Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Study Guide (2024)

So the baby wascarried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyardthat night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling anda pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotmentwhere He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notoriousdrunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. Inspite of the untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a littlecross of two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers,she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could enterthe churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also a bunch ofthe same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them alive. Whatmatter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere observationnoted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"? The eye of maternal affection didnot see them in its vision of higher things.

Shesaw by degrees that since their first and only encounter his mobile facehad grown more thoughtful, and had acquired a young man's shapely moustacheand beard–the latter of the palest straw colour where it began upon hischeeks, and deepening to a warm brown farther from its root.

Hewas getting to behave like a farmer; he flung his legs about; the musclesof his face had grown more expressive; his eyes looked as much informationas his tongue spoke, and more. The manner of the scholar had nearly disappeared;still more the manner of the drawing-room young man. A prig wouldhave said that he had lost culture, and a prude that he had become coarse.Such was the contagion of domiciliary fellowship with the Talbothays nymphsand swains.

"Ishall give way–I shall say yes–I shall let myself marry him–I cannot helpit!" she jealously panted, with her hot face to the pillow that night,on hearing one of the other girls sigh his [Angel’s] name in her sleep.

Theywere simple and innocent girls on whom the unhappiness of unrequited lovehad fallen; they had deserved better at the hands of Fate. She had deservedworse–yet she was the chosen one. It was wicked of her to take all withoutpaying. She would pay to the uttermost farthing; she would tell [abouther past], there and then. This final determination she came to when shelooked into the fire, he holding her hand.

......."Ah!poor Angel, poor Angel! I never see that nice girl [Mercy Chant] withoutmore and more regretting his precipitancy in throwing himself away upona dairymaid, or whatever she may be. It is a queer business, apparently.Whether she has joined him yet or not I don't know; but she had not doneso some months ago when I heard from him."
.......""Ican't say. He never tells me anything nowadays. His ill-considered marriageseems to have completed that estrangement from me which was begun by hisextraordinary opinions."

Ihate him now, because he told me a lie–that you would not come again; andyou HAVE come! These clothes are what he's put upon me: I didn'tcare what he did wi' me! But–will you go away, Angel, please, andnever come any more?

Most of the action takesplace in the late 19th Century in Southwestern England in the county ofWessex, the fictional name of Dorset County. The town where Tess lives,Marlott (fictional), is four hours from London by horse-drawn coach orwagon. In Chapter 41, the action shifts for a time to Curitiba, Brazil,where Angel Clare and other Englishmen discover that the promise of richesis an ignis fatuus. In Chapter 58, the scene shifts to the prehistoricmonument of Stonehenge, north of the town of Salisbury, England, in thecounty of Wiltshire. Author Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset County in 1840and died there in 1928. Because he knew the county intimately, his descriptionsof its landscape, its people, and its customs ring with authenticity.

Characters

Tess Durbeyfield:Intelligent, sensitive, and attractive teenager who lives with her impoverishedfamily in the village of Marlott in Southwestern England. She is a diligentworker who helps her father support the family and assists her mother inlooking after the younger children. The narrator says Tess has completedthe Sixth Standard in the National School under a London teacher and, therefore,can speak two languages: the local dialect and standard English. She couldhave become a teacher but had to abandon her studies to go to work at home.After her father discovers one day that he is descended from an aristocraticfamily, the d'Urbervilles, he and his wife send Tess to a wealthy familyof that name in the neighboring village of Trantridge. The idea is to haveTess prevail upon the members of the family, the Stoke-d'Urbervilles, toprovide financial help for their Marlott relatives. What Tess and her parentsdo not realize, however, is that the Trantridge d'Urbervilles–though indeedwealthy–are parvenus who adopted the d'Urberville name and are not relativesat all. Nevertheless, Tess lands a job there as a poultry keeper afterone of the family members, Alec, ogles the pretty Tess and plans to useher as his sexual plaything. Thereafter, all goes wrong for Tess as fateappears to single her out its plaything.
John Durbeyfield:Middle-aged father of Tess. He is a self-described haggler who peddlesgoods and works the land. But because he is lazy and irresponsible, hisfamily lives in constant want in a Marlott cottage. He relies heavily onTess to help keep the family going. When he discovers that he is a descendantof an aristocratic family (see Tess Durbeyfield,above) he hopes to capitalize on the cachet of that name.
Joan Durbeyfield:Mother of Tess. She is generally a pleasant, easygoing woman, althoughat times she manipulates Tess.
Abraham (Aby) Durbeyfield:Brother of Tess. He is nine years old at the beginning of the novel. Abyis with Tess on the night of the accident that kills their horse, Prince.
Eliza-Louisa (Liza-Lu)Durbeyfield: Sister of Tess. At the beginning of the novel, she istwelve years old. She is with Angel Clare at Salisbury when Tess is executed.
Hope and Modesty Durbeyfield:Very young sisters of Tess.
Durbeyfield Toddlers:Brothers of Tess, ages three and one at the beginning of the novel.
Simon Stoke-d'Urberville:Deceased businessman who made a fortune in northern England through hardwork and wise handling of money. Before moving to southwestern Englandto live in a quiet country setting, he researched the families that hadlived in that part of the country to find a name "that would not too readilyidentify him with the smart tradesman [that he was in] the past." Amongthe names of "extinct, half-extinct, obscured, and ruined families" hecame upon d'Urberville and, thinking it appropriate, "annexed itto his own name for himself and his heirs eternally." After his death,his wife and son continue to live on his estate in Trantridge. John andJoan Durbeyfield mistake the Stoke-d'Urbervilles as relatives.
Alexander (Alec) Stoke-d'Urberville:Son of Simon Stoke-d'Urberville. After Tess arrives at the Stoke-d'Urbervilleestate, he gives her a job as a poultry keeper and immediately makes sexualadvances toward her. Tess rejects them, but he persists. One evening, whileTess is asleep, he sees his opportunity and seizes it, forever changingher and sending her on a tragic journey.
Mrs. Stoke-d'Urberville:Mother of Alec d'Urberville and widow of Simon. She is blind and confinedto her home. One of Tess's tasks as a poultry keeper is to take chickensto Mrs. d'Urberville so that she can feel them.
Angel Clare: Sonof a vicar and the vicar's second wife. Although Angel's father wants himto be a minister, Angel, who has studied at Cambridge, wishes to pursuea career in agriculture. He is more open-minded to new ideas than the restof his family and more accepting of common folk. While studying agricultureat a dairy where Tess works, he falls in love with her, and they eventuallymarry. But when he learns about Tess's past, he leaves her shortly afterthe wedding.
Rev. James Clare:Vicar and father of Angel Clare. The narrator describes him as a "spiritualdescendant in the direct line from Wycliff, Huss, Luther, Calvin; an Evangelicalof the Evangelicals, a Conversionist, a man of Apostolic simplicity inlife and thought . . . [whose] creed of determinism was such that it almostamounted to a vice."
Cutherbert and FelixClare: Brothers of Angel Clare. Both become ministers. They look downupon common folk, including Tess.
Richard Crick: Masterdairyman at Talbothays Dairy, where Tess takes a job and falls in lovewith Angel Clare.
Mrs.Crick: Wife of Richard Crick.
Izz Huett, Retty Priddle,Marian: Milkmaids at Talbothays Dairy who befriend Tess and share aroom with her. They fall in love with Angel Clare and are broken-heartedwhen he marries Tess.
Mercy Chant: Prissyyoung woman who conducts Bible classes. Before Angel Clare meets Tess,his parents think she would make him a fine wife.
Car Darch: Shrewishyoung woman who was a favorite of Alec Stoke-d'Urberville before he metTess. She is nicknamed the Queen of Spades. When she picks a fight withTess, Alec comes to Tess's rescue.
Nancy Darch: CarDarch's sister, known as the Queen of Diamonds. She backs her sister inthe fight with Tess.
Car Darch's Mother
Deborah Fyander:Elderly worker at Talbothays dairy farm. She helps Tess with skimming whenother workers are unavailable.
Jonathan Kail: Talbothaysworker who informs Tess and Angel on their wedding night of the attemptedsuicide of Retty Priddle.
Bill Lewell, Beck Knibbs,Frances: Workers at Talbothays dairy farm.
Farmer Groby: Cruelsupervisor at Flintcombe-Ash dairy farm.
Amby Seedling: Manwho declares his love for Izz Huett when she is working at Flintcombe-Ash.
Mrs.Pitney: Angel’s late godmother, who bequeathed jewelry to the wifeof Angel.
Sister of Angel Clare:Oldest of Angel Clare's siblings. She had married a missionary and gonewith him to Africa. Her picture hangs in the Clare home.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles:A Pure Woman is a novel depicting the dreary life and tragic deathof country girl. Because the narrator maintains that she is a victim offorces she cannot control, literary critics have often characterized Tessas a naturalistic novel. (See below.) It waspublished in 1891.

Tessas a Naturalistic Novel

Tess of the d'Urbervilles:A Pure Woman exhibits the characteristics of literary naturalism, anextreme form of realismthatdeveloped inFrance in the 19th Century. It was inspired in part by the scientific determinismof Charles Darwin, an Englishman, and the economic determinism of KarlMarx and Friedrich Engels, both Germans. Four Frenchmen–Hippolyte Taine,Edmond and Jules Goncourt, and Emile Zola–applied the principles of scientificand economic determinism to literature to create literary naturalism. Accordingto its followers, literary naturalism stresses the following beliefs:

(1) Heredity and environmentare the major forces that shape human beings. In Tess, Cuthbertand Felix Clare exemplify this principle in that they adopt their father'sviews and follow him into the ministry. Angel Clare dares to entertaindifferent views and pursue a different career. However, when he learnsabout Tess's past, the mindset of his family asserts itself and he abandonsTess.
(2) Human beings have nofree will, or very little of it, because heredity and environment are sopowerful in determining the course of human action.
(3) Human beings, like loweranimals, have no soul. Religion and morality are irrelevant. (Hardy's narratorpromotes this position with preachments that are sometimes less than subtle.)
(4) A literary work shouldpresent life exactly as it is. In this respect, naturalism is akin to realism.However, naturalism goes further than realism in that it presents a moredetailed picture of everyday life. Whereas the realist writer omits insignificantdetails when depicting a particular scene, a naturalist writer generallyincludes them. He wants the scene to be as “natural" as possible.
(5) The naturalist writershould be painstakingly objective and detached. (Hardy, however, sometimesinjects his own views, allowing his narrator to rail against God and religion.)
(6) Rather than manipulatingcharacters as if they were puppets, the naturalist writer prefers to observethe characters as if they were animals in the wild. Then he reports ontheir activity.
(7) Naturalism attemptsto present dialogue as spoken in everyday life. Rather than putting “unnatural"wording in the mouth of a character, the naturalist writer attempts toreproduce the speech patterns of people in a particular time and place.(Hardy usually succeeds in this respect when presenting dialogue spokenby common folk, such as Tess's mother, Joan Durbeyfield. When she informsTess about her father's noble heritage, she says, "O yes! 'Tis thoughtedthat great things may come o't. No doubt a
mampus of volk of our ownrank will be down here in their carriages as soon as 'tis known. Your fatherlearnt it on his way hwome
from Shaston, and he hasbeen telling me the whole pedigree of the matter."

Pointof View

Thomas Hardy invests hisnarrator with omniscient, third-person point of view. In other words, thenarrator can present not only what people speak and say but also what theythink. Oftentimes, an omniscient narrator in a novel is objective, unbiased,reporting only what takes place. However, in Tess,Hardy frequentlyuses his narrator as a mouthpiece for his own opinions, as in the followingexample centering on the Durbeyfield children. In it, he characterizesthem as victims of a divine plan gone wrong:

All these youngsouls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship–entirely dependent on thejudgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures, their necessities,their health, even their existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield householdchose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation,death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under hatches compelledto sail with them–six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if theywished for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hardconditions as were involved in being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield.Some people would like to know whence the poet whose philosophy is in thesedays deemed as profound and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure,gets his authority for speaking of "Nature's holy plan."

"Justice" was done,and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended hissport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in theirtombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to theearth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless:the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, theyarose, joined hands again, and went on.

Tess of the d'Urbervillesis rich in nature imagery that establishes moods, presents allusions, makescomparisons, suggests the fate of Tess or another character, and presentsviews of the author. Here are examples:

From Chapter 14

It was a hazy sunrisein August. The denser nocturnal vapours, attacked by the warm beams, weredividing and shrinking into isolated fleeces within hollows and coverts,where they waited till they should be dried away to nothing. The sun, onaccount of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding themasculine pronoun for its adequate expression. His present aspect, coupledwith the lack of all human forms in the scene, explained the old-timeheliolatriesin a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailedunder the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed,God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth uponan earth that was brimming with interest for him. His light, a little later,broke though chinks of cottage shutters, throwing stripes like red-hotpokers upon cupboards, chests of drawers, and other furniture within; andawakening harvesters who were not already astir.
Comment: This paragraph isan extended metaphor in which the narrator personifies the sun.
Heliolatries: Religions thatworshipped the sun. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the sun god was namedRa. In ancient Greek mythology, the sun god was named Helios. Beginningin the Fifth Century BC, the Greeks began identifying Apollo as a sun god.
One . . . sky: This sentencepresents the view that "natural" religion is preferable to organized religion.

The river itself,which nourished the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed notlike the streams in Blackmoor. Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowingover beds of mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanishunawares. The Froom waters were clear as the pureRiver of Life shown to the Evangelist,rapidas the shadow of a cloud, withpebblyshallows that prattled to the sky all day long. There the water-flowerwas the lily; the crow-foot here.
.......Eitherthe change in the quality of the air from heavy to light, or the senseof being amid new scenes where there were no invidious eyes upon her, sentup her spirits wonderfully. Her hopes mingled with the sunshine in an idealphotosphere which surrounded her as she
bounded along against thesoftsouth wind. She heard a pleasant voicein every breeze, and in every bird's note seemed to lurk a joy.
Froom .. . Life: Simile.
From .. . cloud: Simile.
Pebbly. . . prattled: Alliteration and personifcation.
Soft south:Alliteration.
Pleasant. . . breeze: Personification.

July passed overtheir heads, and the Thermidorean weatherwhich came in its wake seemed an efforton the part of Nature to match the state of hearts at TalbothaysDairy. The air of the place, so fresh in the spring and early summer, wasstagnant and enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them, and atmid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon.Ethiopicscorchings browned the upper slopes of the pastures, but there was stillbright green herbage here where thewatercourses purled. And as Clare was oppressed by the outwardheats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for thesoftand silent Tess.
Thermidorean: Adjective referringto Thermidor, a month in the calendar used during the French Revolution.Thermidor began on July 20 (Gregorian calendar) and ended on August 18.
Effort. . . match: Personification.
Landscape. . . swoon: Personification.
Ethiopic: Adjective referringto the African country of Ethiopia.
Where thewatercourses: Alliteration.
Soft andsilent: Alliteration.

At first Tess seemedto regard Angel Clare as an intelligence rather than as a man. As suchshe compared him with herself; and at every discovery of the abundanceof his illuminations, of the distance between her own modest mental standpointand the unmeasurable,Andean altitude of his,she became quite dejected, disheartened from all further effort on herown part whatever.
Andean Altitude: Metaphorand hyperbole comparing Angel's intellect to the altitude of the Andes,a mountain range in South America with the highest peak in the westernhemisphere, Mount Aconcagua, which rises 22,831 feet.

Though theair was fresh and keen there was a whisper of spring in it thatcheered the workers on. Something in the place, the hours, the cracklingfires, the fantastic mysteries of light and shade,made others as well as Tess enjoy being there. Nightfall,which in the frost of winter comes as a fiendand in the warmth of summer as a lover, cameas a tranquillizer on this March day.
Air . .. it: Personification.
Mysteries. . . made: Alliteration.

Hardy alludes or directlyrefers to literature, including the Bible, and historical and mythologicalfigures to underscore themes or the qualities or attitudes of characters.Following are examples:

Chapter 19: Angel Clareas Peter the Great

It was true thathe [Angel Clare] was at present out of his class. But she [Tess] knew thatwas only because, like Peter the Great in a shipwright's yard, hewas studying what he wanted to know. He did not milk cows because he wasobliged to milk cows, but because he was learning to be a rich and prosperousdairyman, landowner, agriculturist, and breeder of cattle. He would becomean American or Australian Abraham, commanding like a monarch hisflocks and his herds, his spotted and his ring-straked, his men-servantsand his maids.
Peter the Great: Peter I(1672-1725), czar and later emperor of Russia who shaped his country intoa great power. Early in his rule, one of his priorities was to educatehimself about life in Europe and to learn technology that would empowerhis regime. To accomplish these tasks, he lived in Western Europe for atime under an assumed name. To gain the knowledge necessary to build aformidable navy, he worked as a carpenter in a Dutch shipyard and laterlabored in a British Royal Navy yard.
Abraham: Hebrew patriarchwho went forth in the Second Millennium BC. from his native city, Ur, tofound a great nation, supervising the tending of sheep and other animalsalong the way.

......."Whydo you look so woebegone all of a sudden?" he [Angel Clare] asked.
......."Oh,'tis only–about my own self," she said, with a frail laugh of sadness .. . . Just a sense of what might have been with me! My life looks as ifit had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know,what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!I'm like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in the Bible. There isno more spirit in me."
Queen of Sheba: Ruler ofSaba' (Sheba) in Arabia in the Tenth Century BC who visited King Solomonto test his knowledge and wisdom. Here was the result, as told in 3 Kings,Chapter 10, Verses 3-5:

And Solomon informed herof all the things she proposed to him: there was not any word the kingwas ignorant of, and which he could not answer her. And when the queenof Saba saw all the wisdom of Solomon, and the house which he had built,and the meat of his table, and the apartments of his servants, and theorder of his ministers, and their apparel, and the cupbearers, and theholocausts, which he offered in the house of the Lord, she had no longerany spirit in her.

Being so often–possiblynot always by chance–the first two persons to get up at the dairy-house,they [Angel and Tess] seemed to themselves the first persons up of allthe world. In these early days of her residence here Tess did not skim,but went out of doors at once after rising, where he was generally awaitingher. The spectral, half-compounded, aqueous light which pervaded the openmead impressed them with a feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam andEve.

.......Hisaspect was probably as un-Sabbatarian a one as a dogmatic parson's sonoften presented; his attire being his dairy clothes, long wading boots,a cabbage-leaf inside his hat to keep his head cool, with a thistle-spudto finish him off. "He's not going to church," said Marian.
......."No–Iwish he was!" murmured Tess.
.......Angel,in fact, rightly or wrongly (to adopt the safe phrase of evasive controversialists),preferredsermons in stones to sermons in churches and chapels onfine summer days.
Sermons in stones: Wordsspoken by Duke Senior in Scene 1 of Act 2 in Shakespeare's As You LikeIt. The duke is exulting in the advantages of life in the forest, wherenature speaks the sermons instead of a representative of organized religion.To access the As You Like It study guide, clickhere.

Having been lyingdown in her clothes she was warm as a sunned cat. At first she would notlook straight up at him, but her eyes soon lifted, and his plumbed thedeepness of the ever-varying pupils, with their radiating fibrils of blue,and black, and gray, and violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her secondwaking might have regarded Adam.

The outskirt ofthe garden in which Tess found herself had been left uncultivated for someyears, and was now damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists ofpollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells–weedswhose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling asthat of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat through this profusionof growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails thatwere underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, andrubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-whiteon the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drewquite near to Clare, still unobserved of him.

......."Angel!–Angel!I [Tess] was a child–a child when it happened! I knew nothing ofmen."
......."Youwere more sinned against than sinning, that I [Angel Clare] admit."
Sinned . . . sinning: InScene 2 of Act 3 of Shakespeare's play King Lear, the title charactersays, "I am a man / More sinn'd against than sinning." Lear had just beenrejected by two of his daughters, who are conspiring against him. To accessthe King Lear study guide, click here.

"I have donenothing!" said he indifferently. "Heaven, as I have been telling my hearers,has done all. No amount of contempt that you can pour upon me, Tess, willequal what I have poured upon myself–the old Adam of my former years!

......."Ajester might say this is just like Paradise. You are Eve, and I am theold Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal.I used to be quite up in that scene of Milton's when I was theological.Some of it goes–
"Empress, the way is ready,and not long,
Beyond a row of myrtles...
... If thou accept
My conduct, I can bringthee thither soon."
"Lead then," said Eve.
Milton's: Reference to JohnMilton (1608-1674), author of the great epic poem Paradise Lost.

Theclimax of the novel takes place on the wedding night of Tess and Angelafter Tess reveals to her new husband the details of her relationship withAlec d'Urberville. The key moment occurs when Angel rejects Tess, sayingthat her disclosure makes him realize that she is not the woman he believedher to be. His inability to accept Tess as she is precipitates the tragicevents that follow. There is a kind of secondary climax that occurs whenpolice catch up with and arrest Tess at Stonehenge.

.

Fatalism

Hardy presents a world inwhich circ*mstances beyond the control of Tess determine her destiny. Luck,chance, coincidence, and environmental forces continually work againstTess to entangle her in one predicament after another. Her social status,her accident with the horse, her row with Car Darch, the forest encounterwith Alec and the resulting pregnancy, the death of her father, the evictionof her family, and so on all weave her into a web from which there is noescape. The narrator calls attention to this theme in Chapter 11 afterAlec rapes–or seduces–Tess:

As Tess's own peopledown in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in theirfatalistic way: "It was to be." There lay the pity of it. An immeasurablesocial chasm was to divide our heroine's personality thereafter from thatprevious self of hers who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortuneat Trantridge poultry-farm.

In the 19th Century, malesdominated society and expected females to do their bidding. Tess’s resistanceto the advances of Alec succeed for a time, but he eventually entraps herafter continually harassing her. Although Angel loves Tess and marriesher, he abandons her shortly after their wedding when he discovers whathappened between her and Alec. It does not matter to him that he himselfhad an affair before he was married. Men may stray with impunity, he believes.Women may not. After Tess’s father, John Durbeyfield dies, his wife andchildren are evicted. It was he who was privileged to hold the lease totheir property, not his wife.

Prejudice

This theme manifests itselfin Chapter 2 when Angel Clare asks his brothers to attend the country Maydance with him. Felix replies, “Dancing in public with a troop of countryhoydens–suppose we should be seen!" In Chapter 40, Mercy Chant exhibitsan anti-Catholic bias after she hears that Angel is going abroad. Hereis the passage:

.......Shehad learnt that he was about to leave England, and observed what an excellentand promising scheme it seemed to be.
......."Yes;it is a likely scheme enough in a commercial sense, no doubt," he replied."But, my dear Mercy, it snaps the continuity of existence. Perhaps a cloisterwould be preferable."
......."Acloister! O, Angel Clare!"
......."Well?"
......."Why,you wicked man, a cloister implies a monk, and a monk Roman Catholicism."
......."AndRoman Catholicism sin, and sin damnation. Thou art in a parlous state,Angel Clare" [third person reference to himself].
......."Iglory in my Protestantism!" she said severely.

Angel Clare's brothers, Felixand Cuthbert, are conformists who adopt current fashions and adjust theirliterary and artistic tastes to whatever is popular at the time. They seemto represent the conformists in the general population who exhibit littleoriginal thinking and lack the courage to consider news ideas or challengeestablished ideas. In the following passage from Chapter 25, the narratordiscusses their conformacy:

After breakfasthe walked with his two brothers, non-evangelical, well-educated, hall-markedyoung men, correct to their remotest fibre, such unimpeachable models asare turned out yearly by the lathe of a systematic tuition. They were bothsomewhat short-sighted, and when it was the custom to wear a single eyeglassand string they wore a single eyeglass and string; when it was the customto wear a double glass they wore a double glass; when it was the customto wear spectacles they wore spectacles straightway, all without referenceto the particular variety of defect in their own vision. When Wordsworthwas enthroned they carried pocket copies; and when Shelley was belittledthey allowed him to grow dusty on their shelves. When Correggio's HolyFamilies were admired, they admired Correggio's Holy Families; when hewas decried in favour of Velasquez, they sedulously followed suit withoutany personal objection.

After John Durbeyfield learnsthat he has noble ancestors, he and his wife hatch a "projick," as JoanDurbeyfield calls it, to send Tess on a mission to claim a relationshipwith a wealthy family, the Stoke-d'Urbervilles, that the Durbeyfields mistakenlybelieve has descended from the same ancestors. Their goal is straightforwardand crass: to establish kinship with the Stoke-d'Urbervilles and therebyqualify for financial assistance from them. The Durbeyfields entertainthe hope that Tess may even marry into the family and become a source ofbenefactions. When Tess first resists the idea, the Durbeyfield childrenjoin their voices with those of their parents in urging Tess to seek outthe Stoke-d'Urbervilles, saying that if Tess does not accede to the plan,"we shan't have a nice new horse, and lots o' golden money to buy fairlings!"Later in the novel, Alec d'Urberville uses money to attempt to win Tess.He succeeds. Here is the scenario: After John Durbeyfield dies and hisfamily is evicted, Alec offers to house the Durbeyfields if Tess will yieldto him. Tess–ever concerned about the welfare of her family–accepts hisproposition.

Situational Irony

Tess Durbeyfield and herfamily are commoners descended from nobility. Alec d'Urberville and hismother are wealthy landowners who, though perceived as nobility, are reallymembers of the bourgeois class. It seems that Hardy intends this situationalirony as a rebuke of society's excessive emphasis on lineage and materialpossessions–or, in short, name recognition and appearances. True nobility,he says, lies in the heart, not in a genealogical table or a wallet. Itis also ironic that Tess, a young woman of modest education, intuitivelyknows more about what really matters in life than either Angel Clare orAlec d'Urberville, both exhibiting a knowledge of literature, art, philosophy,and religion but lacking in the knowledge to make the right moral decisions.

Dramatic Irony

Hardy uses dramaticirony to create suspense or to reveal a truth, a situation, an attitude,or a trait of which at least one character is unaware. In the climax ofthe story, for example, dramatic irony reveals a bias in Angel of whichhe is ignorant. The moment occurs when he has a change of heart after Tesstells him about her past. Previously, he had declared himself more tolerantand less judgmental than his brothers, as well as Victorian society ingeneral. But this moment reveals him as just as biased as his brothersin regard to what they deem acceptable or unacceptable conduct for a woman.However, he is blind to this shortcoming; to him, it is Tess who is blameworthy.The narrator stresses his self-blindness later, when Angel visits his parents.At supper, they have a Bible reading from Chapter 31 of the Book of Proverbs,Verses 10-31, in which King Lemuel reports a vision of his mother. In it,his mother instructs him in the ways and qualities of a of a wise and virtuouswife. Afterward, the narrator writes,

With all his attemptedindependence of judgement this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sampleproduct of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to customand conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings.No prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself,that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praiseof King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil,her moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency.

IronicThesis

One of Hardy's main thesesin Tess is that heredity, environment, and pure chance shape thelives of people. They have little or no free will. Ironically, however,Hardy rebukes Victorian society for its moral and social attitudes. Inother words, Hardy is condemning society for actions over which (he theorizes)it has no control.

StudyQuestions and Essay Topics

1. Write an essay analyzingthe significance of passages that present white or black (or light or dark)images. Following are several passages to get you started:

The district isof historic, no less than of topographical interest. The Vale was knownin former times as the Forest of White Hart, from a curious legend of KingHenry III's reign, in which the killing by a certain Thomas de la Lyndof a beautiful white hart which the king had run down and spared, was madethe occasion of a heavy fine. (Chapter 2)

In addition to the distinctionof a white frock, every woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeledwillow wand, and in her left a bunch of white flowers. The peeling of theformer, and the selection of the latter, had been an operation of personalcare. (Chapter 2)

The wind blew through Tess'swhite muslin to her very skin, and her washed hair flew out behind. Shewas determined to show no open fear, but she clutched d'Urberville's rein-arm.(Chapter 8)

The obscurity was now sogreat that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at hisfeet, which represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the deadleaves. Everything else was blackness alike. D'Urberville stooped; andheard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breathwarmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. Shewas sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears. (Chapter11)

Her [Tess's] figure lookedsingularly tall and imposing as she stood in her long white nightgown,a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to herwaist. (Chapter 14)