Tess of the D’Urbervilles:
A Book of Symbols
Landscape
“Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the
landscape” (220).
Blakemore
• Hardy’s description?
• “The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the
beautiful Vale of Blakemore or Blackmore aforesaid—an engirdled and
secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist and
landscape-painter . . . fertile and sheltered . . .” (5).
(Blakemore, cont.)
May Day Dance
• What is May Day all
about?
• A ritual celebrating the
fertility of nature
–
–
–
–
White dresses
Flowers
May pole or wands
Red ribbon
The Slopes
• Hardy’s description?
• “A country-house built for
enjoyment pure and simple, with
not an acre of troublesome land
attached to it . . . The house
proper stood in full view. It was
of recent erection, indeed almost
new, and of the same rich red
colour . . . Everything looked like
money—like the last coin issued
from the Mint” (26-27).
(The Slopes, cont.)
Early or “Forced” Strawberries
“He conducted her about the lawns, and flower-beds, . . . And greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked strawberries.
“Yes,” said Tess. “When they come.”
“They are already here.” D’Urberville begn gathering specimens of the
fruit for her . . . A specially fine product of the “British Queen” variety
he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth.
“No, no!” she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and her
lips. “I would rather take it in my own hand.” (29)
The Chase
• Setting in relation to Alec’s home?
• “Far behind the corner of the house . . . Stretched . . . The Chase—a truly
venerable tract of forest land; one of the few remaining woodlands in
England of undoubted primaeval date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still
found on aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand
of man, grew as they had grown when they were pollarded for bows. All this
sylvan antiquity however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the
immediate boundaries of the estate” (26).
• “.
. . Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around”
• What might this place symbolize?
Talbothays Dairy in Froome
Valley
• “Not quite sure of her direction
Tess stood still upon the
hemmed expanse of verdant
flatness . . . The red and white
herd nearest at hand . . . Now
trooped towards the steading,
their great bags of milk
swinging under them as they
walked. Tess followed slowly
in their rear” (82)
(Talbothay’s, cont.)
Paradise
• “Being so often—possibly not always by chance—the first two
persons to get up at the dairy-house, they seemed to themselves the
first persons up of all the world. . . . The spectral, halfcompounded, aqueous light which pervaded the open mead
impressed them with a felling of isolation, as if they were Adam
and Eve” (102)
• “her eyes son lifted, and his plumbed the deepness of the evervarying pupils, and their radiating fibrils of blue, and black, and
grey, and violet, while she regarded him as Eve at her second
waking might have regarded Adam” (133).
(Talbothay’s, cont.)
Tess’s Mouth
• “Her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the
face of the earth . . . No: they were not perfect.
And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the
would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because
it was that which gave the humanity” (118).
Talbothay’s, cont.
Angel and Alec: Literary Foils
Differences:
Berry picking, carriage manners:
courtesy vs. force
“Angel” and Devil?
Similarities:
Both pursue Tess, struggle with faith
Both change because of Tess
Role Reversal: Alec becomes Protector
Angel deserts her
Flintcomb-Ash
• Hardy’s description?
• “Every leaf of the [turnips] having already
been consumed the whole field was in colour
a desolate drab; it was a complexion without
features, as if a face from chin to brow should
be only an expanse of skin. The sky wore, in
another colour, the same likeness; a white
vacuity of countenance with the lineaments
gone. So these two upper and nether visages
confronted each other, all day long the white
face looking down on the brown face, and the
brown face looking up at the white face,
without anything standing between them but
the two girls crawling over the surface of the
former like flies” (223-24).
(Flintcomb-Ash, cont.)
The Machine
• “Maltese cross of the reaping-machine” (68), the “Red
Tyrant,” blue turnip slicer, thresher, “buzzing red glutton”
(262)
• 19th century industrialization exploits the countryside and
the past just like Alec exploits Tess: “I was you master
once . . .”
• Machine = “repository of force”
• The sun seems to approve: “from the west sky a wrathful
shine . . . burst forth” (262).
• Machine = Natural force = Alec (“a ticking like the lovemaking of the grasshopper”-68)
Stonehenge
• Why this?
• “Tess, really tired by this time, flung herself upon an oblong slab
that lay close at hand, and was sheltered from the wind by a
pillar. Owing to the action of the sun during the preceding day,
the stone was warm and dry. . . ‘I don’t want to go any further,
Angel” (310).
• “’Did they sacrifice to God
here?’ asked she.
‘No,’ said he.
‘Who to?’
‘I believe to the sun’” (311).
(Stonehenge, cont.)
Symbolism of the Sun:
Nature’s Plan for Tess
The sun:
• “lit up their figures” at dance (6)
• “absorbed the young stranger’s
retreating figure” (10)
• makes Prince’s hooves sparkle (23)
• is a “godlike creature” gazing down on
earth with a “curious . . . personal
look” (67)
• stretches Tess’s and Angel’s shadows a
quarter of a mile (152)
• sets “a spot like a paint-mark” on
Tess’s skirt during honeymoon (171)
• receives sacrifice at Stonehenge (311)
Tess’s Journey of Faith
• Early in life, she loses her “Angel”
on this “blighted planet.”
• Is “tempted” and “falls.”
(Tess’s Journey of Faith, cont.)
Tess Challenges Christianity’s Rules
• “I don’t believe God said such things.”
• Becomes a priestess for her innocent child.
• Wonders “why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust
alike” (99).
(Tess’s Journey of Faith, cont.)
• Meets an Angel in the fallen garden—finds a new Eden at Talbothays Dairy
and a new religion: LOVE. For a few perfect months, they live “as if they were
Adam and Eve” (102).
• “There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare” (151).
• Tess’s “Angel” falls (as all humans do); Tess’s faith in LOVE is tested.
• Again she is tempted--“A jester might say that this is just like paradise. You are
Eve, and I am the old other one come to tempt you” (275)--in returning to Alec,
she denies her faith in LOVE.
• Tess is able to slay the evil force in her life and regains her Eden, but in the
process she becomes a sacrificial victim to LOVE.
(Tess’s Journey of Faith, cont.)
• Tess believes love is redemptive “Tell me now, Angel; do you
think we shall meet again after we are dead? . . . What—not even you
and I Angel, who love each other so well?” (311)
• Ironically, Angel condemned Tess for her imperfection, but
she is the Christ figure of the story, acting out love,
forgiveness, and a higher justice.
• “She would have laid down her life for ‘ee.”
“No man hath greater love than this—than to lay down his life for a
friend.” John 15:13
(Tess’s Journey of Faith, cont.)
Tess: A Christ Figure?
“I am ready.”
Two persons were walking rapidly . . . With bowed
heads, which . . . The sun’s rays smiled on
pitilessly. . . . They moved on hand in hand, and
never spoke a word, the dropping of their heads
being that of Giotto’s Two Apostles” (313)
Sources for Images
• Virtual tour of settings: http://www2.sisu.edu/depts/ english/Tess1.htm
• http://justinewaddell.ourfamily.com/gallery.htm
• http://www.aande.com/tv/shows/tess/
Leftover Stuff Follows
• “A large shadow of her shape rose upon the wall
and ceiling. She bent forward, at which each
diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a
toad’s” (177).
“Too late, too late”
“I have done it—I don’t know how”
• “I will not desert you; I will protect you by every
means in my power, dearest love, whatever you
may have done or not have done!” (304)
“Ah, happy house—good-bye!”
• “Why should we put an end to all that’s
sweet and lovely! . . . All is trouble outside
there: inside here content” (308).