What are the implications of capitalism in Tess of the D'Urbervilles?

Capitalism is undoubtedly an important background theme in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. This is not altogether surprising when one considers the wider cultural context in which the story was conceived. At the time Thomas Hardy wrote the book, England was a highly developed, industrialized nation. In turn, a rapid and sustained period of growth had had a knock-on effect upon the countryside. Increased mechanization, urbanization, and industrial development radically changed the dynamics of both the rural economy and the society it generated. But by the 1870s, when the story is set, Britain was in the grip of a worldwide economic depression that devastated both urban and rural economies alike.
The tragic struggles that Tess endures throughout the novel are related not just to the cultural norms and values of Victorian Christianity but also to the growing upheavals in the countryside created by a fundamentally disruptive economic system.
Increased mechanization of agriculture has made farm work more efficient. Yet still agricultural laborers are expected to toil long hours in hard conditions. The old social bonds that bound farm workers to the land have been undermined by capitalism. Now the people of the countryside must work, and work hard, to satisfy the demands of the rapidly expanding urban populace. Even ancient agricultural practices must now conform to the dictates of a market economy. Milk, for example, needs to be watered down before being sold to the towns and cities as the people living there can no longer drink the full-fat variety.
In the figure of Tess we see an embodiment of the complexities of rural life under advanced capitalism and the conflicted social identities that it so often imposes. Tess's own social class is somewhat ambiguous. She believes herself to be descended from an old family of Norman aristocrats. In days gone by she might've been described as an artisan, but with the decline of feudalism and the subsequent advent of capitalism, that class of independent producers hardly exists. Now, she can be thought of as a reluctant member of a growing rural proletariat, or working class. Matters are complicated further by her attachment to aspects of bourgeois culture by virtue of an education that her parents never enjoyed.
Under capitalism, even human relationships are now just commodities like everything else, treated as things that no longer partake of a sense of the sacred. As members of the rural proletariat lose their connection to the soil, they lose connection with each other. This is what keeps them in a state of permanent subjection. Tess is now ripe for exploitation, both personal and economic. The symbolism of her rape at the hands of Alec is clear. The violation she suffers as a woman is paralleled by her being forced into a harsh, degrading life of toil at the behest of a cruel, unjust system.
Tess remains trapped. This is her ultimate tragedy. And this is also an oblique comment on capitalism as it stood at that particular time. On one hand, she has the natural intelligence and formal education to escape the increasing harshness of rural Wessex. Yet on the other, as not just a woman but a poor woman at that, she is prevented from doing so. Capitalism has created a large, impoverished proletariat in the countryside, and women like Tess are right at the bottom of it.