feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_0_part_4.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 4
feat_summary_id: chapter 4
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-1-chapters-1-11", "summary": "Rolliver's Inn is the only alehouse in the village, and can only boast of an off-license: nobody can legally drink on the premises, but this rule is often averted. Mrs. Durbeyfield had found her husband there bragging about his grand project for his family. He will send Tess to claim kin, for there is a lady of the name d'Urberville. John Durbeyfield admits that he has not told Tess this, but she is tractable and will do what he wishes. Joan Durbeyfield reminds her husband that there are many families that were once estimable and are now ordinary, but agrees to the arrangement. Tess arrives, and Abraham tells her that she will marry a gentleman. It is eleven o'clock when Tess gets her family to bed, and the next morning John is unable to go on his journey. Tess agrees to go with Abraham. On the way there, Abraham and Tess discuss how other stars are worlds just like Earth. Tess says that some worlds are splendid, but a few are blighted, and they decide that they are on a blighted one. Tess realizes the vanity of her father's pride. Suddenly, the wagon stops and they find that the morning mail-cart has crashed into their horse, killing it. Tess blames herself, while Abraham blames it for living on a blighted star. Tess does not know how to break the news to her family, but John Durbeyfield takes the news stoically.", "analysis": "At this point in the novel, Tess Durbeyfield is a passive character subject to the wishes of her family and afflicted by their sense of irresponsibility. She is the key to her father's design to regain the family fortune, for he intends to marry her off to a gentleman who will provide for her and for her parents; however, Tess has no say in her father's plans. Hardy allows for the strong possibility that John Durbeyfield's plans will amount to nothing, with the reminder that other families have amounted to little despite their former high esteem. Hardy returns to the idea of the cruelty of fate in this chapter with the discussion between Tess and Abraham concerning the stars; the two siblings decide that the misfortunes they suffer are due to living on a blighted star rather than any direct sense of cause and effect. This theme is also illustrated by the accident that Tess and Abraham have concerning the horse and wagon; the occurrence is a complete accident, yet Hardy instills the event with a sense of determinism, as if it were part of the Durbeyfield fate. Tess's reaction to the accident is ironic, for Tess believes herself responsible for an event for which she had no control; furthermore, it is her father's irresponsibility that caused her to take the wagon to deliver the beehives. Nevertheless, Tess feels guilty for the event; this will lead her to be more susceptible to her father's wishes"}
text: 
  
  Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and
  broken village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as
  nobody could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt
  accommodation for consumers was strictly limited to a little board
  about six inches wide and two yards long, fixed to the garden palings
  by pieces of wire, so as to form a ledge.  On this board thirsty
  strangers deposited their cups as they stood in the road and drank,
  and threw the dregs on the dusty ground to the pattern of Polynesia,
  and wished they could have a restful seat inside.
  
  Thus the strangers.  But there were also local customers who felt the
  same wish; and where there's a will there's a way.
  
  In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly
  curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the
  landlady, Mrs Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen
  persons, all seeking beatitude; all old inhabitants of the nearer
  end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat. Not only did the
  distance to the The Pure Drop, the fully-licensed tavern at the
  further part of the dispersed village, render its accommodation
  practically unavailable for dwellers at this end; but the far more
  serious question, the quality of the liquor, confirmed the prevalent
  opinion that it was better to drink with Rolliver in a corner of the
  housetop than with the other landlord in a wide house.
  
  A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in the room afforded
  sitting-space for several persons gathered round three of its sides;
  a couple more men had elevated themselves on a chest of drawers;
  another rested on the oak-carved "cwoffer"; two on the wash-stand;
  another on the stool; and thus all were, somehow, seated at their
  ease.  The stage of mental comfort to which they had arrived at this
  hour was one wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and
  spread their personalities warmly through the room.  In this process
  the chamber and its furniture grew more and more dignified and
  luxurious; the shawl hanging at the window took upon itself the
  richness of tapestry; the brass handles of the chest of drawers were
  as golden knockers; and the carved bedposts seemed to have some
  kinship with the magnificent pillars of Solomon's temple.
  
  Mrs Durbeyfield, having quickly walked hitherward after parting from
  Tess, opened the front door, crossed the downstairs room, which was
  in deep gloom, and then unfastened the stair-door like one whose
  fingers knew the tricks of the latches well.  Her ascent of the
  crooked staircase was a slower process, and her face, as it rose into
  the light above the last stair, encountered the gaze of all the party
  assembled in the bedroom.
  
  "--Being a few private friends I've asked in to keep up club-walking
  at my own expense," the landlady exclaimed at the sound of footsteps,
  as glibly as a child repeating the Catechism, while she peered over
  the stairs.  "Oh, 'tis you, Mrs Durbeyfield--Lard--how you frightened
  me!--I thought it might be some gaffer sent by Gover'ment."
  
  Mrs Durbeyfield was welcomed with glances and nods by the remainder
  of the conclave, and turned to where her husband sat.  He was humming
  absently to himself, in a low tone: "I be as good as some folks here
  and there!  I've got a great family vault at Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,
  and finer skillentons than any man in Wessex!"
  
  "I've something to tell 'ee that's come into my head about that--a
  grand projick!" whispered his cheerful wife.  "Here, John, don't 'ee
  see me?"  She nudged him, while he, looking through her as through a
  window-pane, went on with his recitative.
  
  "Hush!  Don't 'ee sing so loud, my good man," said the landlady; "in
  case any member of the Gover'ment should be passing, and take away my
  licends."
  
  "He's told 'ee what's happened to us, I suppose?" asked Mrs
  Durbeyfield.
  
  "Yes--in a way.  D'ye think there's any money hanging by it?"
  
  "Ah, that's the secret," said Joan Durbeyfield sagely.  "However,
  'tis well to be kin to a coach, even if you don't ride in 'en."  She
  dropped her public voice, and continued in a low tone to her husband:
  "I've been thinking since you brought the news that there's a great
  rich lady out by Trantridge, on the edge o' The Chase, of the name of
  d'Urberville."
  
  "Hey--what's that?" said Sir John.
  
  She repeated the information.  "That lady must be our relation," she
  said.  "And my projick is to send Tess to claim kin."
  
  "There IS a lady of the name, now you mention it," said Durbeyfield.
  "Pa'son Tringham didn't think of that.  But she's nothing beside
  we--a junior branch of us, no doubt, hailing long since King Norman's
  day."
  
  While this question was being discussed neither of the pair noticed,
  in their preoccupation, that little Abraham had crept into the room,
  and was awaiting an opportunity of asking them to return.
  
  "She is rich, and she'd be sure to take notice o' the maid,"
  continued Mrs Durbeyfield; "and 'twill be a very good thing.  I don't
  see why two branches o' one family should not be on visiting terms."
  
  "Yes; and we'll all claim kin!" said Abraham brightly from under the
  bedstead.  "And we'll all go and see her when Tess has gone to live
  with her; and we'll ride in her coach and wear black clothes!"
  
  "How do you come here, child?  What nonsense be ye talking!  Go away,
  and play on the stairs till father and mother be ready! ...  Well,
  Tess ought to go to this other member of our family.  She'd be sure
  to win the lady--Tess would; and likely enough 'twould lead to some
  noble gentleman marrying her.  In short, I know it."
  
  "How?"
  
  "I tried her fate in the _Fortune-Teller_, and it brought out that
  very thing! ...  You should ha' seen how pretty she looked to-day;
  her skin is as sumple as a duchess'."
  
  "What says the maid herself to going?"
  
  "I've not asked her.  She don't know there is any such lady-relation
  yet.  But it would certainly put her in the way of a grand marriage,
  and she won't say nay to going."
  
  "Tess is queer."
  
  "But she's tractable at bottom.  Leave her to me."
  
  Though this conversation had been private, sufficient of its import
  reached the understandings of those around to suggest to them that
  the Durbeyfields had weightier concerns to talk of now than common
  folks had, and that Tess, their pretty eldest daughter, had fine
  prospects in store.
  
  "Tess is a fine figure o' fun, as I said to myself to-day when I zeed
  her vamping round parish with the rest," observed one of the elderly
  boozers in an undertone.  "But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she
  don't get green malt in floor."  It was a local phrase which had a
  peculiar meaning, and there was no reply.
  
  The conversation became inclusive, and presently other footsteps were
  heard crossing the room below.
  
  "--Being a few private friends asked in to-night to keep up
  club-walking at my own expense."  The landlady had rapidly re-used
  the formula she kept on hand for intruders before she recognized that
  the newcomer was Tess.
  
  Even to her mother's gaze the girl's young features looked sadly
  out of place amid the alcoholic vapours which floated here as
  no unsuitable medium for wrinkled middle-age; and hardly was a
  reproachful flash from Tess's dark eyes needed to make her father
  and mother rise from their seats, hastily finish their ale, and
  descend the stairs behind her, Mrs Rolliver's caution following
  their footsteps.
  
  "No noise, please, if ye'll be so good, my dears; or I mid lose my
  licends, and be summons'd, and I don't know what all!  'Night t'ye!"
  
  They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father, and Mrs
  Durbeyfield the other.  He had, in truth, drunk very little--not a
  fourth of the quantity which a systematic tippler could carry to
  church on a Sunday afternoon without a hitch in his eastings or
  genuflections; but the weakness of Sir John's constitution made
  mountains of his petty sins in this kind.  On reaching the fresh
  air he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row of three at one
  moment as if they were marching to London, and at another as if they
  were marching to Bath--which produced a comical effect, frequent
  enough in families on nocturnal homegoings; and, like most comical
  effects, not quite so comic after all.  The two women valiantly
  disguised these forced excursions and countermarches as well as they
  could from Durbeyfield, their cause, and from Abraham, and from
  themselves; and so they approached by degrees their own door, the
  head of the family bursting suddenly into his former refrain as he
  drew near, as if to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness of
  his present residence--
  
  "I've got a fam--ily vault at Kingsbere!"
  
  "Hush--don't be so silly, Jacky," said his wife.  "Yours is not the
  only family that was of 'count in wold days.  Look at the Anktells,
  and Horseys, and the Tringhams themselves--gone to seed a'most as
  much as you--though you was bigger folks than they, that's true.
  Thank God, I was never of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed
  of in that way!"
  
  "Don't you be so sure o' that.  From you nater 'tis my belief you've
  disgraced yourselves more than any o' us, and was kings and queens
  outright at one time."
  
  Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her
  own mind at the moment than thoughts of her ancestry--"I am afraid
  father won't be able to take the journey with the beehives to-morrow
  so early."
  
  "I? I shall be all right in an hour or two," said Durbeyfield.
  
  
  It was eleven o'clock before the family were all in bed, and
  two o'clock next morning was the latest hour for starting with
  the beehives if they were to be delivered to the retailers in
  Casterbridge before the Saturday market began, the way thither lying
  by bad roads over a distance of between twenty and thirty miles, and
  the horse and waggon being of the slowest.  At half-past one Mrs
  Durbeyfield came into the large bedroom where Tess and all her
  little brothers and sisters slept.
  
  "The poor man can't go," she said to her eldest daughter, whose great
  eyes had opened the moment her mother's hand touched the door.
  
  Tess sat up in bed, lost in a vague interspace between a dream and
  this information.
  
  "But somebody must go," she replied.  "It is late for the hives
  already.  Swarming will soon be over for the year; and it we put off
  taking 'em till next week's market the call for 'em will be past, and
  they'll be thrown on our hands."
  
  Mrs Durbeyfield looked unequal to the emergency.  "Some young feller,
  perhaps, would go?  One of them who were so much after dancing with
  'ee yesterday," she presently suggested.
  
  "O no--I wouldn't have it for the world!" declared Tess proudly.
  "And letting everybody know the reason--such a thing to be ashamed
  of!  I think _I_ could go if Abraham could go with me to kip me
  company."
  
  Her mother at length agreed to this arrangement.  Little Abraham was
  aroused from his deep sleep in a corner of the same apartment, and
  made to put on his clothes while still mentally in the other world.
  Meanwhile Tess had hastily dressed herself; and the twain, lighting
  a lantern, went out to the stable.  The rickety little waggon was
  already laden, and the girl led out the horse, Prince, only a degree
  less rickety than the vehicle.
  
  The poor creature looked wonderingly round at the night, at the
  lantern, at their two figures, as if he could not believe that at
  that hour, when every living thing was intended to be in shelter and
  at rest, he was called upon to go out and labour.  They put a stock
  of candle-ends into the lantern, hung the latter to the off-side of
  the load, and directed the horse onward, walking at his shoulder at
  first during the uphill parts of the way, in order not to overload
  an animal of so little vigour.  To cheer themselves as well as they
  could, they made an artificial morning with the lantern, some bread
  and butter, and their own conversation, the real morning being far
  from come.  Abraham, as he more fully awoke (for he had moved in a
  sort of trance so far), began to talk of the strange shapes assumed
  by the various dark objects against the sky; of this tree that looked
  like a raging tiger springing from a lair; of that which resembled a
  giant's head.
  
  When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent
  under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground.  Still
  higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow,
  well-nigh the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky,
  engirdled by its earthen trenches.  From hereabout the long road was
  fairly level for some distance onward.  They mounted in front of the
  waggon, and Abraham grew reflective.
  
  "Tess!" he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.
  
  "Yes, Abraham."
  
  "Bain't you glad that we've become gentlefolk?"
  
  "Not particular glad."
  
  "But you be glad that you 'm going to marry a gentleman?"
  
  "What?" said Tess, lifting her face.
  
  "That our great relation will help 'ee to marry a gentleman."
  
  "I?  Our great relation?  We have no such relation.  What has put
  that into your head?"
  
  "I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's when I went to find
  father.  There's a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge, and
  mother said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she'd put 'ee in
  the way of marrying a gentleman."
  
  His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering
  silence.  Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance
  than for audition, so that his sister's abstraction was of no
  account.  He leant back against the hives, and with upturned face
  made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating
  amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two
  wisps of human life.  He asked how far away those twinklers were,
  and whether God was on the other side of them.  But ever and anon
  his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his imagination
  even more deeply than the wonders of creation.  If Tess were made
  rich by marrying a gentleman, would she have money enough to buy a
  spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as
  Nettlecombe-Tout?
  
  The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole
  family, filled Tess with impatience.
  
  "Never mind that now!" she exclaimed.
  
  "Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "All like ours?"
  
  "I don't know; but I think so.  They sometimes seem to be like the
  apples on our stubbard-tree.  Most of them splendid and sound--a few
  blighted."
  
  "Which do we live on--a splendid one or a blighted one?"
  
  "A blighted one."
  
  "'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there
  were so many more of 'em!"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Is it like that REALLY, Tess?" said Abraham, turning to her much
  impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information.  "How would
  it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?"
  
  "Well, father wouldn't have coughed and creeped about as he does,
  and wouldn't have got too tipsy to go on this journey; and mother
  wouldn't have been always washing, and never getting finished."
  
  "And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to
  be made rich by marrying a gentleman?"
  
  "O Aby, don't--don't talk of that any more!"
  
  Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy.  Tess was not
  skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that she could
  take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for the present and
  allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so.  She made him a
  sort of nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that he could
  not fall, and, taking the reins into her own hands, jogged on as
  before.
  
  Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous
  movements of any sort.  With no longer a companion to distract her,
  Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning
  against the hives.  The mute procession past her shoulders of trees
  and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and
  the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad
  soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in
  time.
  
  Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she seemed to see
  the vanity of her father's pride; the gentlemanly suitor awaiting
  herself in her mother's fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage,
  laughing at her poverty and her shrouded knightly ancestry.
  Everything grew more and more extravagant, and she no longer knew how
  time passed.  A sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke
  from the sleep into which she, too, had fallen.
  
  They were a long way further on than when she had lost consciousness,
  and the waggon had stopped.  A hollow groan, unlike anything she had
  ever heard in her life, came from the front, followed by a shout of
  "Hoi there!"
  
  The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone out, but another was
  shining in her face--much brighter than her own had been.  Something
  terrible had happened.  The harness was entangled with an object
  which blocked the way.
  
  In consternation Tess jumped down, and discovered the dreadful truth.
  The groan had proceeded from her father's poor horse Prince.  The
  morning mail-cart, with its two noiseless wheels, speeding along
  these lanes like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her slow
  and unlighted equipage.  The pointed shaft of the cart had entered
  the breast of the unhappy Prince like a sword, and from the wound his
  life's blood was spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss into
  the road.
  
  In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand upon the hole,
  with the only result that she became splashed from face to skirt with
  the crimson drops.  Then she stood helplessly looking on.  Prince
  also stood firm and motionless as long as he could; till he suddenly
  sank down in a heap.
  
  By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and began dragging and
  unharnessing the hot form of Prince.  But he was already dead, and,
  seeing that nothing more could be done immediately, the mail-cart man
  returned to his own animal, which was uninjured.
  
  "You was on the wrong side," he said.  "I am bound to go on with the
  mail-bags, so that the best thing for you to do is bide here with
  your load.  I'll send somebody to help you as soon as I can.  It is
  getting daylight, and you have nothing to fear."
  
  He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess stood and waited.  The
  atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook themselves in the hedges,
  arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and
  Tess showed hers, still whiter.  The huge pool of blood in front of
  her was already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the
  sun rose a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it.  Prince lay
  alongside, still and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest
  looking scarcely large enough to have let out all that had animated
  him.
  
  "'Tis all my doing--all mine!" the girl cried, gazing at the
  spectacle.  "No excuse for me--none.  What will mother and father
  live on now?  Aby, Aby!"  She shook the child, who had slept soundly
  through the whole disaster.  "We can't go on with our load--Prince
  is killed!"
  
  When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were
  extemporized on his young face.
  
  "Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!" she went on to herself.
  "To think that I was such a fool!"
  
  "'Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't
  it, Tess?" murmured Abraham through his tears.
  
  In silence they waited through an interval which seemed endless.  At
  length a sound, and an approaching object, proved to them that the
  driver of the mail-car had been as good as his word.  A farmer's
  man from near Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob.  He was
  harnessed to the waggon of beehives in the place of Prince, and the
  load taken on towards Casterbridge.
  
  The evening of the same day saw the empty waggon reach again the
  spot of the accident.  Prince had lain there in the ditch since the
  morning; but the place of the blood-pool was still visible in the
  middle of the road, though scratched and scraped over by passing
  vehicles.  All that was left of Prince was now hoisted into the
  waggon he had formerly hauled, and with his hoofs in the air, and his
  shoes shining in the setting sunlight, he retraced the eight or nine
  miles to Marlott.
  
  Tess had gone back earlier.  How to break the news was more than she
  could think.  It was a relief to her tongue to find from the faces of
  her parents that they already knew of their loss, though this did not
  lessen the self-reproach which she continued to heap upon herself for
  her negligence.
  
  But the very shiftlessness of the household rendered the misfortune
  a less terrifying one to them than it would have been to a thriving
  family, though in the present case it meant ruin, and in the other it
  would only have meant inconvenience.  In the Durbeyfield countenances
  there was nothing of the red wrath that would have burnt upon the
  girl from parents more ambitious for her welfare.  Nobody blamed Tess
  as she blamed herself.
  
  When it was discovered that the knacker and tanner would give only a
  very few shillings for Prince's carcase because of his decrepitude,
  Durbeyfield rose to the occasion.
  
  "No," said he stoically, "I won't sell his old body.  When we
  d'Urbervilles was knights in the land, we didn't sell our chargers
  for cat's meat.  Let 'em keep their shillings!  He've served me well
  in his lifetime, and I won't part from him now."
  
  He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for Prince in the
  garden than he had worked for months to grow a crop for his family.
  When the hole was ready, Durbeyfield and his wife tied a rope round
  the horse and dragged him up the path towards it, the children
  following in funeral train.  Abraham and 'Liza-Lu sobbed, Hope and
  Modesty discharged their griefs in loud blares which echoed from the
  walls; and when Prince was tumbled in they gathered round the grave.
  The bread-winner had been taken away from them; what would they do?
  
  "Is he gone to heaven?" asked Abraham, between the sobs.
  
  Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the children cried
  anew.  All except Tess.  Her face was dry and pale, as though she
  regarded herself in the light of a murderess.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 4
target: Rolliver's Inn is the only alehouse in the village, and can only boast of an off-license: nobody can legally drink on the premises, but this rule is often averted. Mrs. Durbeyfield had found her husband there bragging about his grand project for his family. He will send Tess to claim kin, for there is a lady of the name d'Urberville. John Durbeyfield admits that he has not told Tess this, but she is tractable and will do what he wishes. Joan Durbeyfield reminds her husband that there are many families that were once estimable and are now ordinary, but agrees to the arrangement. Tess arrives, and Abraham tells her that she will marry a gentleman. It is eleven o'clock when Tess gets her family to bed, and the next morning John is unable to go on his journey. Tess agrees to go with Abraham. On the way there, Abraham and Tess discuss how other stars are worlds just like Earth. Tess says that some worlds are splendid, but a few are blighted, and they decide that they are on a blighted one. Tess realizes the vanity of her father's pride. Suddenly, the wagon stops and they find that the morning mail-cart has crashed into their horse, killing it. Tess blames herself, while Abraham blames it for living on a blighted star. Tess does not know how to break the news to her family, but John Durbeyfield takes the news stoically.
feat_summary_analysis: At this point in the novel, Tess Durbeyfield is a passive character subject to the wishes of her family and afflicted by their sense of irresponsibility. She is the key to her father's design to regain the family fortune, for he intends to marry her off to a gentleman who will provide for her and for her parents; however, Tess has no say in her father's plans. Hardy allows for the strong possibility that John Durbeyfield's plans will amount to nothing, with the reminder that other families have amounted to little despite their former high esteem. Hardy returns to the idea of the cruelty of fate in this chapter with the discussion between Tess and Abraham concerning the stars; the two siblings decide that the misfortunes they suffer are due to living on a blighted star rather than any direct sense of cause and effect. This theme is also illustrated by the accident that Tess and Abraham have concerning the horse and wagon; the occurrence is a complete accident, yet Hardy instills the event with a sense of determinism, as if it were part of the Durbeyfield fate. Tess's reaction to the accident is ironic, for Tess believes herself responsible for an event for which she had no control; furthermore, it is her father's irresponsibility that caused her to take the wagon to deliver the beehives. Nevertheless, Tess feels guilty for the event; this will lead her to be more susceptible to her father's wishes