A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

The line contrasts innate capacity with the moral and practical responsibility to use it well. Hardy’s speaker judges “strength” (resilience, intelligence, will, or moral stamina) as a kind of endowment that carries obligations: to squander it through rash choices is presented as more blameworthy than never having possessed it. The comparison is deliberately harsh, implying that failure is not only a matter of circumstance but of agency—how one manages one’s gifts under pressure. Read in a Hardyian key, it also reflects his recurring concern with character meeting fate: even in a world shaped by accident and social constraint, self-sabotage can intensify tragedy.