tess quotes

"Her pride would not allow her to turn her head again"

Chapter 2
-Symbolises Tess' pride, separating her character from her father

"A blighted one."

Chapter 4
-Tess' awareness of her own fate, her pessimistic view on the world presents her lack of hope, this could be because of her social class, or her understanding she does't fit in victorian society

'She splashed from face to skirt with crimson drops'

Chapter 4
-Ruthlessness destruction of the urban, and it's destructive effect on nature
-Tess is painted in 'crimson', the colour red symbolising victorian society's view of her as sexual due to her beauty
-Foreshadows her murdering of Alec, she is stained her tragic trajectory has begun

'He had a swarthy complextion...Black moustache with curled points'

Chapter 5
-First description of Alec
-villainously attractive, his moustache contrasts Tess' fresh, youthful appearance

'roses in her breast; roses in her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim'

Chapter 6
-Tess' appearance becomes a spectacle to those in the cart, the flowers and strawberries symbolise how her beauty is exploited by society, the placement being by Alec makes them symbolic of the male gaze

''It was to be'. There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's personality'

Chapter 11
-Rape
-Ideas of fate, criticism of society

"I wish I had never been born"

Chapter 12
-Tess as the tragic victim, suffering

"I should be your creature to go on doing that, and I won't!'

Chapter 12
-Tess' purity, in refusing to be Alec's creature she regains control of her own morals, not allowing herself to sink to his level despite social conventions

"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"

Chapter 12
-Alec as the tragic villain, his awareness shows his lack of responsibilty or care for his actions as he is not condemned or judeged in the same way Tess is

"I was a child... Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men folk?"

Chapter 12
-suffering

"Her depression was then terrible, and she could've hidden herself in a tomb"

Chapter 13
-Foreshadowing
-Tess' suffering
-repeated imagery of tomb in Tess' worst moments

"The reaping-machiene left the fallen corn behind it in little heaps"

Chapter 14
-Imagery of the urban as the grim reaper, destruction of nature by industrialisation
-Tess' downfall parallels the fall of Marlott

"Don't for god's sake speak to me as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself"

Chapter 14

"What a fresh virginal daughter of nature"

Chapter 18
-Angels idealisation of Tess

"Staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow white on the apple tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin"

Chapter 19

"Why the sun do shine on the just on unjust alike....But that's what books will not tell me"

Chapter 19

"A feeling of isolation as if they were Adam and Eve"

Chapter 20

"He called her artemis, dementer"

Chapter 20
-Mythical symbolism

"But she is a lady nevertheless in feeling and nature"

Chapter 26

"He saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snakes"

Chapter 27
-Tess' beauty associated with eve and temptation

"after I have made you the well-read woman that I meant to make you"

Chapter 30

"O, I sometimes wish I'd never been born"

Chapter 30

"She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of darkness were always spread"

Chapter 31

"How strange it was! He seemed to be her double."

Chapter 39

"because tis' just the same!"

Chapter 39
Tess

"Another woman in your shape"

Chapter 40

"Different societies, different nature"
"I am only a peasant by position not by nature"

Chapter 40

"Outside humanity, she had at present no fear"

Chapter 41

PAGE 7-8 Tess's ancestry and men deciding her fate

It was only my whim...Durberville nose...a little debased

PAGE 12 First description of Marlott

'fields are never brown and the springs never dry'

PAGE 14 Tess as represented by nature / innocence

'mobile peony mouth...a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience'

PAGE 16 First description of Angel

'an unscribbed, uncabinated aspect in his eyes and attire'

PAGE 14 + PAGE 25 Privacy of the soul - Dalloway link

'each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in'...'their souls expanded beyond their skins, spreading their personalities warmly through the room'

PAGE 20-24 Durbeyfield household and mother/daughter relationship + connection

'Mrs Durbeyfield still habitually spoke the dialect...personal charms which Tess could boast..a gap of 200 years'

PAGE 33 Princes death

'splashed face to skirt with Crimson drops...huge pool of blood in front of her was already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the sun rose a million prismatic hues were reflected'

PAGE 37 - Malthus reference

'she felt a malthusian vexation with her mother thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and brothers'

PAGE 37-44 Intro to Durberville house / unnatural and dangerous

"country house, built for enjoyment pure and simple...red brick lodge...rich crimson colour...red geranium...acres of glass-houses...regraft a name'

PAGE 37-44 Intro to Alec

'figure came forth from the dark triangular door...swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly moulded, though red and smooth...well groomed black moustache with curled points...singular force in the gentleman's face'

PAGE 40-44 Alec's forcefulattitude towards Tess

'big beauty...my pretty coz...the young man was pressing...in slight distress she parted her lips and took it in'

PAGE 42-43 Mark of Alec on Tess's life'

'he who was to be the blood red ray in the spectrum of her young life...she was doomed to be seen and marked and coveted that day by the wrong man'

PAGE 47-48 Decision for Tess to go to work at the Durbervilles

'making her labours in the house seem heavier than they were' 'handwriting seemed rather masculine'

PAGE 49-53 Tess being prepared to leave to Tranbridge

'Do what you like with me mother' 'estimated a women when she was not much more than a child' 'like a painter' 'her trump card'

AGE 53-57 Cart-ride to Tranbridge with Alec

'she began to get uneasy' 'Hold on round my waist!' 'eyes staring at him..like..a wild animal' 'kiss of mastery' 'I shall walk'

PAGE 62 Shift in their relationship - Alec is almost grooming / dominating Tess as she begins to rely on him and involuntarily leads him on

'he persisted in his demand' 'she involuntarily smiled in his face' 'owing her inevitable dependance..on him'

PAGE 66-67 Tess's altercation with Car Dutch

'back of her head like a rope' 'Tess unfairly browbeaten'

PAGE 69-74 Tess's rape, her body as angelic and malleable, the air as hazy and narcotic, Alec as manipulative and dominant.

'luminous fog..enveloped them' 'she was inexpressibly weary' 'he had stolen a hearty kiss' 'your father has a new cob today' 'sank into her as a billow' 'druggist's bottle' 'chase was wrapped in thick darkness' 'pale nebulousness' 'where was Tess's guardian angel' 'beautiful feminine tissue'

PAGE 75 Tess is a new woman - no longer innocent and naive. Garden of Eden imagery.

'the basket was heavy and the bundle was large' 'she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing. Life was totally changed for her forthwith'

PAGE 76 Tess's depressive mood and intense regret

'she sat now, like a puppet, replying to remarks in monosyllables' 'I wish I had never been born'

PAGE 77 Important message of women being dismissed and blamed - also Alec's awareness of what he has done is wrong

'Did it ever strike your mind that what every woman says some woman may feel' 'I suppose I am a bad fellow, a damn bad fellow'

PAGE 79 Board that Tess passes- symbolises beginning of Tess's unfair condemnation by christianity and Victorian Society. Tess critical of Christianity after her bad experience with religion, where /how sin is inflicted makes no difference to society

'THY DAMNATION SLUMBERETH NOT'

PAGE 82 Tess questioning her family, emphasises her innocence and the fact her parents failed to protect and warn her - suggests its common for young women

'How could I be expected to know?...I was a child when I left this house...Why didn't you warn me?'

PAGE 84-85 The long lasting / profound effect of the rape, she wishes for death. She is condemned, judged and gossiped about in society

'Her depression was then terrible, and she could have hidden herself in a tomb' 'she knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more'

PAGE 86-87 The sun as a powerful /godly being and the reaping machine representative of violence / industrial destroying / corrupting nature

'The sun..had a curious sentiment..demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression' 'The machine had begun..arms of mechanical reaper revolving slowly...(animals) retreated inwards as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of their refuge'

PAGE 94-97 Sorrows baptism, death and burial

'the baby had been suddenly taken ill...so tender and puny' 'little prisoner of flesh' 'a child's child' 'she stood in her long white nightgown, a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging...candle abstracted from her form and features...immaculate beauty...almost regal' 'a divine personage' 'I'll never come to your church no more'

PAGE 102-105 Tess's new chapter and journey / arrival at Talbothays.

'her days pilgrimage...new air was clear, bracing, ethereal' 'The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life...had at length mastered Tess'

PAGE 113 First detailed description of Angel, more expressive / emotional but still had unexpected firms around him

'fixed, abstracted eyes, and a mobility of mouth somewhat too small and delicately lined for a mans, firm close of lower lip'

PAGE 117-118 Angel beginning to see beyond the farm peoples class and see's them as individuals, mirrors how he treats Tess

'farm-folk of his imagination..known as hodge..began to differentiate themselves as in a chemical process'

PAGE 122-123 A very intense moment as Tess is in Talbothays approached angel, very bare / pure / sensual description, a similar mist / haze Tess has with men that reps sexual longing. Very rich / overpowering smells and colourful sticky scenery - Garden of Eden / extremely bare nature as if Tess is a child of fertility and abundance

'wandered in the still air with a stark quality like that of nudity...Tess, like a fascinated bird...damp and rank with juicy grass...thistle milk and slug slime...upon her naked arms sticky blights which,..made blood red stains'

PAGE 129 Tess and Angel in a state of limbo but also portrayed as a social ideal, its inevitable they'll come together

'happiest of all positions in the social scale...ever balanced on the edge of a passion...all the while they were converging , under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale'

PAGE 129 She's repressed / hiding her past \= metaphor. Fate finally working in her favour

'sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soul'

PAGE 130 Tess's beauty seems other-worldly, almost godly, to Angel. As the only two people awake on the farm, he thinks of her as the only women in the world.

'She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman - a whole sex condensed into one typical form'

PAGE 136 The humorous story of a girls innocence being taken by a man strikes a delicate place in Tess's heart, The description of the sun as a 'wound' is a violent image that connotes the lasting impressions of Tess's past experiences.

'not one knew how cruelly it touched the tender place in her experience. The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in the sky'

PAGE 143 The sentences long and complex with more sophisticated vocabulary. Emphasising their is more to each country girl than may seem and Hardy creates the image of to perhaps symbolise the forces of nature and christian nature fighting within them.

'Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary'

PAGE 151 Angels sudden embrace shows how overcome he is with love for Tess. Tess doesn't reflect of this move and believes it inevitable - showing she accepted her fate once again but this time she desired it

'Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness'

PAGE 156 Antithetical suggests love as pleasure and pain. Oxymoron portray strong and confusing impact of Angel on the dairy maids. (Quote from pessimistic poem Swinburne)

'Four months and more of torturing ecstasy in his society - pleasure girdles about with pain'

PAGE 159 Brothers education has been mechanical and uniform and Angel thinks they've lost their emotion and sense of wonder

'two brothers, non-evangelical, well-educated, hall-marked young men, correct to their remotest fibre; such unimpeachable models as are turned out yearly by the lathe of a systematic tuition'

PAGE 171 Tess is worried about impact of her past her past, she avoids telling him the truth but this only prolongs her suffering. She wants to stand still + be happy (Mrs D)

'Oh, Mr Clare - I cannot be your wife...I only want to love you'

PAGE 173 Angel cant understand the reasons behind Tess's response - She tries to escape turmoil \= running away from sadness into the natural world where the nature helps her to reconcile happiness + self

'She went out towards the mead, joining the other milkmaids with a bound, as if trying to make to open air drive away her sad constraint'

PAGE 175 Love is a struggle - physical / biological desire much stronger than their conscience / social structure

'the struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the side of his - two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience'

PAGE 176 Simultaneous extremes of Tess's emotions, love of Angel is mixed with the pain of hiding her past from him.

'Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain'

PAGE 186 Talbothays as out of sync with the rest of modernisation and industrialisation. Two worlds incongruous

'A fitful white streak of steam at intervals upon the dark green background denotes intermittent moments of contact between their secluded world and modern life...no object could have looked more foreign to the gleaming cranks and wheels than the unsophisticated girl'

PAGE 190 Hardy's authorial intervention - nature vs social convention states that her desire for happiness wins over society. Suggests Tess was always going to succumb to Angel \= fate

'The 'appetite for joy' which pervades all creation, that tremendous force which sways humanity to its purpose, as the tide sways the helpless weed was not to be controlled by vague lubrications over the social rubric'

PAGE 195 Tess's devotion towards Angel and felt he was the only thing that makes her happy and made her forget her tragedies.

'her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being..he irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows...she walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of darkness were always spread'

PAGE 223 Tess finds out the dairymaids all suffering from their love for Angel which makes her feel unworthy of him. She knows they are more innocent and simple than her - Fate presides and overtakes Tess's life.

'They were simple and innocent girls on whom the unhappiness of unrequited love had fallen; they had deserved better at the hands of fate. She had deserved worse yet she was the chosen one'

PAGE 224-225 Lead up to Tess telling Angel of her past

'He seemed to be her double...when I, my very self, fell...It can hardly be more serious, dearest...Her imagination beheld a Last Day luridness in this red-coaled glow...each diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a toad'

PAGE 227 After Tess tells Angel her inner world collapses.

'all material objects around announced their irresponsibility with terrible iteration. And yet nothing had changed since the moments when he had been kissing her; or rather, nothing in the substance of things. But the essence of things had changed'

PAGE 228 Angel cannot comprehend who Tess really is. He has a one dimensional view on women and although Tess hasn't changed he conceives her as a different person.

'you were one person; and now you are another. How can forgiveness meet such a grotesque prestidigitation'

PAGE 232 Angels manifested superiority and arrogance (male) - blames Tess

'you are an unapprehending peasant women who have never been initiated into the proportions of social things'

PAGE 241 Heartbreaking idea that any other man could have looked past it - Angel too stubborn and hard. Has a rough streak.

'she broke into sobs...it would almost have won round any man but Angel Clare..so gentle and affectionate was he in general, there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam'

PAGE 247 Angels sleepwalking - his inner emotions / conflict. Reveals his tender love which suggests that his condemnation of her was misplaced. Perhaps foreshadows her death.

'with as much respect as one would show a dead body...my poor poor Tess, my dearest darling Tess! So sweet, so good, so true!..withheld so severely in his waking hours...My wife - dead, dead'

PAGE 278-279 Tess's encounter with the pheasants \= Tess's vulnerable position

'several pheasants lay about...dabbled with blood...she broke the necks'

PAGE 280 Tess associated with nature \= part of the landscape. Purity of her character as a simple country girl - even her clothes entwined

'Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a field women pure and simple...every thread of that old attire had become write drawn and thin'

PAGE 285 Desolate flintcome ash antithesis of fresh, fertile Talbothays.

'the sky wore...a white vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone...white face looking down on the brown face and the brown face looking up at the white face...two girls crawling over the surface of the former like flies'

PAGE 305 See's Alec - Links to her being in a passive state by Alec at Tranbridge. He effects her physically and emotionally - loses her sense of self

'a fear overcame her, paralysing her movement so that she neither retreated nor advanced'

PAGE 305-306 Alec seems to have made a complete change but Tess can still see the old him. His mastery has only diminished into rude energy.

'animalism had become fanaticism...the bold rolling eye that had flashed upon her form in the old time with such mastery now beamed with the rude energy of theolatry that was almost ferocious'

PAGE 306 Hypocrisy of religion, implying his only reason for conversion was to save himself from hell - though it doesn't apply to Tess

'He who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the spirit, while she remained unregernerate'

PAGE 324 Hardy's reminder that the conversion was reversible - Alec is in limbo slipping between his two selves

'the corpses of those old black passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines of his face since his reformation seemed to wake and come together as resurrection'

PAGE 325 The Threshing machine - hellish and destruction for the countryside

'red tyrant...threshing machine...despotic demand'

PAGE 331 Tess's violent and impulsive outburst that foreshadows the murder

'scarlet oozing appeared where her blow had alighted...blood began dropping'

PAGE 335 Hunted animal motif - victim - Alec is hunting and dominating her. He then continues to manipulate her by using her families hardship

'How the little limbs tremble! You are as weak as a bled calf, you know you are; and yet you need have done nothing since I arrived...I have enough and more than enough to put you out of anxiety, both for yourself and your parents and sisters'

PAGE 337 Tess's letter to Angel - thinks she has no right to happiness

'How silly I was in my happiness when I thought I could trust you always to love me! I ought to have known that such as that was not for poor me'

PAGE 340 Angel begins to realise his treatment of Tess was wrong that his values were narrow and legalistic.

'now began to discredit the old appraisements of morality...plainly told Clare that he was wrong in coming away from her'

PAGE 349 Alec's hellish connotations

'the fire flared up and she beheld the face of Durberville...grotesqueness of his appearance...ghastly comicality'

PAGE 354 Shift in Tess's emotion and she finally recognises her hardships

'a sudden rebellious sense of injustice...never in her life...had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come...they were not sins of intention but of inadvertence...O why have you treated me so monstrously Angel! I do not deserve it!...it is all injustice I have received at your hands!'

PAGE 368 Angels been through purgatory hell - only a shell of his former self

'so reduced was that figure from it's former contours...the skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind the skeleton'

PAGE 370 Realisation of his treatment - same intention vs action argument \= hardy commentary

'he asked himself why had he not judged Tess constructively rather than biographically, by the will rather than the deed...Clare's eyes were blinded with tears, springing wildly up to go and find her immediately'

PAGE 372 People can be forgotten / story is tragically small / human species renews itself

'inhabited by another family who had never known her...taking as much interest on their own doings as if the homestead had never passed its primal time in conjunction with the histories of others...their actions into jarring collision with the dim figures behind them'

PAGE 378 She's in a moral gray area

'her great natural beauty was at last rendered full justice by her attire. She was loosely wrapped in a rich cashmere dressing gown of gray-white, embroidered in half mourning tints'

AGE 381-383 The murder of Alec

'made me a victim, a caged bird...spot in the middle of the white surface...it was red...ace of hearts...point of the blade had touched the heart of the victim'

PAGE 389-392 Tess and Angels last few days together

'I'm not going to think outside of now...the gloomy intervening time seemed to sink into chaos...morning light fell upon the faces of the pair...my life can only be a question of a few weeks...'