Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) by Thomas Hardy.

Context

Tess Durbeyfield -

The novel’s protagonist. is a beautiful, loyal young woman living with her impoverished family in the village of Marlott. Tess has a keen sense of responsibility and is committed to doing the best she can for her family, although her inexperience and lack of wise parenting leave her extremely vulnerable. Her life is complicated when her father discovers a link to the noble line of the d’Urbervilles, and, as a result, Tess is sent to work at the d’Urberville mansion. Unfortunately, her ideals cannot prevent her from sliding further and further into misfortune after she becomes pregnant by . The terrible irony is that Tess and her family are not really related to this branch of the d’Urbervilles at all: Alec’s father, a merchant named Simon Stokes, simply assumed the name after he retired.

Angel Clare -

An intelligent young man who has decided to become a farmer to preserve his intellectual freedom from the pressures of city life. ’s father and his two brothers are respected clergymen, but Angel’s religious doubts have kept him from joining the ministry. He meets Tess when she is a milkmaid at the Talbothays Dairy and quickly falls in love with her.

Alec d’Urberville -

The handsome, amoral son of a wealthy merchant named Simon Stokes. Alec is not really a d’Urberville—his father simply took on the name of the ancient noble family after he built his mansion and retired. Alec is a manipulative, sinister young man who does everything he can to seduce the inexperienced Tess when she comes to work for his family. When he finally has his way with her, out in the woods, he subsequently tries to help her but is unable to make her love him.

Mr. John Durbeyfield -

Tess’s father, a lazy peddler in Marlott. John is naturally quick, but he hates work. When he learns that he descends from the noble line of the d’Urbervilles, he is quick to make an attempt to profit from the connection.

Mrs. Joan Durbeyfield -

Tess’s mother. Joan has a strong sense of propriety and very particular hopes for Tess’s life. She is continually disappointed and hurt by the way in which her daughter’s life actually proceeds. But she is also somewhat simpleminded and naturally forgiving, and she is unable to remain angry with Tess—particularly once Tess becomes her primary means of support.

Mrs. d’Urberville -

Alec’s mother, and the widow of Simon Stokes. is blind and often ill. She cares deeply for her animals, but not for her maid Elizabeth, her son Alec, nor Tess when she comes to work for her. In fact, she never sees Tess as anything more than an impoverished girl.

Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty Priddle -

Milkmaids whom Tess befriends at the Talbothays Dairy. , Izz, and Retty remain close to Tess throughout the rest of her life. They are all in love with Angel and are devastated when he chooses Tess over them: Marian turns to drink, Retty attempts suicide, and Izz nearly runs off to with Angel when he leaves Tess. Nevertheless, they remain helpful to Tess. Marian helps her find a job at a farm called Flintcomb-Ash, and Marian and Izz write Angel a plaintive letter encouraging him to give Tess another chance.

Reverend Clare –

Angel’s father, a somewhat intractable but principled clergyman in the town of Emminster. Mr. Clare considers it his duty to convert the populace. One of his most difficult cases proves to be none other than Alec d’Urberville.

Mrs. Clare -

Angel’s mother, a loving but snobbish woman who places great stock in social class. wants Angel to marry a suitable woman, meaning a woman with the proper social, financial, and religious background. Mrs. Clare initially looks down on Tess as a “simple” and impoverished girl, but later grows to appreciate her.

Reverend Felix Clare -

Angel’s brother, a village curate.

Reverend Cuthbert -

Clare Angel’s brother, a classical scholar and dean at Cambridge. , who can concentrate only on university matters, marries .

Eliza Louisa Durbeyfield -

Tess’s younger sister. Tess believes Liza-Lu has all of Tess’s own good qualities and none of her bad ones, and she encourages Angel to look after and even marry Liza-Lu after Tess dies.

Sorrow -

Tess’s son with Alec d’Urberville. dies in his early infancy, after Tess christens him herself. She later buries him herself as well, and decorates his grave.

Mercy Chant -

The daughter of a friend of the . Mr. Clare hopes Angel will marry Mercy, but after Angel marries Tess, Mercy becomes engaged to his brother Cuthbert instead.

Tess Durbeyfield

Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate intensity, is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine. Her name, formally Theresa, recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her her life. Other characters often refer to Tess in mythical terms, as when calls her a “Daughter of Nature” in Chapter XVIII, or refers to her by the Greek mythological names “Artemis” and “Demeter” in Chapter XX. The narrator himself sometimes describes Tess as more than an individual woman, but as something closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood. In Chapter XIV, he says that her eyes are “neither black nor blue nor grey nor violet; rather all these shades together,” like “an almost standard woman.” Tess’s story may thus be a “standard” story, representing a deeper and larger experience than that of a single individual.

In part, Tess represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in England in the late nineteenth century. Possessing an education that her unschooled parents lack, since she has passed the Sixth Standard of the National Schools, Tess does not quite fit into the folk culture of her predecessors, but financial constraints keep her from rising to a higher station in life. She belongs in that higher world, however, as we discover on the first page of the novel with the news that the Durbeyfields are the surviving members of the noble and ancient family of the d’Urbervilles. There is aristocracy in Tess’s blood, visible in her graceful beauty—yet she is forced to work as a farmhand and milkmaid. When she tries to express her joy by singing lower-class folk ballads at the beginning of the third part of the novel, they do not satisfy her—she seems not quite comfortable with those popular songs. But, on the other hand, her diction, while more polished than her mother’s, is not quite up to the level of ’s or Angel’s. She is in between, both socially and culturally. Thus, Tess is a symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain, where old family lines retained their earlier glamour, but where cold economic realities made sheer wealth more important than inner nobility.

Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen humanity in a religious sense, as the frequent biblical allusions in the novel remind us. Just as Tess’s clan was once glorious and powerful but is now sadly diminished, so too did the early glory of the first humans, Adam and Eve, fade with their expulsion from Eden, making humans sad shadows of what they once were. Tess thus represents what is known in Christian theology as original sin, the degraded state in which all humans live, even when—like Tess herself after killing or succumbing to Alec—they are not wholly or directly responsible for the sins for which they are punished. This torment represents the most universal side of Tess: she is the myth of the human who suffers for crimes that are not her own and lives a life more degraded than she deserves.

Alec d’Urberville

An insouciant twenty-four-year-old man, heir to a fortune, and bearer of a name that his father purchased, Alec is the nemesis and downfall of Tess’s life. His first name, Alexander, suggests the conqueror—as in Alexander the Great—who seizes what he wants regardless of moral propriety. Yet he is more slippery than a grand conqueror. His full last name, Stoke-d’Urberville, symbolizes the split character of his family, whose origins are simpler than their pretensions to grandeur. After all, Stokes is a blunt and inelegant name. Indeed, the divided and duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very end of the novel, when he quickly abandons his newfound Christian faith upon remeeting Tess. It is hard to believe Alec holds his religion, or anything else, sincerely. His supposed conversion may only be a new role he is playing.

This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec, and its consequences for Tess so severe, that he becomes diabolical. The first part of his surname conjures associations with fiery energies, as in the stoking of a furnace or the flames of hell. His devilish associations are evident when he wields a pitchfork while addressing Tess early in the novel, and when he seduces her as the serpent in Genesis seduced Eve. Additionally, like the famous depiction of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Alec does not try to hide his bad qualities. In fact, like Satan, he revels in them. In Chapter XII, he bluntly tells Tess, “I suppose I am a bad fellow—a damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in all probability.” There is frank acceptance in this admission and no shame. Some readers feel Alec is too wicked to be believable, but, like Tess herself, he represents a larger moral principle rather than a real individual man. Like Satan, Alec symbolizes the base forces of life that drive a person away from moral perfection and greatness.

Angel Clare

A freethinking son born into the family of a provincial parson and determined to set himself up as a farmer instead of going to Cambridge like his conformist brothers, Angel represents a rebellious striving toward a personal vision of goodness. He is a secularist who yearns to work for the “honor and glory of man,” as he tells his father in Chapter XVIII, rather than for the honor and glory of God in a more distant world. A typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel sees human society as a thing to be remolded and improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of man. He rejects the values handed to him, and sets off in search of his own. His love for Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of his disdain for tradition. This independent spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and general attractiveness that makes him the love object of all the milkmaids with whom he works at Talbothays.

As his name—in French, close to “Bright Angel”—suggests, Angel is not quite of this world, but floats above it in a transcendent sphere of his own. The narrator says that Angel shines rather than burns and that he is closer to the intellectually aloof poet Shelley than to the fleshly and passionate poet Byron. His love for Tess may be abstract, as we guess when he calls her “Daughter of Nature” or “Demeter.” Tess may be more an archetype or ideal to him than a flesh and blood woman with a complicated life. Angel’s ideals of human purity are too elevated to be applied to actual people: ’s easygoing moral beliefs are much more easily accommodated to real lives such as Tess’s. Angel awakens to the actual complexities of real-world morality after his failure in , and only then he realizes he has been unfair to Tess. His moral system is readjusted as he is brought down to Earth. Ironically, it is not the angel who guides the human in this novel, but the human who instructs the angel, although at the cost of her own life.

Phase the Second: Maiden No More, Chapters XII–XV

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Phase the Second: Maiden No More, Chapters XII–XV

Phase the Third: The Rally, Chapters XVI–XIX

Summary: Chapter XVI

In good spirits, sets out to begin work at the Talbothays Dairy, located in the Valley of the Great Dairies. On her way, the new scenery enchants her as she travels through the mists of Blackmoor. The beautiful day and the beautiful landscape put Tess in an optimistic mood. She passes the burial ground of her ancient ancestors, but decides to keep going.

Summary: Chapter XVII

Tess finally arrives at the Talbothays Dairy. Richard Crick, the master dairyman, treats her kindly and offers to let her rest, but she prefers to begin work immediately. She quickly fits in and feels very much at home. One of the men at the dairy looks familiar to her, and she recognizes him as the highbrow man whom she noticed back at the May Day village dance in Marlott. That evening, Tess overhears the dairymaids talking about him and learns that he is , the son of a well-respected Wessex clergyman. Angel’s two brothers have also joined the church, but Angel himself prefers a life in agriculture and, thus, has come to the dairy to learn about its work. There is much talk about Angel among the other dairymaids, and many of them seem to have a crush on him.

Summary: Chapter XVIII

The narrator shifts away from Tess’s point of view to tell us Angel’s background story. Angel is the most gifted of the three brothers, but, because his father looked upon a university education solely as preparation for a clerical life, Angel decided not to go to Cambridge. He has doubts about the doctrines of the church and feels that it would be dishonest to join the clergy. He has spent time in London in an attempt to find a business profession and has been involved with an older woman. Finally, he decided that the life of the soil would enable him to preserve his intellectual liberty outside the stifling conditions of city life. Now twenty-six years old, he learns firsthand about farming by visiting sites devoted to the subject. He is gentlemanly and thoughtful and is treated as a superior by most of the workers at the dairy. Angel acts aloof and a bit shy at first, but he soon befriends the other workers and spends more time with them. He swiftly finds himself drawn to Tess’s beauty and thinks that she seems uncommonly virginal and pure. Tess, however, tries to stay away from him out of shame for her secret, woeful past.

Summary: Chapter XIX

After a few weeks, Tess discovers that Angel is breaking the dairy’s rules by lining up her favorite cows for her. She tells him of her discovery and, later that night, walks alone in the garden, listening to him strum his harp. He comes down to join her, and they have an intimate conversation. Angel finds it compelling that a girl as young and beautiful as Tess would have such a dark view of life. She deflects his questions about her with general comments about life, and then she inquires about him. Tess is interested in Angel’s education and learning, and she also wonders why such a well-bred and well-schooled man would choose to become a farmer instead of joining his father and brothers in the clergy. He offers to tutor her, but she refuses, claiming that the answers she seeks are not to be found in books.

Analysis: Chapters XVI–XIX

These chapters portray the beginning of the happiest period of Tess’s life. The narrator indicates that she “had never been in her recent life so happy as she was now, possibly never would be so happy again.” This turn in tone is matched by a healthier landscape, and she is perfectly suited to her surroundings. Tess’s simple, rustic beauty is matched by the country paradise of the dairy, and the ripening weather of summer matches the blossoming romance between Tess and Angel.

Tess is in control of her emotions and, it appears, of her life. The setting allows her to deal with her past melancholy, and these chapters serve as development, on a number of levels, of Tess’s newfound success: her return to normal life, her achievement as a worker, and her success as a more virtuous lover. This perspective is mirrored by the background of Talbothays, a quiet, slow-paced paradise where Tess can be calm and comfortable.

Tess’s assertion that the answers she seeks are not to be found in books indicates that she wants to learn directly from life experiences. Tess is ready to experience the world, and, of course, she has already made some mistakes as a result. Her assertion demonstrates that she wants to become knowledgeable and self-sufficient. In other words, she does not want to rely on anyone else. This independence contrasts with the way Tess’s mother used to consult the fortune-telling book for all her guidance. In the same way that Angel seeks to become independent from his family’s current legacy, Tess wants to become independent of hers.

These chapters fully introduce Angel into the novel. A great deal of narrative and an entire chapter are devoted to summarizing his recent accomplishments and family background. Given that Angel is introduced immediately after the saga between Tess and the ruthless , the contrasts between these two men emerge vividly in these chapters. For instance, Angel has soothing, elegant conversations with Tess and gives her classical, idealistic nicknames like “Artemis” and “Demeter.” Alec, on the other hand, mocks her with demeaning words and low-society nicknames like “coz.” Through this juxtaposition, Angel appears an angel and a savior to the troubled but coping Tess.

Summary: Chapter XX

As the months pass, and grow closer, and Tess finds herself in the happiest phase of her life. They wake up early, before the others, and feel as if they are the only people on Earth. Indeed, the dairy seems to be an Eden, where Angel is Adam and Tess is Eve. Tess is Angel’s “visionary essence of woman,” and he playfully nicknames her “Artemis” and “Demeter.” Tess does not understand these nicknames and simply tells him to call her Tess. They continue to enjoy the morning, as the summer fog slowly lifts and swoop and play in the misty air.

Summary: Chapter XXI

Life on the dairy begins to change. There is worry about the butter, which is not churning properly. Mrs. Crick jokes that this sort of thing happens only when someone on the farm falls in love. Indeed, there are two people who are in love, and the milkmaids often discuss Angel’s noticeable love for Tess and imagine what the future will hold for them. Tess does not want to marry, though, because she is still ashamed of her past. After some further churning, the butter begins to set and everyone’s fears melt away—except for Tess’s.

Summary: Chapter XXII

Early in the morning, the Cricks receive a letter from a customer who complains that the butter he has bought from them “had a twang,” or a sharp taste. Mr. Crick realizes that this taste must be the result of the cows eating from garlic weeds. The dairymaids go out to the pasture to search for these disastrous weeds. Tess feels faint, and Mr. Crick encourages Tess to take a moment to rest. Angel stops with her, and she makes a point of mentioning the virtues of two of her close milkmaid friends, Izz and Retty. Angel agrees that they are nice women and capable dairymaids, but indicates that he has no romantic interest in them.

Summary: Chapter XXIII

Two months after her arrival at the dairy, Tess sets out with her friends to attend the Mellstock Church. There has been a torrential downpour the day before, and the girls come to a long stretch of flooded road. Angel offers to carry them across, and they agree. All the girls notice that Angel takes the longest with Tess, and they each realize that he prefers her.

Tess begins to avoid Angel, but she notices from afar his grace and self-discipline in the company of the girls who dote on him. One night, , Izz, and Retty each confess to feeling love for Angel, and Tess feels guilty, since she too loves Angel but has already decided never to marry. She wonders if she is wrong to take so much of his time.

Summary: Chapter XXIV

Later that summer, Angel and Tess are milking cows, and Angel is overcome with his feeling for Tess. He embraces her, and she gives way to her feelings for a moment before trying to pull away. Angel tells Tess he loves her and is surprised to hear the words come out of his mouth. No one has noticed their encounter, and the two return to their milking, shaken.

Analysis: Chapters XX–XXIV

These chapters mark the end of Phase the Third, subtitled “The Rally,” which concerns Tess’s “invincible instinct toward self-delight” as she enjoys a happy period at the Talbothays Dairy and her new romance with Angel Clare. The harsh irony of Angel’s first impression of Tess, that she is “virginal,” is underplayed by Tess’s self-sacrificing virtue throughout these chapters—she even avoids him intentionally when she thinks her friends deserve him more. The plot of this phase is, like that of Phase the First, essentially linear: Tess meets Angel and their relationship grows closer until it becomes clear that he loves her.

A new conflict arises in these chapters between Tess’s new love for Angel and her moral reservations about acting on that love. This conflict and indecisiveness on Tess’s part is mirrored by the new problems that surface at Talbothays Dairy concerning the quality of the butter. Certain agents have caused the butter to become tainted, affecting its taste and attractiveness. Tess feels a similar inner turmoil with the agents that have affected her, which leads her to think that her attractiveness may be tainted even though Angel expresses his love for her.

With Tess’s virtue as uncompromisable as ever, her personal reservations about marrying Angel seem clearly designed to arouse both our sympathy and moral outrage. It seems ludicrous for poor Tess to have to refrain from acting on her passion. Surely any moral code that would force Tess to suffer for the rest of her life for a single error must be deeply flawed. This line of reasoning is Hardy’s argument, but still Tess seems to be fated to suffer, the victim of “the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things.”

As Angel and are compared and contrasted in previous chapters, Tess is compared and contrasted with the other dairymaids in these chapters. Tess views herself as equal or subordinate to her friends Marian, Izz, and Retty, but Angel sees her as his sole, perfect mate. All of the dairymaids have crushes on Angel, but Angel is interested only in Tess. The final scene in the section—in which Tess and Angel are overcome by their love—is a wonderful conclusion to these chapters, which have focused on the growing attraction between them. The conclusion satisfies the natural progression of their love in a way that is surely meant to appease us. Tess is surprised by Angel’s confession, and a bit shaken by its implications. She is torn because she knows her dark past will stand in the way of her future with Angel, and even as their love continues to grow, these issues and problems do not show any signs of disappearing.

Summary: Chapter XXXII

agrees to leave the dairy with around Christmas, and their wedding date is set for December 31. Angel hopes to spend that time visiting a flour mill and staying in a home that belonged to the d’Urbervilles. Angel buys Tess clothes for their wedding and, to her relief, quietly takes out a marriage license rather than publicizing his intent to marry Tess.

Summary: Chapter XXXIII

While out shopping, Angel and Tess encounter a man from ’s village, who disparages Tess and denies her virginity. Angel strikes the man, but when the man apologizes, Angel gives him some money. Tess is wracked with guilt, and that night she writes a confession and slips it under Angel’s door. Strangely, in the morning, Angel’s behavior toward her has not changed, and he does not mention the letter. Tess ascertains that it slipped under the carpet and that Angel never saw it. On the morning of the wedding, Tess again tries to tell Angel about her past, but he cuts her off, saying that there will be time for such revelations after they are married. The dairyman and his wife accompany them to church, and they are married. As they are leaving for the ceremony, however, a rooster crows in the mid-afternoon.

Summary: Chapter XXXIV

After the wedding, the couple travels to the old d’Urberville mansion, where they will have a few days to themselves before the farmer returns. Tess receives a package from Angel’s father, containing some jewelry that Angel’s godmother bequeathed to his future wife some years ago. The newlyweds enjoy a happy moment, which is broken when the man arrives from the dairy with their luggage, bringing bad news about Tess’s friends. After the wedding, Retty attempted suicide and became an alcoholic.

After this disclosure, Angel asks Tess for forgiveness, telling her of his past indiscretion with an older woman in London. Tess says that she, too, has a confession and tells him of her past with Alec.

Analysis: Chapters XXXII–XXXIV

As these chapters mark the end of Phase the Fourth, “The Consequence,” they permit the phase to fit well with the seesaw scheme of the novel up to this point. Tess of the d’Urbervilles alternates sections that build up to a climax with sections that detail the result of the climax. Phase the First builds steadily toward Tess’s fall from grace, and Phase the Second lays out the consequences for Tess—her child and her loss of reputation. Phase the Third builds inexorably toward Tess’s union with Angel, while Phase the Fourth brings us the consequences of their love: Angel and Tess marry, and she confesses her past. Aside from the repeated instances of supernatural effect and mystical ill omen, such as the cock crowing in the afternoon and the creaky old mansion, the real conflict in this section is again moral, between Tess’s desire to be happily loved by Angel and her conscious obligation to tell him about her past. Because Tess has such a strong instinct for self-delight, she is able to delay and resist her conscience through October. Since Tess has an even stronger sense of moral duty, however, she cannot resist it forever; the section ends as she begins her story, “murmuring the words without flinching, and with her eyelids drooping down.”

The universe is still hostile to Tess, and fate still toys with her in the form of the accidental mishaps on which the plot turns. Had Angel received Tess’s note before they were married, the course of the story might have gone differently. But the letter happens to slip under the carpet, and another chance for Tess’s tragedy to be averted is lost. This fluke may seem like an unbelievable coincidence, except that the universe expresses its hostility toward Tess through the portentous mishaps that plague her throughout the novel. The cock crowing in the afternoon does not doom Tess to ill fortune, but simply announces her foreordained doom to the world.

Indeed, Angel’s decision to seek work at Talbothays is one of the most improbable circumstances in the novel. Although we see Angel as a progressive, new-thinking young man, his decision to give up a university education and an esteemed position in the clergy seems almost too idealistic to be true. While we see Tess as the responsible, patient, and persistent character that she is, Angel may appear rather spoiled—the youngest son in a privileged family who is not satisfied with his status quo and seeks adventure in murkier waters. In a sense, Angel is much more childish and naïve than the extremely responsible Tess. Angel may be angelic not in his morality, but in the sense that he is cherubic and childlike, indicating his need to grow and develop a truer love for Tess.

Talbothays Dairy is a kind of classless haven untroubled by social difference. Even Angel, the closest thing Talbothays has to an aristocrat, fits in quite seamlessly. Nevertheless, the themes of social prejudice and noble heritage continue to arise. Angel’s mother, who exhibits snobbery throughout the novel, wants Angel to marry a suitable girl—meaning highborn. Angel is pleased to discover Tess’s noble background in this section because he knows it will placate his mother, who will conclude that Tess must be worthwhile if she has such a remarkable pedigree. This situation can be interpreted in various ways. On the one hand, it is superficial and reprehensible of to place such a high stock in social class. On the other, Tess is nobly born, and she does possess all the stereotypical characteristics that are supposed to distinguish nobility, such as beauty, courage, and integrity.

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, Chapters XXXV–XXXIX

Summary: Chapter XXXV

is distraught by ’s confession. He begs her to deny it, but she cannot. He flees the house, and Tess follows after him. For hours, they walk the grounds of the mansion. Tess tells her husband that she will do anything he asks and even offers to drown herself. Angel orders her to go back to the house. When he returns, Tess is asleep. After an uncomfortable moment looking at the d’Urberville ladies’ portraits, Angel goes to sleep in a different room.

Summary: Chapter XXXVI

Three miserable days go by, during which Angel spends his time at the mill or with his studies. Tess wonders if they should get a divorce, but she learns that the law does not allow divorces. Finally, Tess offers to go home, and Angel tells her she should go.

Summary: Chapter XXXVII

Clare came close, and bent over her. “Dead, dead, dead!” he murmured.

(See )

That night, Tess wakes up and discovers that Angel is sleepwalking. He stumbles into Tess’s room and seizes her in his arms. Moaning that his wife is dead, he carries her over a narrow bridge and into the churchyard, where he lays her in a coffin. Tess carefully leads Angel back into the house, and in the morning he shows no recollection of the event.

The couple makes a brief stop at the dairy on their way to Marlott. They behave awkwardly together in public. Angel leaves Tess near her village, telling her that he will try to accept her past, but that she should not try to come to him until he comes for her.

Summary: Chapter XXXVIII

Tess returns home dolefully and confesses to her mother what has happened. calls her a fool, and Mr. finds it hard to believe Tess is even married. Tess is miserable at home, and when a letter arrives from Angel informing Tess that he has begun looking for a farm in the north, Tess seizes the excuse to leave and tells her family that she is going to join her husband. She gives them half of the fifty pounds Angel gave her and leaves her home.

Summary: Chapter XXXIX

Three weeks after their marriage, Angel visits his parents and tells them he is traveling to and not taking Tess. His parents are alarmed and disappointed, but Angel tells them they will meet Tess in a year, when he returns.

Angel’s parents surprise him by reading a biblical passage about how virtuous wives are loving, loyal, selfless, and “working.” applies the passage directly to Tess, demonstrating her wholehearted acceptance of Angel’s choice not to marry a fine lady, but Angel, overcome with emotion, leaves the room. Following him, Mrs. Clare guesses that Angel discovered something dishonorable in Tess’s past, but he vehemently denies it.

Analysis: Chapters XXXV–XXXIX

Atmosphere is a very important component in these chapters, and as Tess nears the culmination of her tragedy, the sense of mystical gloom intensifies. The old, abandoned, Gothic d’Urberville mansion is a perfect setting for the emotional change that takes place. The setting also mirrors Tess’s feelings of emptiness and coldness toward her family legacy. In exploiting the setting for dramatic and psychological effect, Hardy draws heavily on the conventions of Gothic literature, sometimes creating very unrealistic effects.

In a similar vein, the scene in which Angel sleepwalks is Gothic almost to the point of being ridiculous. The scene represents the fact that, while Tess herself is still very much alive, Angel’s vision of her is dead. The woman he married does not seem to be the same woman now, and he cannot reconcile the difference. As sexually violated Tess, Tess’s past has spiritually violated Angel. It seems inevitable that Angel’s idealized, pure vision of Tess must shatter and, given the importance he attaches to this vision, their marriage must shatter along with it. Angel’s reaction is a result of his childish decision to marry the Tess that he envisioned as opposed to Tess as she actually is.

The scene becomes even harder to believe when Angel scoops up his wife, and—still asleep—carries her to her ancestral cemetery and places her in a coffin. Hardy may have included such a scene to please a Victorian readership that loved Gothic gloom and mystery. But the scene also attests to the hostility of fate toward Tess. Hardy means for us to accept Tess’s tragedy as foreordained, willed by the universe, and executed by powers beyond mortal control. By suggesting such a deterministic view of events, Hardy makes us look at the story in a new and unsettling way. For much of the novel, Hardy seems to criticize the archaic and outmoded morality that unfairly judges and condemns Tess, as well as the social hierarchies that allow aristocrats to exploit the lower classes and men to abuse women. But if Tess’s tragedy is foreordained, it may not be solely the fault of outdated public moral judgment.

Angel thinks that Tess is somehow dead, and Tess herself actually wants to be dead. She loses her strength and tells Angel that she wishes to submit: “I will obey you, like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die.” She never complains about his feelings, and she only criticizes and blames herself. As Angel carries her over the narrow bridge, she imagines both of them falling over the side to their deaths in each other’s arms. She wants to commit suicide but—as with her inability to tell Angel about her past—she cannot summon the courage. As they say good-bye, Tess is little more than a walking corpse. Indeed, it seems that Angel has killed her soul and her desire to live. It is apparent now that Tess can never escape the wrongs of the past, either socially or personally.

Summary: Chapter XLV

has not seen since she left his family’s service. When she sees and hears him testifying to his religious conversion, she is struck dumb with a sudden terror. She withdraws, but Alec sees her and runs after her, claiming he has to save her soul. He says he has found God through the intercession of the . Tess, angry and disbelieving, excoriates people like Alec, who ruin other people’s lives and then try to secure a place in heaven by suddenly converting. She then asserts that she cannot put her faith in Alec’s religion when a better man than he—meaning —does not believe in that religion. Alec expresses fear of Tess, and as they come to a stone monument called the Cross-in-Hand, he asks Tess to swear that she will never tempt him again. She agrees and Alec leaves, reading a letter from Reverend Clare to calm himself. Tess asks a shepherd what the Cross-in-Hand signifies, and she learns that it is an object of ill omen.

Summary: Chapter XLVI

The omen proves correct a few days later, when Alec approaches Tess in the fields and asks her to marry him. He proposes that they go to Africa to be missionaries. Tess replies that she is already married, and she asks the distraught Alec to leave. She begins another letter to Angel but is unable to finish it.

At Candlemas, Alec again approaches Tess. This time, he asks her to pray for him. Tess replies that she cannot pray, and she recites Angel’s reasons for doubting the validity of church doctrine. Alec appears shaken, and Tess asserts that she has a religion but no belief in the supernatural. Alec says that he has missed an opportunity to preach in order to see her, and he says that he is bothered by the fact that he has no right to help or protect her, while the man who does have that right has chosen to abandon her. Tess asks him to leave before their conversation can taint her husband’s honor.

Summary: Chapter XLVII

In early spring, Tess has been assigned a stint of difficult work as a thresher on the farm. Alec appears again, saying that he is no longer a preacher and beseeching Tess to come away with him. He says his love for her has strengthened, and he is upset that her husband neglects her. Tess slaps his face with a leather glove. He becomes angry, but calms himself, asserting his desire to be her master and telling her that he is her true husband. He says he will be back in the afternoon to collect her.

Summary: Chapter XLVIII

Alec comes back that afternoon as he promised. He walks Tess home and asks her to trust him to take care of both Tess and her family. Tess again refuses his offers, and that night she writes a letter to Angel, finally confessing her loyalty and her love and asking for his help against the temptation presented by Alec.

Analysis: Chapters XLV–XLVIII

Though Alec d’Urberville seems at first to have undergone a remarkable transformation from a rake into a pious and religious man, he discards this posture so effortlessly and quickly that it seems to have been a superfluous charade—Alec’s attempts to contain his desire for Tess seem weak at best. Indeed, we may wonder why Hardy chooses to reintroduce Alec as a convert at this point in the novel, given that he seems to be very much the same man as before. One effect of this choice is to heighten dramatically the bitter irony of Tess’s predicament. Tess continues to suffer as a social outcast because of a disgrace that is much more Alec’s fault than hers, yet the hypocritical Alec has the luxury to repent and even win acceptance as a preacher. Tess’s plight as a woman thus appears incredibly unjust, reinforcing the message given in the subtitle of this section of the novel: “The Woman Pays.”

Alec’s reintroduction into the novel comes at Tess’s lowest moment, but his new pitch still does not work on her. She has not seen Alec for a long time, but she has clearly thought about him and what he did to her. Tess is observant and distrusting of Alec, and she views his conversion as a plot to win her back. The converted Alec appears to her as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, intending to prey on her, or like a devil in disguise, come to tempt her a final time. Indeed, we might well view the relationship between Tess and Alec as an allegory of good struggling with the temptation offered by evil.

Alec continues to tempt Tess with money and security, the two things that would help her family the most, and in doing so he tests her ability to resist evil. His promise of financial security is attractive, but not quite attractive enough. Tess has learned her lesson about risking herself and her happiness for the sake of money. She is a much stronger woman now and is more knowledgeable about conniving men, especially Alec. This strength deters Alec and makes him feel weaker and more vulnerable because his plot is not working. Alec is successful, however, in making Tess doubt herself.

As Tess struggles with Alec’s temptation, her need for Angel becomes more and more desperate. If Angel were to return to her and do his duty as her husband, her problems would greatly diminish. She writes to Angel and pleads that he not judge her on her irretrievable past. Ironically, Alec asks Tess to do the same thing for him, claiming that he has changed, that Tess tempted him, and that he must not be judged based on his past mistakes. Tess’s situation thus makes her very vulnerable to Alec’s persuasions. She is obviously heartbroken and needs to be loved more than ever. She is also distraught by her family’s ever-worsening financial situation. Alec’s reasoning seems more valid to Tess than it has in the past. In a way, Tess and Alec are similar in that they have both fallen and ask for forgiveness for their indiscretions.

Summary: Chapter XLIX

’s letter goes to ’s parents, who forward it to Angel in . reproaches her husband for keeping Angel from attending Cambridge, whereas feels justified in his decision but regrets the misery his son has endured. For his part, Angel is ready to abandon his idea of farming in Brazil. The suffering he has endured there has softened his feelings toward Tess, and when a more experienced man tells him he was wrong to leave her, Angel feels a powerful regret. When the man dies a few days later, his words assume even more power in Angel’s mind. Back at the farm, Tess encounters her sister, Liza-Lu, who comes with sorrowful news: Tess’s mother is dying, and her father is also very ill and can do no work. Tess tells Izz and what has happened and leaves for home the next morning.

Summary: Chapter L

Upon her arrival, Tess does what she can to make her mother comfortable and then begins working in the garden and on the family’s land. One night, she looks over and sees working next to her. He again offers to help Tess and her family. She is sorely tempted but declines again. Enraged, Alec leaves.

On the way home, Tess’s sister tells her that their father has died, which means that Tess’s family will lose their house. John was the last person guaranteed a place in the terms of the lease, and the tenant farmer who owns the house wants to use it for his own workers.

Summary: Chapter LI

Tess prepares to move her family to a set of rooms in Kingsbere. Alec arrives and tells Tess the legend of the ghostly d’Urberville Coach—the message of which is that the sound of an invisible coach is a bad omen. Alec tries to persuade Tess to move her family to his family’s garden home, allow him to send her brothers and sisters to school, and have Tess’s mother tend the fowls. Tess is again sorely tempted, but she once more declines Alec’s offer, and he rides away. As he leaves, Tess admits to herself that Angel has treated her badly, and she writes him a letter saying she will do all she can to forget him, since she will never be able to forgive him. Joan asks what Alec said to her, but Tess refuses to divulge the story, saying she will tell her mother when they are in their rooms at Kingsbere.

Summary: Chapter LII

“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?”

(See )

The next day, Tess and her family begin their journey. On the way, they meet Marian and Izz, who are moving on to new work at a new farm. When they reach Kingsbere, they learn that Joan’s letter was late, and the rooms have already been rented. They cannot find more lodging and end up sleeping in the churchyard, in a plot called d’Urberville Aisle. Tess finds Alec lying on a tomb, and he tells her he can do more for her than all her noble ancestors. Tess tells him to leave, and angrily he does, promising that Tess will learn to be civil. Tess leans down toward the funeral vault and asks why she is still alive. Marian and Izz do their part for their friend by writing a note to Angel asking him to go back to Tess.

Analysis

Phase the Sixth tells the story of Tess’s struggle to remain free from Alec despite her family’s increasingly desperate plight, which Alec has the power to alleviate if Tess agrees to love him. Though Alec overtly plays the part of a villain in this section, the real conflict is within Tess, as two of her deepest virtues, her integrity and her loyalty to her family, prompt her in opposite directions. Her integrity demands that she stay away from Alec, whom she does not love, but her duty to her family tempts her to go with him to save her mother and her siblings. Integrity wins out throughout the section, but we get the sense that it is only a matter of time before Tess is forced to submit. As a result, the story in this section and part of the next is propelled along by a kind of race: Angel needs to forgive Tess and return to her before she surrenders to Alec.

In fact, Angel is in the process of changing as a result of his bad experiences in Brazil. He begins to alter his attitude toward Tess, slowly realizing that his way of thinking has been faulty. He undergoes an emotional and moral conversion that is much more real than Alec’s religious conversion a few chapters back. Angel is finally shedding his immaturity and growing to love Tess as a responsible adult. But the distance between Angel and Tess is still great, both physically and emotionally. Ironically, the distance may have led them closer together, as their loneliness and separation have shown Angel how much Tess means to him. Notably, Angel’s transformation comes when he is at a great distance from English society and its prevailing sentiments. Even though he remains the die-hard progressive of the Clares, the pressure of conforming to English propriety coupled with his troubled view of his marriage stifles Angel’s growth while in England.

As Alec’s courtship of Tess increases in intensity, so too does the string of misfortunes that plague Tess and her family. With her options narrowing, Tess becomes more desperate in her desire to reconcile with Angel: “Come to me!” she pleads, “Come to me and save me from what threatens me!” Throughout, Alec is portrayed as a sinister and threatening figure even when supposedly in the grip of religious conflict—at one point, the narrator notes that his face blackens “with something that was not Christianity.” Even when he appears most in love with Tess, he still seems the same old Alec, thinly disguised, hoping to seduce Tess by doing a good turn for her.

The supernatural, Gothic atmosphere of the old d’Urberville mansion reappears here at the d’Urberville Aisle in the churchyard. Here, Tess, a real d’Urberville, and Alec, an imposter, have one of their most solemn moments, as Alec asserts that he can do more for Tess than all her lofty dead ancestors. Tess begins to realize the futility of claiming such an aristocratic legacy, since her ancestors truly cannot help her at all. She begins to realize that Alec may be her only hope. In the yard, Alec’s legend of the d’Urberville Coach evokes the Gothic or supernatural yet again, providing an ill omen that foreshadows the deadly conclusion of their story.

Summary: Chapter LIII

returns to his parents’ home, haggard and gaunt after his tribulations abroad. He reads ’s angry letter, and he worries that she will never forgive him. His mother haughtily declares that he should not worry about the opinions of a poor commoner, and Angel reveals to her Tess’s exalted lineage.

Angel spends a few days at home regaining his strength. He writes a letter to Tess addressed to Marlott, and finally receives a reply from Tess’s mother informing him that they have left Marlott and that Tess is no longer with the family.

After a short time spent waiting, Angel decides that he must not delay his reunion with Tess. He is encouraged in this feeling by the revelation that Tess has not used any of the money Angel left with his father. Angel realizes that Tess must have suffered great poverty while he was abroad, and he is overcome with pity and guilt. Angel’s parents finally guess the secret cause of their son’s estrangement from Tess, and find that the knowledge disposes them to feel more kindly toward their daughter-in-law. Just before Angel leaves, he receives the letter from and Izz.

Summary: Chapter LIV

Angel sets out to find his wife, traveling through the farm at Flintcomb-Ash and through Marlott, where he learns of the death of Tess’s father. He finds the elaborate gravestone of John , and when he learns that it is unpaid for, he settles the bill. When he meets Joan, he finds his mother-in-law uncomfortable and hesitant to tell him where Tess has gone. At last she takes pity on him and reveals that Tess is in Sandbourne.

Summary: Chapter LV

In Sandbourne, Angel is unable to find a or a Miss Durbeyfield, but he does learn that a d’Urberville is staying at an expensive lodging called The Herons.

Angel hurries to The Herons and is impressed by its grandeur. He wonders how Tess could possibly afford it and thinks she must have sold his godmother’s diamonds. When Tess appears, she is dressed in expensive clothing. Angel pleads for her forgiveness and tells her that he has learned to accept her as she is and desperately wants her to come back to him. Brokenhearted, Tess replies that it is too late—thinking Angel would never come back for her, she gave in to ’s desires and is now under his protection. Tess leaves the room, and Angel rushes out of the house.

Summary: Chapter LVI

Mrs. Brooks, the landlady at The Herons, follows Tess upstairs and spies on her through the keyhole. She sees Tess holding her head in her hands, accusing Alec of deceiving her into thinking that Angel would never come back for her. Alec replies angrily, and Mrs. Brooks, startled, flees the scene. Back in her own room, she sees Tess go through the front gate, where she disappears onto the street. A short while later, Mrs. Brooks notices a dark red spot spreading on the ceiling. Terrified, Mrs. Brooks has a workman open the door of the d’Urberville rooms, where they discover Alec lying on the bed, stabbed to death. The landlady gives the alarm, and the news of Alec’s murder quickly spreads through the town.

Summary: Chapter LVII

Angel decides to leave on the first train. At his hotel, he finds a telegraph from his mother informing him that is going to marry . Rather than waiting for the train, Angel decides to walk to the next station and meet it there. As he hikes out of the valley, he sees Tess running after him. He draws her off the main road, and she tells him that she has killed Alec. Tess says she had to kill Alec because he wronged Angel, but that she also had to return to Alec because Angel abandoned her. She begs Angel’s forgiveness, and he, thinking she is delirious, tells her he loves her. At last he realizes she is serious, though he still does not believe she has actually killed Alec. He agrees to protect her.

They walk toward the interior of the country, waiting for the search for Tess to be called off so they can escape overseas. That evening, they find an old mansion and slip in through the windows. After a woman comes to close up the house, Angel opens the shutters, and they are alone for the night.

Summary: Chapter LVIII

Five days pass, and Angel and Tess slowly lapse back into their original love. They make little mention of their estrangement. One day the woman who airs the house discovers their hiding place, and they decide it is time to leave. After a day of travel, they arrive in the evening at Stonehenge, where Tess feels quite at home. As she rests by a pillar, she says that she feels as if there are no people in the world but them.

Tess becomes distraught, and asks Angel to look after Liza-Lu when Tess is dead. She says she hopes Angel will marry Liza-Lu, then asks her husband if he believes they will meet again after death. Angel does not answer, and Tess, upset, drifts into sleep.

At dawn, Angel realizes that they are surrounded. Men are moving in from all sides, and Angel realizes Tess must truly have killed Alec. Angel asks the men not to take Tess until she wakes. When she sees them, she feels strangely relieved. Tess is glad she will not live, because she feels unworthy of Angel’s love.

Summary: Chapter LIX

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

(See )

Sometime later, from a hillside outside Wintoncester, Angel and Liza-Lu watch as a black flag is raised above the tower. Tess has been put to death. Angel and Liza-Lu are motionless for a time, and then they join hands and go on.

Analysis: Chapters LIII–LIX

Phase the Seventh brings the novel to a tragic close through a shift in perspective. It begins in an aura of mystery, as Hardy chooses not to narrate the climax of Tess’s struggle—her return to the bed of Alec d’Urberville. The first part of this section is told instead from Angel’s perspective. When he arrives at The Herons, we have a gradual, sickening sense of what to expect, but Angel has no idea. He is too late because the race is over, and Tess’s loyalty to her family has overmastered her integrity. Torn apart, Tess now kills her lover in a murderous rage out of love for her husband. From that moment, the novel simply becomes a mechanical process leading to the inevitable conclusion—Tess’s death.

As Angel returns with renewed loyalty and love for Tess, it becomes apparent that Alec has considerably broken down Tess’s loyalty to Angel. Tess recovers this love and loyalty when she sees Angel again, and she feels guilty about how far she has drifted. Her pride in poverty when Angel is away stands in direct contrast with her fancy clothing and luxurious lodging, which physically measures how far into temptation she has gone with Alec. Her shame and grief cause her violent side to explode, and she kills Alec. Whether intentionally or not, Tess has fulfilled Angel’s proclamation that they cannot be together as long as Alec is alive. The murder may appear justified to us at this point, after everything through which Alec has put Tess. But, though we may sympathize with Tess’s actions, we know that Tess must now flee and live the life of a hunted criminal.

The short section narrated from the perspective of Mrs. Brooks is almost an exact double of the technique Hardy uses with Angel at the beginning of Phase the Seventh. Just as he excludes Tess’s return to Alec, he excludes her murder of Alec. Just as an unsuspecting third party shows us that she has gone back to him, another unsuspecting third party shows us that she has killed him. Tess’s mind has been at the center of the novel from its beginning, and practically everything that has happened has been shown solely in its relation to her. By shifting attention away from her so suddenly, Hardy creates the sense that Tess is already lost—though she is still alive, she has partially vanished into the gloom of her fate. At the end, despite the atmosphere of Gothic mystery and supernatural portent that infuses much of the novel, Hardy still manages to surprise us by setting the conclusion at Stonehenge, one of the most famous and mysterious monuments in the world.

1. “Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the d’Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan d’Urberville, that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey Roll?” “Never heard it before, sir!”

In this passage, from Chapter I, the local parson informs Mr. of his grand lineage, thus setting in motion the events that change the fate of forever. Interestingly, the parson’s tone is casual, as if he is unable even to conceive of how his news might lead to tragedy later. For the parson it is genealogical trivia, but for Durbeyfield it feels like fate—the deepest truth about himself, like Oedipus’s discovery of his own identity. The fact that this prophetic news is delivered on the road, in an open field, right at the beginning of the work is reminiscent of the opening of Macbeth. There, the witches address Macbeth as “Thane of Cawdor” and “King of Scotland,” just as the parson addresses Durbeyfield as “Sir John.” As in Macbeth’s case, the noble address leads to disaster and death—in this case, the death of the “rightful” d’Urberville, .

Hardy emphasizes the irony of Durbeyfield’s situation not only by contrasting the common peddler on the road with the image of the “renowned knight” who was his forebear, but also by contrasting the modes of address of Durbeyfield and the parson. The parson has just addressed him as “Sir John,” which sets the whole conversation in motion, but we see here that the parson soon lapses back into the familiar tone more appropriate to one addressing a social inferior: “Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield. . . . “ Durbeyfield does the same: despite his discovery that he is Sir John, it is he who calls the parson “sir” here. The ironies multiply, making questions of class and identity complex and unstable, as Hardy intends to depict them.

2. Clare came close, and bent over her. “Dead, dead, dead!” he murmured. After fixedly regarding her for some moments with the same gaze of unmeasurable woe he bent lower, enclosed her in his arms, and rolled her in the sheet as in a shroud. Then lifting her from the bed with as much respect as one would show to a dead body, he carried her across the room, murmuring, “My poor poor Tess, my dearest darling Tess! So sweet, so good, so true!” The words of endearment, withheld so severely in his waking hours, were inexpressibly sweet to her forlorn and hungry heart. If it had been to save her weary life she would not, by moving or struggling, have put an end to the position she found herself in. Thus she lay in absolute stillness, scarcely venturing to breathe, and, wondering what he was going to do with her, suffered herself to be borne out upon the landing. “My wife—dead, dead!” he said.
In Chapter XXXVII, begins to sleepwalk on the third night of his estrangement from , having rejected her as his wife because of her earlier disgrace. Like Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, Angel’s nighttime somnambulism reveals an inner conflict within a character who earlier seems convinced of a moral idea, in control, and inflexible. For Lady Macbeth, her earlier cold protestations that killing a king is justifiable are belied by her unconscious fixation on being bloodstained. For Angel, the situation is reversed. He consciously maintains a conviction that Tess is bad, corrupt, and cannot be forgiven, but his unconscious sleepwalking self reveals the tender love and moral respect for her (“so good, so true!”) that he feels somewhere inside him. This revelation foreshadows his final realization, too late, that his condemnation of Tess was wrongheaded. Angel’s words “dead, dead, dead” hint at Tess’s future death, but they also signal Angel’s conception of Tess. She is alive physically, but for him she is dead morally, as dead as an idea of purity that he once revered.

3. Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out—all of them writhing in agony except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more. With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess’s first thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where she had found them till the gamekeepers should come, as they probably would come, to look for them a second time. “Poor darlings—to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o’ such misery as yours!” she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly.

stumbles upon the pheasants at the end of Chapter XLI, feeling like a “hunted soul.” The dying symbolize her own condition. It is a strange and unexpected image, since throughout all the scenes of farm life we have witnessed in the novel, there has never been any killing. Farming is always associated with production, never with loss or sacrifice. But hunting is different: it kills creatures, and does so unnecessarily. It is gratuitous cruelty. The image of silently suffering victims of violence evokes Tess’s quiet acceptance of her own violation at the hands of , which was also gratuitous. In a literary sense, these flightless birds stand in sharp contrast to the high-flying birds of Romantic poetry—we recall that is compared to Shelley, who wrote an ode to a skylark. Romantic birds leave the Earth below to soar into a higher plane of existence, but the birds here have no such luck, having been shot down as Tess has been.

Tess’s killing of these suffering birds suggests that she is killing off that part of herself that has quietly accepted many years of agony. After this scene Tess begins to show a more active resolution that culminates in her final murder of Alec. Her newfound activity may not save her; indeed, her punishment for the murder, presumably death by hanging, will snap her neck just like she snaps the necks of these pheasants. Nevertheless, it may be preferable to her earlier passivity, providing her with a nobler way to face her fate.

4. As soon as she drew close to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living person; and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so violent that she was quite overcome, and sank down nigh to fainting, not however till she had recognized Alec d’Urberville in the form. He leapt off the slab and supported her. “I saw you come in,” he said smiling, “and got up there not to interrupt your meditations. A family gathering, is it not, with these old fellows under us here? Listen.” He stamped with his heel heavily on the floor; whereupon there arose a hollow echo from below. “That shook them a bit, I’ll warrant,” he continued. “And you thought I was the mere stone reproduction of one of them. But no. The old order changeth. 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?”
Having sought shelter for her family in the ancient clan’s church in Chapter LII, has gone out walking at night and has come upon her family vault and . Hardy’s irony is deep here: originally, the knowledge that Tess belongs to the d’Urberville line brings her into tragic conflict with Alec, and here those ancestors and Alec are united before her dazed eyes. The two main factors in her sad fate are brought together for her viewing. Moreover, it is ironic that Alec is at first mistaken for one of the sculpted ancestors, as if the distinction between the truly noble d’Urbervilles and the “sham” ones—to use Alec’s own word—is not as important as it first seemed. They are all part of the same display. Whether true or fake, the d’Urbervilles have brought Tess only grief. When Alec stomps on the floor of the crypt and a “hollow echo from below” is heard, we feel that those ancestors may indeed be nothing more than an empty void, a meaningless nothingness. Alec believes he is different from them, since he has power over her while they do not, but in fact he is just like them, using his power like a grand lord although he is quite hollow. He promises empty advantages to her, like the wealth she eventually receives from him, that can never be more important than love. This scene in the corpse-ridden vault shows how dead all thoughts of personal grandeur are next to the life of true feeling, like that of Tess’s feelings for .

5. “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. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained there a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
This passage is the last paragraph of Chapter LIX at the close of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Its tired and unimpassioned tone suggests the narrator’s weariness with the ways of the world, as if quite familiar with the fact that life always unfolds in this way. Nothing great is achieved by this finale: the two figures of Liza-Lu and “went on” at the end, just as life itself will go on. Ignorance rules, rather than understanding: the d’Urberville ancestors who cause the tragedy are not even moved from their slumber, blithely unaffected by the agony and death of one of their own line. ’s tale has not been a climactic unfolding, but a rather humdrum affair that perhaps happens all the time.

In this sense, there is great irony in Hardy’s reference to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, since we feel tragedy should be more impassioned, like the Prometheus Bound referred to here. Prometheus dared to steal fire from the gods for the benefit of men, thus improving human life, but he was punished by eternal agony sent by the president of the gods. Aeschylus’s view of that divine justice was ironic—just as Hardy’s justice is placed in ironic quotation marks—since it seemed deeply unjust to punish Prometheus so severely. Our judgment of Prometheus’s crime matters immensely. Yet Tess’s suffering, by contrast, seems simply a game or “sport,” as if nothing important is at stake. It is hard to know whether Tess has brought any benefits to anyone, though Angel’s life has been changed and Liza-Lu may grow up to be like her sister. In any case, Hardy hints that Tess’s life may have a mythical and tragic importance like that of Prometheus, but it is up to us to judge how ironic this justice is, or what her life’s importance might be.