Consumer Culture in Tess

Early in the novel, we see that Tess takes some care in how she looks, what she wears, but not more than any other girl at the May-Day dance in the Vale. She has on her "best frock" but it's just a plain white dress, and she has a red ribbon, which does separate her from the group, though arguably more for the symbolic nature of the color than for the commodity status of the ribbon. It seems to me that either way this early adornment, compared to the later costumes both Angel and Alec push her to wear, acts more as foil to consumer culture than an example of it. The decadent consumer culture is not localized from or created in Tess's Wessex, but is rather a cultural import from the large social centers of England, shipped out to the country towns, where Tess does not end up until she is living as Alec's mistress. It seems as if the consumer culture is pushed on her by the two men in her life, or, to say it another way, though Tess may not be interested in it, Angel and Alec are very interested in it for her. Angel buys a series of fancy gifts for her before the wedding, and treats her almost like a doll on their wedding night, asking her to dress up in the clothes he bought her and the family jewels from his father. As Alec's mistress it seems plausible that her outfits are dictated by him, especially as he has always been described with a certain care about his clothes. Is Hardy then criticizing consumer culture and its effect on the "pure" rural country as portrayed by Tess? Hardy himself "attain[ed] almost to dapperness" (ODNB), but the novel concerns itself with the (feminine) unsullied country, with the regional local culture of Wessex and its value, not with middle-class (male) writers who have a knack for social climbing.