Angel who seems so noble - he believes in the virtues of work, he despises the class society, he is a gentleman, attentive - is worse than any of them, completely a slave to social convention and opinion, evidently deeply attracted to Tess because of her so-called noble lineage. The whole story stems from this preposterous idea that Tess's family is fallen nobility, every sorrow she endures follows from that mistaken premise. Finally, Angel leaves England for Brazil, and I expect he will come back and plead for Tess's hand but it will be too late, she will have moved on, she's a survivor and a realist. Morally, socially, it's a very tricky novel, and hard to pin Thomas Hardy to any ideology - one of his strengths and the strength of this book. Is it deeply socially conservative? Yes, in a way, in the romanticism of the agrarian life, for example. Is it progressive? Yes, in another way, it obviously shows how the pointless remnants of class society and the English idolatry of the aristocracy is a poison in the well. It's also a very beautiful and moving story about the "sentimental education" of a young woman. You almost sense that Hardy was ahead of his time and could have written even bolder, more striking works if he had been free to write (and publish) more openly about sexual power and politics.