The tragic lack (King)

One thing she admired about Hardy was the inevitability of his tragedies. He was right up there with the Greeks, the way Tess for example picked up steam. You felt the first spasm of motion in the very first scene, then with each subsequent scene the tragedy gathered power. But life itself was nothing like that. In life the lack of inevitabiliity—the lack of any design at all—was the tragedy.

Lily King, The English Teacher