Tess of the D'urbervilles.

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Tess of the D’urbervilles

 Chapter 31

Alexis Canoy

Ms. Fanara

A.P. English

November 10, 2003

Chapter 31

        The depth of artistic unity found in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles pervades every chapter of the novel. No one chapter is less important than another because each is essential in order to tell the tragic tale of Tess Durbeyfield. There is never an instance in Hardy’s prose that suggests frill or excess. Themes of the Industrial Revolution in England, the status of women during Victorian England, Christianity vs. Paganism, matters of nobility, and the role that fatalism plays in life weave together with various symbols to create an amazing flow to his novel.  

        At the beginning of chapter thirty-one, Joan Durbeyfield has just sent a letter with her advice to Tess. She tells Tess to keep her past from Angel a secret. Tess’ mother is a practical woman who knows that Angel will be like most men and will reject Tess once he discovers the truth. It is important that Joan makes an appearance in this chapter because Tess’ parents’ influence on their daughter is integral to the plot of the novel from the beginning. In fact, a line can be traced from Tess to her parents to the effect of the Industrial Revolution on the peasantry of England.

        At the beginning of the novel, Tess offers to go Casterbridge to deliver the beehives that her father was supposed to deliver. John Durbeyfield is unable to make this delivery because he has yet again inebriated after having made a visit to Rolliver’s Inn. Tess’ father is just one example of the many victims of the Industrial Revolution. He and Joan are “representatives of the disaffected and drunken villagers whose houses will soon fall to larger farms mass-producing crops for mass consumption.” The villagers of Wessex and other similar areas in England, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, have turned to drinking because of their economic deprivation. Because John Durbeyfield is drunk, Tess takes it upon herself to go to Casterbridge with their horse Prince (the transportation for making the means of their living) who is impaled in his breast by a mail-cart coming from the opposite direction. Now that Prince is dead Tess is persuaded by her mother to go claim her kin from the Chase, which of course sets everything in motion for Tess’ troubles.

        But to be more exact, it is the combination of Tess’ obligation to her parents and Tess’ pride that are her undoing. In the letter that Joan has just sent her daughter, she makes note of Tess’ “Childish Nature.” Her “Childish Nature” being her simpleness to tell “all that’s in [her] heart,” her inability to keep quiet what should be kept quiet. Because Tess is not only ‘higher’ in blood than her peers, but also more true in her purity and her morals (as Hardy implies by the full title of the novel) it is an innate sense in her to feel pride. Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a tragic novel and its tragic hero is Tess. Her flaw, like Oedipus, is pride – the pride that she carries in her goodness more so than in the royalty of her name. It is her pride that will not allow her to ask for help with the beehive delivery and call upon “some young feller...who were so much after dancing with” (41) her from the May Day dance as her mother suggests. It is her pride that causes her to take responsibility for the death of Prince thus forcing her to go claim kin with Alec D’urberville. It is her pride that will not allow her to tell Alec that she is pregnant with his child. And finally, it is her pride that will make her tell Angel of her tainted past.

In a later scene in chapter thirty-one, Tess and Angel are sitting by themselves in the glow of the firelight one evening when their happiness is disrupted by Mr. and Mrs. Crick and two of the dairymaids. The party discover the couple sharing a private moment and in shame, Tess, who is seated on Angel’s lap, “[springs] like an elastic ball from his side to her feet” (213). She automatically assumes that Mr. Crick and the others think that she and Angel have been sharing in some sort of inappropriate contact. On the contrary, had she not said anything, Mr. Crick would not have noticed in the dark light of the room. Tess, by her pride, is compelled to talk when she does not need to.

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At this point in the novel, it is the month of October – the season of autumn. Autumn, in Greek mythology, is the season of the year when Persephone has just left her mother Demeter and is sent back to Hades and the Underworld. It is the limbo between spring and winter, winter being the period on earth when mortals suffered from the wrath of Demeter’s loss and sorrow. Throughout the novel, Hardy often parallels Tess to the Greek figure of Persephone. Persephone was stolen away in a carriage by Hades, just as Tess was taken to The Chase in ...

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