Purity + morality How Tess is pure - She looked absolutely pure.

Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air. Questioning meaning of purity/morality - Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? - Who was the moral man? Still more pertinently, who was the moral woman? The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed. - her moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency Fate cruel Nature's law Why tess fate is bad - Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it, Tess? - (tess people say) "It was to be." There lay the pity of it. Rape - where was Tess guardian angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps he was talking or... sleeping and not to be awaked. - Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive Unlucky in love - Thus the thing began she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by the desired one... o her fate grants her the wrong man - In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Societal justice in relation to tess fate - I shouldn't mind learning whywhy the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike But that's what books will not tell me. - "Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. o Hardy mocks societal justice. This is the way life is; world will not stop for tess Other/ the universe - the thought of the world's concern at her situationwas founded on an illusion o The universe is indifferent to Tess Double standards Angels hypocrisy - Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are another. My Godhow can forgiveness meet such a grotesqueprestidigitation as that!" - He looked upon her as a species of imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one - You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit - Decrepit families imply decrepit conduct here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy!"

When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line why had he not stoically abandoned her, in fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and his punishment was deserved. o Hypocritical; he was happy with this discovery because then he could show her off to his mother, and he laments his own hypocrisy here I have not told of anything that interferes with or belies my love for you. It is in your own mind what you are angry at, Angel Oh it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you think me!" o She hasnt said anything which makes her love impure In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire. o Through his narrow vision he sees only her faults where there is also compassion

Tess innocence of the sexual double-standards - Could intensity of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases; and she had no counsellor. - This, from him had the effect upon her of a Providential interposition. - No, it cannot be more serious, certainly because 'tis just the same! Double standards between men and women in Church - it appalled her, this change in their relative platforms. He who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit, while she remained unregenerate. injustice between men and women: church has forgiven alec but not tess Victorian society Nature vs. Society - She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly - But for the world's opinion those experiences would have been simply a liberal education. - [it was] based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature. o Tess has behaved in accordance with natural justice, which is eternal, not arbitrary. - All is trouble outside there; inside here content It was quite true; within was affection, union, error forgiven: outside was the inexorable. - outside humanity she had at present no fear. o Outside the bounds of society tess is fearless; she is natures child - I am only a peasant by position, not by nature! Victorian society trapping/taming tess - she began to trace imaginary patterns with the constraint of a domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched. o allusions to entrapment; like Alec tames tess to whistle like a budgie, angel similarly watches her. Like the bird analogy, it is demonstrated how tess is hunted by Victorian standards - Their gauzy skirts had brushed up [against] innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary. o pattern of a net on tess represents tess trapped by the social standards; the net is closing in on her angels hypocrisy in rejecting his conventional aspects - For your own sake I rejoice in your descent. Society is hopelessly snobbish, and this fact of your extraction may make an appreciable difference to its acceptance of you as my wife - [he would] impart [his intent to marry her] while triumphantly producing her as worthy Perhaps Tess's lineage had more value for himself than for anybody in the world beside. - With all his attempted independence of judgement, this well-meaning young man was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into her early teachings.

o His upbringing suppresses his love for tess Within the remote depths of his constitution there lay hidden a hard logical deposit It had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it blocked his acceptance of Tess.

Stupid judgements of society examples - "Some imposter who wished to come into the town barefoot, perhaps, and so excite our sympathies," said Miss Chant. Victorian judgements are wrong - [Angel learnt that there is] less difference between the good woman of one social stratum and the good woman of another social stratum, than between the good and bad, the wise and the foolish, of the same class. o It is not class which makes a woman good or bad - he could regard her in no other light than that of one who had practised gross deceit upon him. Yet could a woman who had done even what she had done deserve all this? hardy questions the validity of Victorian judgement other - Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations

- THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT

Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a bygone herself. she will never be forgiven until she dies, which by then, is too late

Responsibility/ whos to blame Responsibility/guilt seen through tess - "Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to her eyes. Go to a public-house to get up his strength! - Tis all my doingall mine! ... No excuse for menone. What will mother and father live on now? - Nobody blamed Tess as she blamed herself. - Her face was dry and pale, as though she regarded herself in the light of a murderess. - She turned andregarded the little group. Something seemed to quicken her to a determination; possibly the thought that she had killed Prince. - she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of Innocence - After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise Parents fault - Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the family burdens, and that Tess should be the representative of the Durbeyfields at the d'Urberville mansion came as a thing of course. - Why didn't ye think of doing some good for your family instead o' thinking only of yourself? See how I've got to teave and slave, and your poor weak father with his heart clogged like a dripping-pan. - I was a child when I left this house four months ago. Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you warn me? Tess is too passive/ submissive unto others - If Tess had been artful, had she made a scene, fainted, wept hysterically he would probably not have withstood her. But her mood of long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she herself was his best advocate. - Pride, too, entered into her submission and the many effective chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched. other

on no account do you say a word of your Bygone Trouble to him why should you Trumpet yours when others don't Trumpet theirs?

Social change/ mechanisation Old customs - The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain The May-Day dance, for instancein the guise of"club-walking" o Immemorial may day dance Reaper and social change at marlott - the reaping-machine.. [had] a look of having been dipped in liquid fire - the arms of the mechanical reaper revolving slowly - Rabbits, hares, snakes retreated inwards unaware of the ephemeral nature of their refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later in the day when they were every one put to death by theharvesters social change at flintcomb - the red tyrant that the women had come to servekept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves. - He was in the agricultural world, but not of it. - The creatures had crept downwards till they were all together at the bottom, and now uncovered from their last refuge, they ran across the ground in all directions Effects on people, village life - A depopulation was also going on These families, who had formed the backbone of the village life [and] who were the depositaries of the village traditions, had to seek refuge in the large centres; the process, humorously designated by statisticians as "the tendency of the rural population towards the large towns", being really the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery. other - So do flux and refluxthe rhythm of changealternate and persist in everything under the sky. Religion Tess view - (tess): "But perhaps I don't quite know the Lord as yet." Angels attitude - I love the Church as one loves a parent but I cannot honestly be ordained her minister while she refuses to liberate her mind from an untenable redemptive theolarty - I can't be a parson My whole instinct in matters of religion is towards reconstruction; to quote 'the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.' o new and advanced ideas threatening conventional Christianity angel represents these modern ideas and mr clare represents the classical ways (mr clare has a somewhat narrow scope of mind towards his sons religious exploration; he cannot understand it because he cannot look beyond Christianity. Alecs religion - My religious mania, or whatever it was, is over - animalism had become fanaticism - It was less a reform than a transfiguration The lineaments, as such, seemed to complain. They had been diverted from their hereditary connotation to signify impressions for which Nature did not intend them. criticising of systemised, modern religion

women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their souls far more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the systematized religion taught their race at later date. it carries us back to medieval times, when faith was a living thing!" o there was more pure faith and love for religion than rules and regulations [Tess] was expressing feelings which might almost have been called those of the agethe ache of modernism o Hardy challenges the worth of Christianity; he feels that it has run its course and now just an empty set of rules which are thoughtless and meaningless modernism dislocates and uproots people

Nature Animal allusions - Like a trapped bird - Tess, like a fascinated bird, could not leave the spot - She went stealthily as a cat - the suspended attitude of a friendly leopard at pause - winced like a wounded animal - she seemed to flinch under [angels love] like a plant burning under a sun How tess is natural - The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her. - Every see-saw of her breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was a voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness. - [tess] was so far-reaching in her influence as to spread into and make the whole overhanging sky throb with a burning sensibility. tess presence brings alive the landscape of talbothays Names/ ancestry Durbefields pride of ancestry and plan - Sir John d'Urbervillethat's who I am That is if knights were baronets - my projick is to send Tess to claim kin." Uselessness of ancestry - Pedigree did not help Tess in her life's battle as yet, even to the extent of attracting to her a dancingpartner over the heads of the commonest peasantry - the bones of her ancestorsher useless ancestorslay entombed. She had no admiration for them now; she almost hated them for the dance they had led her other - how are the mighty fallen Other [tess would not stoop to] convulsive snatching at social salvation our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes. They are better women than I," she replied, magnanimously sticking to her resolve My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances!

Red motif - She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only one who could boast of such a pronounced adornment. - she became splashed from face to skirt with the crimson drops. - A piece of blood-stained paper beat up and down the road too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away

Tess Innocence, child - mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes - Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. - Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. - to almost everybody she was a fine and picturesque country girl, and no more Early woman - She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a fullness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was. - her figure belied her age, [causing] her to be estimated as a woman when she was not much more than a child. - And there was revived in her the wretched sentiment that in inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her she was somehow doing wrong. natural - Upon her sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through her existence all her fellow-creatures existed to her. tess is impulsive, sensitive and defined by her emotions and her intentions, not the consequences. Hardy thinks this is also how we should judge tess, and thats why she is considered by him pure, albeit not by society. What rape does to tess maturity - Tess passing corporeal blight had been her mental harvest. - Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to complex woman. Symbols of reflectiveness passed into her face, and a note of tragedy at times into her voice. She became what would have been called a fine creature Effects of Alecs control - his original Tess had spiritually ceasedallowing [her body] to drift, like a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its living will. Other - With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself Love Tess pure love - her own heart was so strongly on the side of histwo ardent hearts against one poor little conscience - Neither a religious sense of a certain moral validity in the previous union nor a conscientious wish for candour could hold out against it much longer. She loved him so passionately, and her nature cried for his tutelary guidance. - There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare he would sometimes catch her looking at him as if she saw something immortal before her. - Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere - Clare knew that she loved him but he did not know the full depth of her devotion what long-suffering it guaranteed, what honesty, what endurance, what good faith.

Angels idealism - [Angel was/was no longer] passion's slave o He was driven towards her by every heave of his pulse - [Angel] loved desperately, but [it was] with a love more especially inclined to the imaginative and ethereal - Clare's love was doubtless ethereal to a fault, imaginative to impracticability, [with him] creating an ideal presence that conveniently drops the defects of the real. - What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!" - She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of womana whole sex condensed into one typical form. o He moulds her to be his divine creature artemis, demeter Alecs love/lust - said by alec there was never before such a beautiful thing in Nature or Art as you look, 'Cousin' Tess ('Cousin' had a faint ring of mockery). - the cruelty of lust alec succumbed unto this Landcape Marlott a world in transition - Marlott [was] an engirdled and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape-painter - This fertile and sheltered tract of country Flintcomb - starve-acre place - the whole field was in colour a desolate drab; it was a complexion without features as if a face// a white vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone. stonehenge - A very Temple of the Winds the heathen temple - the whole enormous landscape bore reserve, taciturnity, and hesitation The place where tess dies - Against these far stretches of country rose a large red-brick building and rows of short barred windows bespeaking captivity Tess part of landscape, natural - Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape - It was they that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she - she felt akin to the landscape Nature and tess mirroring eachother - The atmosphere turned pale the lane showed all its white features, and Tess showed hers, still whiter. - her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. - At times [she] would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it The midnight airs and gusts, moaning were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness - Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung upon Tess eyelashesWhen the day grew quite strong and commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess [too] then lost her strange and ethereal beauty o in beautiful weather Tess is more beautiful; but the ethereal beauty slightly lessens in more common weather her beauty is also mirrored through weather as well as nature

The season developed and matured. Another year's installment of flowers took up their positions where only a year ago [they] were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. o Mirrors both relationship of tess and angel as well as her maturity

Tess sexual awakening mirrored through land the garden in which Tess found herself had been left uncultivated for some years, and was now damp and rank She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which made madder stains on her skin o the coming together of man and woman; tess and angel like Adam and eve; Adam is unaware of eves creation until he suddenly just wakes to see her other - The air of the place was stagnant and enervating now...Its heavy scents weighed upon them, And as Clare was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for Tess o angel even mirroring landscape and weather - perhaps in that country of contrasting notions and habits, the conventions would not be so operative which made life with her seem impracticable to him here when angel is dislodged from conventional attitudes and reconnected with nature he is able to love tess again Alec He had an almost swarthy complexion [with] touches of barbarism in his contours a damn bad fellow. new rich an Enemy in the shape of a Friend

Tess and alec rape stuff (including allusions to the rape) - "Nonsense!" he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips and took it in. - Tess Durbeyfield did not divine that [in alec lay] potentially the "tragic mischief" of her dramaone who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in her life. - she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing, and her views of life had been totally changed for her by the lesson - That haunting episode of bygone days Alecs persuasion - she was more pliable under his hands owing to her unavoidable dependence upon him. - you had used your cruel persuasion upon me ... you did not stop using it!... My little sisters and brothers and my mother's needsthey were the things you moved me by ... and you said my husband would never come backnever! - adroit advantage of her helplessness - The little finger of the sham d'Urberville can do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath.... Now command me. What shall I do? (alec) Alecs temptation - "Tess, I was on the way to social salvation till I saw you again! ...why then have you tempted me? surely there never was such a maddening mouth since Eve's - You temptress, Tess; you dear damned witch of BabylonI could not resist you as soon as I met you again!"

What a grand revenge you have taken! I saw you innocent, and I deceived you. Four years after, you find me a Christian enthusiast; you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete perdition! A jester might say this is just like Paradise. You are Eve, and I am the old Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal.

alecs dominance - Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife you are mine!" Angel description - there was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire That he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might only have been predicted of him. Angels other idealistic views - He wore the ordinary [clothes] of a dairy-farmer when milking but beneath it was something educated, differing. - At times it did seem unaccountable to her that a decidedly bookish man should have chosen deliberately to be a farmer o angel romanticising labour, while it is survival for tess angels conscience, his respect for tess - Despite his faults Clare was a man with a conscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss; but a woman living her precious life ** hardy shows what modern man has become through alec and angel, and contrasts them with tess, whose is pure in her intentions and sincere in her beliefs Parents - [Joans] instinctive plan for relieving herself of her labours lay in postponing them. - Durbeyfield was a slack-twisted fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement Mr clare - He was a man not merely religious, but devout; a firm believer o He is sincere - he had in his raw youth made up his mind once for all in the deeper questions of existence, and admitted no further reasoning on them thenceforward. o He is narrow minded, stubborn and cannot fathom a world beyond his religion other - six helpless creatures - tall budding creaturehalf girl, half womana spiritualized image of Tess, slighter than she, but with the same beautiful eyesClare's sister-in-law, 'Liza-Lu. o The beauty without the sin; the unblemished tess