Tess phase 7 (fulfillment) quotes+meanings

“His sunken eye-putts were of morbid hue and his eyes had waned”

+similar to how Jesus was described when he died and Jesus was famous for forgiving- even sex workers and a cheating women. saying that angel has forgiven tess- for something she needed kindness for and didn’t ask for.

“He matched chrivelli’s dead Christ”

+punishing himself and seeing himself as a spreader of morality.

“How the mighty have fallen”

+links back to cyclical structure as that’s said in chapter 1. ironic as while they were once a mighty family it’s sure as shit now not the case cos angel paid for John’s grave to be engraved. ties into the theme of class structure.

“where could Tess possibly be, a cottage girl, his young wife, admitst all this wealth and fashion”

+bowman or a industral town- strucaully strong and very similar to the chase. links back to chapter 5 with tess’s passiveness as the industrial town disrupts nature.

+going up in social class doesn’t suit tess and it’s very unnatural for her but she was coerced and manipulated into living there.

“he has won me back”

+zero autonomy and the possessive pronoun highlights the power imbalance bewteen tess and Alec, compounded by the passive voice.

“Her great natural beauty was, if not highlighted more obvious by her attire”

+the greyness washes her out as she’s reduced to being a trophy/adornanet.

“like a coprse upon the current”

+semantic field of death.

+tess has the power in the realtionship cos she’s over angel but he isn;t over her.

“in a low role of meaning, as if it came from a sou bound to some Txionian wheel.”

+she’s trapped in a cycle of suffering and is destined to hell. tragic ineviatblilty.

Wheel of lxion from Greek mythology as he was spun for eternity in Tartaus- link to WH as Catherine suffers “the fate of Milo”

“with the sole addition that anew her hat a black feather and a veil was drawn”

+she’s not mouning Alec, she’s mourning her loss of innconce/lost life and how Alec fucked that up. we know that tess will be caught, but feel that this is justified (reader gains pathos).

+Feathers link as Catheirne also turns to feathers to reclaim childhood, just she plucks them out of a pillow.

+Veil shows how she deliberately trys not to see things now as her brain doesn’t do it automatically as it used to.

“a lot of blood had run down upon the floor”

+all we know about the murder- just a lot of blood.

+Poss signs that this retribution was needed and essential as one of the first plagues in Egypt was a blood red nile.

“I think you are lying on alter”

+shes a sacrifice to the sun (and angel) and kinda the patrichary a place that holds great importance fro pagans. Winter/summer solace occurs at stone henge so it’s where’s she’s at her happiest but also her saddest. very imment death.

+Angel saying this shows how he’s gaining awareness as seeing tess as the sacrifice she is

“This happiness could not have lasted”

+she’s very accepting of her death and has come to terms with how she’s destined to suffer.

“one of my mother’s people was a Shepard hereabouts, now I think of it. And you used to say at Talbothays that I was a heathen” chapter 58

+while her childhood home was taken away after her dad died- the women were seen as morally inferior- the meaning of family to tess had become sacrifice. When Joan sent Tess away to work for Alec knowing what may happen, her future was comprised for the possibility of social mobility for her family. she also only marry Alec once she see’s Liza-Lu and realises how poverty striken her family is therefore making Alec’s finical stability worth sacrificing her sanity for. Tess knows she will die so reuininying with Angel while nice for her means little. instead she makes angel promise that he’ll take care of her family- more sactifacre.