TOTB characterisation + themes

Tess

a family orientated countrygirl from Marlott

key quotes: “the dialect was on her tongue” “the Vale of Blackmoor was to her the world” “she regarded herself in the light of a murderess” “abandoned to her impulse [and] scrambled [to Alec]” “no invidious eyes set upon her” “her instinct of self preservation was stronger than her candour” “I am desolate without you [Angel]” “all injustice I have received at your hands” “justice was done…president of immortals had ended his sport with Tess” “mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience” “I am ready to pay the price” “far less worthy of him” “I am like the poor Queen of Sheba in the bible” “not much more than a child”

Izz tells Angel - “[Tess] would have laid down her life [for him]”

Angel - “visionary essence of woman” “Artemis/Demeter” “rarity about her [that separated her from] the ache of modernism” “a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent”

Alec - “I will be your master again” “once a victim always a victim, that’s the law”

associated themes: fallen woman, nature vs city, victim, guilt, abandonment + betrayal, gender + female suffering, fate

Angel

a farmer at Talbothays with confined rural idealism

key quotes: “fresh virginal daughter of Naure” “you were more sinned against than sinning” “he looked upon her as a species of imposter” “he had not really forgiven Tess” “ethereal essence of womanliness…insensible arrested his serious attention” “too sorry…he had not observed her” “how very lovable her face was to him” “she yielded into his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness” “thought no evil in his treatment of her” “the shade of his own limitations” “looked at the unpracticed mouth [of the] daughter of the soil” “not the heart to desert his father’s religion - yet had doubts about it”

associated themes: guilt, injustice, female suffering, social class, abandonment + betrayal, gender

Alec

predatory and corrupt rapist

key quotes: “full lips, badly moulded…red and smooth” “kiss of mastery” “allowed his lips to smile slowly for themselves” “everything else was blackness alike…where was Tess’s guardian angel?” “you temptress…damned witch of Babylon” “I was your master once” “a damn bad fellow. I was born bad” “she’s mine” “the fire flared up…face of d’urberville”

Tess - “the wrong man did it”

associated themes: corruption, abandonment + betrayal, injustice, gender roles + female suffering, social class

John + Joan

Tess’s parents who reinforce her guilt and lead her to “claim kin”

key quotes

Joan: tells Tess to “claim kin” “why didn’t ye think of ur family…only of urself” “it was to be” “if only i had known I wouldn’t have let her go” “a woman should put up with her husband” “her mother had not yet told her what to do in a crisis” “we women folk have not much to do with it”

associated themes: guilt, fate, gender roles + female suffering, social class

John: “the d’Urberville blood running through me” “her father was making himself foolish in their eyes” “why should I work?” “a very poor specimen of nobility”

associated themes: hopes + dreams, social class

Liza Lu

Tess’s little sister

key quotes: “all the pureness of Tess, without the experience” “worshipping Tess in a sort of divinity” at execution when leaving with Angel “as if affinity at last conquered affinity, despite the will” (two meanings of affinity: her pure spiritual closeness overcame angel’s attraction to Tess as a form of justice)

associated themes: fate, purity, gender roles

Crick

Kind master dairyman at Talbothays

key quotes: his family pew at church “dairyman dick…mister Richard crick on Sundays” praises Tess for being “a very good milker, a very good dairymaid” “more than one milkmaid…that wouldn’t go to the churn alone” “twas on this very day 3 years ago” “we shall not forget her”

associated themes: fate, rural tradition + warmth, social class

Izz, Retty and Marian

Tess’s friends at Talbothays

key quotes: “would’ve given their souls for him”

Izz - “I wouldn’t have said yes if I hadn’t thought you loved her still” , writes a letter w Marian to Angel to reconsider Tess

“retty had drowned herself, but was recovered”

Marian - “he ought to marry one of you” (instead of Tess), helps Tess get the job at flintcomb

associated themes: fate, female suffering

Mrs d’Urberville

Alec’s cold mother

key quotes: “mobile face [that had been] laboriously striven after” “knew what they had eaten” “face enacting vivid pantomime of criticisms passing in her mind” “no great affection” “compelled to love her offspring resentfully and to be bitterly fond”

blindness as a symbol of blindness to Tess’s suffering, her son’s deviant nature and impassive ‘upperclass’

associated themes: social class, injustice, female suffering

Clare’s family

judgemental upperclass, strict in idealism and practices

key quotes: “old fashioned family” “not think Tess an appropriate wife for our son” “[Tess is] a simple creature, not intellectually bright” “[religion is] soul of family, law of our lives” “will of God” - that the affair ended as it did “The woman is pure enough in her heart” (Reverend to Alec)

Reverend refuses to take Alec as a son in law despite his ‘redemption’, values social values more than Christianity

associated themes: social class, injustice, fate