Phase the first - The Maiden
Tells the d’Urbervilles that they are noble, maidens dance in may time (white dresses) – she meets angel first but doesn’t dance with her – pastoral setting,
class represented in her father’s drunkenness, angel impression (p22), pub scene with father he comes home drunk consistently, Tess and looking after her
siblings – explores feminine roles (chapter 3), feminine education – Tess wants to be a teacher and end the fate of her beginning – ending cut off = more tragic,
has to go to the market due to her fathers drunkenness – horse dies (chapter 4), idea of ‘blighted star’ beginning ideas of fate, (chapter 5) trip to see Alec
Chapter 1:
Tess’ father finds out that they are from a noble line, this make Durbeyfield become very self important and
obsessed with the idea – he sends for a horse to take him home despite having no money – as he feels liberated from
poverty
Rich description of landscape as the setting
‘you are the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the d’Urbervilles, who derive their
descent from Sir Pagan d’Urberville’ – starts her having to find alec and reclaim their status
‘luxuriously stretched himself out’ – shows his change in manner after finding out despite no real change in his
situation
‘Produced a shilling, one of the chronically few that he possessed’ – reinforces their situation and his elevated
sense of self, his desperation is highlighted in the hopeful arrogance – sadly comical tone of narrator
Mr Durbeyfield’s drinking = sympathy heightened towards family – morally compromised?
Chapter 2:
Tess and the may dance – angel comes by but they don’t dance, regrets this decision thinking Tess is the most
beautiful
‘mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience’ – virginity, female over emotion
‘she wore a red ribbon in her hair and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a
pronounced adornment’ – ‘red’ used to forebode future impurity contrast with expected ‘white’
The helplessness of country girls is emphasised as they are sexualised.
- Repetition of ‘white’ ‘white gowns’ ‘white company’ ‘white frock’ ‘white flowers’ – tess as natural and
pure – her virginity and new life of spring
- ‘under those bodices the life throbbed quick and warm’
- ‘Beautiful eyes, others a beautiful nose, others a beautiful mouth’
- ‘genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many eyes’
- ‘natural shyness of the softer sex’
About Tess
- ‘but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes’
- ‘Bouncing handsome womanliness’.
- ‘You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks’ – focus on her youthful beauty – predatorial.
First characterisation of angel – chivalrous, saviour, knightly
- ‘Three young men of superior class’.
- ‘There was an uncribbed, uncabined, aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that that he had hardly as
yet found the entrance to his professional groove’.
Chapter 3:
Tess is told about their family line and that her father is ill, Joan has read a fortune teller book. – her irrational
hope for the future. Both parents go to the pub for a long time this concerns Tess so she sends her brother to get
them, still they don’t return so she goes herself
,‘the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing pains, and the agreeable distresses of those girls who had been
wood and won’ – foreshadowing in the series of oxymorons – Tess’s strong character, disapproving of higher
class men like Angel who ‘won’ lower class women
‘dismiss all thought and care of the children during the interval’ – father at the pub, characterises his stupidity
and pig-headedness as a drunk
‘her now wedded husband in the same spot during his wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects of character, and
regarding him only in his idea presentation as a lover’ – female repression, joan as an ideal Victorian wife –
accepting and submissive to her feminine role but has outlet of drinking as well. – heightens empathy for her
‘young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship’ - metaphor – unstoppable journey towards fate,
powerless to change it
‘half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail … six helpless creatures’ – unfair on children,
extended metaphor.
Chapter 4:
The parents discuss their plans for Tess at the inn, he is too drunk the next morning to go to market so Tess and her
brother go instead – when they go Abraham tells Tess of their plans for her. Both fall asleep on the carriage and
‘prince’ dies – this fills Tess with guilt.
‘we’ll all claim kin’ – Mr Durbeyfield, fathers’ ownership of his daughter thus he can control her to benefit
himself - ‘she won’t say nay to going’ – simplistic language reinforces their low class and ominous
foreshadowing.
‘Blighted star’ – as her brother asks if the stars are a better or worse world than theirs and she replies that
theirs is a blighted one – the reason for their misfortune – bleak and unhopeful – doom ‘tis because we be on a
blighted star and not a sound one’ – awakens to reality.
‘With upturned face made observation on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black hollows
above, in a serene disassociation from these two wisps of human life’ – dark imagery, ominous ‘cold pulse’ =
death
‘The pointed shaft of the cart had entered the breast of the unhappy prince like a sword’– penetrative sexual
imagery, penetration causes death – foreshadowing – virginal, blood erotic invasion direct mirroring (falls
asleep on the horse) – white and red images.
‘she regarded herself in the light of a murderess’ – foreshadows Alec’s death
Chapter 5:
Because of her guilt Tess agrees to go to Alec, goes to the house where ‘everything smelled like money’. Strawberries
images, roses erotic, mirrors later force.
‘She felt quite Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and brothers’ –
feels responsibility to them, resents her and sees the irresponsibility of their actions.
Establishes alec as disingenuous and his attraction – description, new money class, tries to dismiss them being
related – her potential claims to class ‘it was of recent errection, indeed almost new’
‘it was a luxuriance of aspect, a fullness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really
was’ – sexualised by Alec
‘in a slight distress she parted her lips and took it in’ – alec wishes for her submission to him, and himself as the
dominant figure
‘Obeyed like one in a dream’ – false, dreamlike ‘blue narcotic haze’ – hazy in the rape scene
‘he watched her, pretty and unconscious’ – parallels with the chase
‘what a crummy girl’ – shabby, sees her as a toy, plump comely attractive
, Chapter 6:
She returns home and finds a letter from Mrs. D’Urberville offering her a job at their house, she wants to earn
enough money to buy the family a new horse.
Walks home with roses ‘quite a posey’ ‘blushes’ – male gaze, female desirability, innocence and ignorance of her
own desirability, shocked into erotica, excess – to look at, to please.
‘Roses at her breast; roses in her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim’ – Danger of his love in
‘rose’ = thorns and red, plosives and repetition
‘a thorn of the rose remaining in her breast accidentally pricked her chin’ – Danger, forbodes.
Joan’s ‘triumphant manner’ – her simplicity and inability to see obvious danger, expectations of Tess’s
needs/love as secondary.
‘Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear that she had won such high opinion from a stranger, when
in her own esteem she had sunk so low’ – naivety – parents show hopeful naivety by not looking after Tess and
trusting Alec – fated tragedy.
‘she had hoped to be a teacher at the school but her fate seemed to decide otherwise’
Chapter 7:
Joan dresses Tess up to go to the D’Urbervilles – she questions her decision and thinks Alec may exploit Tess.
‘estimated a woman when she was not much more than a child’ – physically desirable, yet emotionally a child –
makes tragedy worse
‘Honest beauty flanked by innocence’ – ironic contrast, strong image
‘Cigar between his teeth; wearing a dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth, stick up
collar, and brown driving gloves’ - Description of Alec, wealth and arrogance
‘Mrs Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child’ – continues idiocy and grim irony, no concern for Tess.
‘Is that the gentleman Kingsman which will make sissy a lady’
‘if ‘twere the doing again, I wouldn’t let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman was really a good
hearted man’ – regrets instantly change of tone and realisation of potential tragedy
Chapter 8:
Alec drives recklessly to scare Tess and she wants him to stop. He wont stop driving fast unless Tess allows him to
kiss her – they argue, and she continues the journey on foot ‘no I shall walk’ suggesting her defiance –
unconventional – Alec is almost caricaturish as hardy emphasises unpleasant man and Tess’s discomfort.
Another unstoppable journey to fate almost parallels the ‘Ship’
‘don’t try to frighten me sir’ Semi-resistance ‘- ‘if any living man can manage this horse I can’
Drives fast to destabilise her so she will grab him
‘never said Tess independently’ – tries to resist he calls her ‘young witch’
‘I wouldn’t have come if I had known’
‘you are mighty sensitive for a cottage girl’ – emotive, passionate – where alec expects submission and stupidity
‘artful hussy’ – insults again – immediately blames her
Chapter 9:
