TESS: Wed me? He’s never once said a wor...

TESS: Wed me? He’s never once said a word about making me his wife. He wants me to go back to him--that’s all. If he had wished to marry me, I might have agreed, to save myself from what may be coming. But mother, you don’t understand my feelings towards this man. Perhaps it is unusual, unnatural; but there it is; and it is this that makes me detest myself. I have never cared deeply for him. … I was, I suppose, blinded by his manners, for he, in a way, dazzled me. But I soon despised him, and now I’ve run away from him. Go back to him as before I will not. I hardly wish even to marry him if I could, for my name's sake.

[JOAN: Then you ought to have been more careful if you didn’t mean to get him to make you his wife.]

TESS: O mother, my mother! How could I be expected to know? I was not much more than a child when I left this house three months ago. Why didn’t you warn me there was danger in such men? I never had any chance of learning, and you did not help me.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles: The Stage Version, as Adapted by the Author. Edited by N. John McArthur. Lexicos Publishing. Kindle Edition, 2012.