It's a classic story. Rich boy meets poor girl. Boy seduces girl. Boy impregnates girl. Girl kills baby. Boy lives happily ever after. Maybe not so classic, but I wonder how the Cinderella story evolved in this strange way.
While considering this concept I have been thinking about Hetty in Adam Bede and Tess in Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The actions of Arthur and Alec do not leave the gentlemen blameless-perhaps in this life they might have received some sort of moral punishment, but Eliot and Hardy aim to illuminate society to the injustice of the working-class, uneducated woman.
Eliot praises virtue in the characters of Dinah and Adam and condemns the actions of Arthur and Hetty. I have just begun reading Tess, but I do not believe Hardy will have this same type of juxtaposition between right and wrong.
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