What is Hardy's attitude toward love and sex in Tess of the D'Urbervilles?

Here as elsewhere in Hardy's works love and sex wreak havoc on the lives of the poor and dispossessed. To see this in action, we need look no further than the example of Tess. Here is a young lady with deeply romantic ideals of love, but whose ideals are then shattered by the wicked Alec, who seduces, rapes, and abandons her, leaving her pregnant in the process.
Try as she might, Tess is unable to move on from this terrible ordeal. Though she still clings to the fond hope that she will one day find love, her violation at the hands of Alec follows her around wherever she goes. After she marries Angel Clare, a man that she genuinely loves, Tess tells him about what happened to her, perhaps expecting a sympathetic reaction. Yet instead Angel is horrified, not because his wife was sexually assaulted, but because she's not a virgin, which offends his pious sensibilities. The double standard regarding sex is used as here as a weapon of patriarchy to keep women, especially lower-class women like Tess, firmly in their place.
The overall message from all of this is pretty grim, to say the least. Love and sex are more trouble than they're worth. They lead people astray, causing them to do things they ordinarily wouldn't do. They distort one's perspectives, separating people from their true selves. What's more, they can so easily be appropriated by the dominant groups in society and used as a method of cementing their control over their alleged social inferiors.