feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_3_part_4.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 28
feat_summary_id: chapter 28
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34", "summary": "Tess's refusal does not permanently daunt Clare, knowing that the negative is often the preface to a later affirmative. Angel asks Tess if she loves another man, but she says that this is not the reason for her refusal. She says that it is for his own good. Tess wonders why nobody has told Angel the entirety of Tess's history. When Angel asks Tess once more, she tells him that she will tell him all about himself. She vows to tell him on Sunday. Tess feels that she cannot help giving in and marrying Angel, but feels that it is wrong and it may kill Angel when he finds out about her.", "analysis": "Hardy prolongs the conflict between Angel and Tess concerning marriage throughout this chapter, thus illustrating Angel's persistence and the intensity of his love for Tess. However, in equal measure this demonstrates the great extent to which Tess believes that her history prevents any possibility of happiness with Angel Clare. This persistence and intensity serve to demonstrate the inadequacy of Tess's refusal and inaction. Hardy demonstrates that her refusal stems from some sense of selfishness; Tess believes that she cannot be happy with Angel if he knows about her past, yet she cannot marry him without revealing such details"}
text: 
  
  Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently daunt Clare.
  His experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that
  the negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the
  affirmative; and it was little enough for him not to know that in
  the manner of the present negative there lay a great exception to
  the dallyings of coyness.  That she had already permitted him to
  make love to her he read as an additional assurance, not fully
  trowing that in the fields and pastures to "sigh gratis" is by no
  means deemed waste; love-making being here more often accepted
  inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake than in the carking,
  anxious homes of the ambitious, where a girl's craving for an
  establishment paralyzes her healthy thought of a passion as an end.
  
  "Tess, why did you say 'no' in such a positive way?" he asked her in
  the course of a few days.
  
  She started.
  
  "Don't ask me.  I told you why--partly.  I am not good enough--not
  worthy enough."
  
  "How?  Not fine lady enough?"
  
  "Yes--something like that," murmured she.  "Your friends would scorn
  me."
  
  "Indeed, you mistake them--my father and mother.  As for my brothers,
  I don't care--"  He clasped his fingers behind her back to keep her
  from slipping away.  "Now--you did not mean it, sweet?--I am sure you
  did not!  You have made me so restless that I cannot read, or play,
  or do anything.  I am in no hurry, Tess, but I want to know--to hear
  from your own warm lips--that you will some day be mine--any time you
  may choose; but some day?"
  
  She could only shake her head and look away from him.
  
  Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters of her face as
  if they had been hieroglyphics.  The denial seemed real.
  
  "Then I ought not to hold you in this way--ought I?  I have no
  right to you--no right to seek out where you are, or walk with you!
  Honestly, Tess, do you love any other man?"
  
  "How can you ask?" she said, with continued self-suppression.
  
  "I almost know that you do not.  But then, why do you repulse me?"
  
  "I don't repulse you.  I like you to--tell me you love me; and you
  may always tell me so as you go about with me--and never offend me."
  
  "But you will not accept me as a husband?"
  
  "Ah--that's different--it is for your good, indeed, my dearest!
  O, believe me, it is only for your sake!  I don't like to give
  myself the great happiness o' promising to be yours in that
  way--because--because I am SURE I ought not to do it."
  
  "But you will make me happy!"
  
  "Ah--you think so, but you don't know!"
  
  At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be
  her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he
  would say that she was wonderfully well-informed and versatile--which
  was certainly true, her natural quickness and her admiration for him
  having led her to pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments
  of his knowledge, to a surprising extent.  After these tender
  contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the
  remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room,
  if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an
  apparently phlegmatic negative.
  
  The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the
  side of his--two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience--
  that she tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power.
  She had come to Talbothays with a made-up mind.  On no account could
  she agree to a step which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her
  husband for his blindness in wedding her.  And she held that what her
  conscience had decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not
  to be overruled now.
  
  "Why don't somebody tell him all about me?" she said.  "It was only
  forty miles off--why hasn't it reached here?  Somebody must know!"
  
  Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.
  
  For two or three days no more was said.  She guessed from the sad
  countenances of her chamber companions that they regarded her not
  only as the favourite, but as the chosen; but they could see for
  themselves that she did not put herself in his way.
  
  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.  At the next cheese-making the pair were again left
  alone together.  The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but
  Mr Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a
  suspicion of mutual interest between these two; though they walked
  so circumspectly that suspicion was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the
  dairyman left them to themselves.
  
  They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into
  the vats.  The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a
  large scale; and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess
  Durbeyfield's hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose.
  Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful, suddenly ceased,
  and laid his hands flat upon hers.  Her sleeves were rolled far above
  the elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft
  arm.
  
  Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from
  her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a
  new-gathered mushroom, and tasted of the whey.  But she was such
  a sheaf of susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the
  touch, her blood driven to her finder-ends, and the cool arms
  flushed hot.  Then, as though her heart had said, "Is coyness longer
  necessary? Truth is truth between man and woman, as between man and
  man," she lifted her eyes and they beamed devotedly into his, as her
  lip rose in a tender half-smile.
  
  "Do you know why I did that, Tess?" he said.
  
  "Because you love me very much!"
  
  "Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty."
  
  "Not AGAIN!"
  
  She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might break down under
  her own desire.
  
  "O, Tessy!" he went on, "I CANNOT think why you are so tantalizing.
  Why do you disappoint me so?  You seem almost like a coquette, upon
  my life you do--a coquette of the first urban water!  They blow
  hot and blow cold, just as you do, and it is the very last sort of
  thing to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays. ...  And yet,
  dearest," he quickly added, observing now the remark had cut her, "I
  know you to be the most honest, spotless creature that ever lived.
  So how can I suppose you a flirt?  Tess, why don't you like the idea
  of being my wife, if you love me as you seem to do?"
  
  "I have never said I don't like the idea, and I never could say it;
  because--it isn't true!"
  
  The stress now getting beyond endurance, her lip quivered, and she
  was obliged to go away.  Clare was so pained and perplexed that he
  ran after and caught her in the passage.
  
  "Tell me, tell me!" he said, passionately clasping her, in
  forgetfulness of his curdy hands: "do tell me that you won't belong
  to anybody but me!"
  
  "I will, I will tell you!" she exclaimed.  "And I will give you a
  complete answer, if you will let me go now. I will tell you my
  experiences--all about myself--all!"
  
  "Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; any number."  He expressed
  assent in loving satire, looking into her face.  "My Tess, no doubt,
  almost as many experiences as that wild convolvulus out there on the
  garden hedge, that opened itself this morning for the first time.
  Tell me anything, but don't use that wretched expression any more
  about not being worthy of me."
  
  "I will try--not!  And I'll give you my reasons to-morrow--next
  week."
  
  "Say on Sunday?"
  
  "Yes, on Sunday."
  
  At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat till she was in
  the thicket of pollard willows at the lower side of the barton, where
  she could be quite unseen.  Here Tess flung herself down upon the
  rustling undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained
  crouching in palpitating misery broken by momentary shoots of joy,
  which her fears about the ending could not altogether suppress.
  
  In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence.  Every see-saw of her
  breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was
  a voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness.
  Reckless, inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the
  altar, revealing nothing, and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe
  pleasure before the iron teeth of pain could have time to shut upon
  her: that was what love counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy
  Tess divined that, despite her many months of lonely self-chastisement,
  wrestlings, communings, schemes to lead a future of austere
  isolation, love's counsel would prevail.
  
  The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among the willows.
  She heard the rattle of taking down the pails from the forked stands;
  the "waow-waow!" which accompanied the getting together of the cows.
  But she did not go to the milking.  They would see her agitation;
  and the dairyman, thinking the cause to be love alone, would
  good-naturedly tease her; and that harassment could not be borne.
  
  Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some
  excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls
  given.  At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with
  the aspect of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a monstrous
  pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand.  The pollard willows,
  tortured out of their natural shape by incessant choppings, became
  spiny-haired monsters as they stood up against it.  She went in and
  upstairs without a light.
  
  It was now Wednesday.  Thursday came, and Angel looked thoughtfully
  at her from a distance, but intruded in no way upon her.  The indoor
  milkmaids, Marian and the rest, seemed to guess that something
  definite was afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in
  the bedchamber.  Friday passed; Saturday.  To-morrow was the day.
  
  "I shall give way--I shall say yes--I shall let myself marry
  him--I cannot help it!" she jealously panted, with her hot face to
  the pillow that night, on hearing one of the other girls sigh his
  name in her sleep.  "I can't bear to let anybody have him but me!
  Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows!  O my
  heart--O--O--O!"
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 28
target: Tess's refusal does not permanently daunt Clare, knowing that the negative is often the preface to a later affirmative. Angel asks Tess if she loves another man, but she says that this is not the reason for her refusal. She says that it is for his own good. Tess wonders why nobody has told Angel the entirety of Tess's history. When Angel asks Tess once more, she tells him that she will tell him all about himself. She vows to tell him on Sunday. Tess feels that she cannot help giving in and marrying Angel, but feels that it is wrong and it may kill Angel when he finds out about her.
feat_summary_analysis: Hardy prolongs the conflict between Angel and Tess concerning marriage throughout this chapter, thus illustrating Angel's persistence and the intensity of his love for Tess. However, in equal measure this demonstrates the great extent to which Tess believes that her history prevents any possibility of happiness with Angel Clare. This persistence and intensity serve to demonstrate the inadequacy of Tess's refusal and inaction. Hardy demonstrates that her refusal stems from some sense of selfishness; Tess believes that she cannot be happy with Angel if he knows about her past, yet she cannot marry him without revealing such details