As the callow kid that I was at the time we read Tess of the D'urbervilles, I couldn't viscerally understand the reaction of the people of the time. In our era of (fairly) casual teenage sex, the idea that the public would have castigated him for that subtitle just... seemed inconceivable. I could accept it with my brain, but somehow the truth of it couldn't register.

Now, older, and having seen more of the world, I do understand. Humans! They make their own lives so difficult.