Summary
Summary Phase the First to Phase the third of Tess of the D'urbervilles.
detailed summary, quotes and analysis for Alevel.
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Phase the first - The MaidenTells 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
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