feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_6_part_8.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter lii
feat_summary_id: chapter lii
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter LII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase6-chapter45-52", "summary": "The Durbeyfields leave Marlott and set off by wagon to rented rooms in Kingsbere. They meet Marian and Izz who are also \"house-ridding\" and moving to a new farm. At Kingsbere, the family learns they have lost their rooms and are forced to sleep in the churchyard near the d'Urberville family burial vault. Alec finds Tess lying on a tomb and once more offers help. Rejected, he leaves warning her that he will teach her to be civil. Marian and Izz send an anonymous note to Angel telling warning him to return to Tess.", "analysis": ". Loyalty is one of Tess's greatest virtues but it is misplaced. Indeed, she is loyal to everyone but herself, and this is a key determining factor in her downfall. She blames herself for the accident involving Prince and feels obliged to provide another horse for the family. She fails to blame her father for getting drunk and not taking the wagon to market himself. She remains entirely loyal to Angel, taking on the whole brunt of their troubles, defending his behavior to the death, suffering for years at menial work, barely surviving. Despite her family's ill treatment of her, Tess gives them the last of her money and shoulders the entire responsibility when the father dies. It is only when they no longer have a roof that she finally submits and promises to love Alec. And, while she still loves Angel, she listens to Alec and believes he will never return to her. Angel's journey to Brazil could be interpreted as metaphorical. Away from Tess and the British society that molded his beliefs, he can grow to maturity. When he leaves, he is an adolescent who views the world in black and white, and right and wrong, with nothing in between. Since Tess didn't tell him about Alec, his pride is hurt, he is unable to forgive her and so he has to leave. However, in time, especially when he encounters an older and more mature man in Brazil, he learns that he is guilty of abandoning her. Earnestly, he hopes for her forgiveness, and in this he finally becomes equal to Tess. In a sense, Angel undergoes a form of conversion and tosses away his earlier notions of mystical religion in favor of rationality and maturity. His conversion occurs simultaneously with that of Alec d'Urberville, who leaves his selfish self behind to be replaced, albeit temporarily, with a man of the cloth bent on saving others. But this man of the cloth is a sham. Hardy compares him with \"the Other,\" otherwise known as Satan, who tempts Eve in the garden paradise. And, just as he did years before, Alec seduces Tess. However, Alec appears to love Tess, who has some kind of hold on him. Why else the transformation into a man of God when she leaves, and why else the return to the man-of-old upon her return. Throughout the novel, Hardy paints a picture of, as the title denotes, \"a pure woman,\" and the tenuous position of such a woman, without a man's protection, in nineteenth-century Britain. Because of her fall from maidenhood Tess can only live as a man's mistress but never as his wife. Alec no doubt wanted Tess to remain with him, but he never asked her to marry him. Hardy provides no explanation for this because to his readers it would not be credible for a lower-class servant to marry an upper-class man with a noble name, even though that name is a sham. The upper-class Angel can marry Tess, but he has to justify this decision by pointing out how virtuous she is and how she will benefit him monetarily in his future as a farmer. Tess, however, is never Angel's wife in the physical sense of the word until the end of the novel. when the couple lives outside society's boundaries in the woods. Despite all the maneuverings of his characters, Hardy holds fast to his idea that fate ultimately controls all. Tess attempts to get Angel's attention by visiting his parents to ask for help and support. However, fate would have it that Angel's brothers just happen to be talking of their errant brother's marriage and they pass a veiled Tess. Had Tess spoken to the Clare family, chances are that she never would have encountered Alec, and certainly, if she had, not had the necessity to return to him in desperation. Hardy would thus have us believe that the course of our life, and thus our decisions, is predestined"}
text: 
  
  During the small hours of the next morning, while it was still dark,
  dwellers near the highways were conscious of a disturbance of their
  night's rest by rumbling noises, intermittently continuing till
  daylight--noises as certain to recur in this particular first week of
  the month as the voice of the cuckoo in the third week of the same.
  They were the preliminaries of the general removal, the passing of
  the empty waggons and teams to fetch the goods of the migrating
  families; for it was always by the vehicle of the farmer who required
  his services that the hired man was conveyed to his destination.
  That this might be accomplished within the day was the explanation
  of the reverberation occurring so soon after midnight, the aim of
  the carters being to reach the door of the outgoing households by
  six o'clock, when the loading of their movables at once began.
  
  But to Tess and her mother's household no such anxious farmer sent
  his team.  They were only women; they were not regular labourers;
  they were not particularly required anywhere; hence they had to hire
  a waggon at their own expense, and got nothing sent gratuitously.
  
  It was a relief to Tess, when she looked out of the window that
  morning, to find that though the weather was windy and louring, it
  did not rain, and that the waggon had come.  A wet Lady-Day was a
  spectre which removing families never forgot; damp furniture, damp
  bedding, damp clothing accompanied it, and left a train of ills.
  
  Her mother, 'Liza-Lu, and Abraham were also awake, but the younger
  children were let sleep on.  The four breakfasted by the thin light,
  and the "house-ridding" was taken in hand.
  
  It proceeded with some cheerfulness, a friendly neighbour or two
  assisting.  When the large articles of furniture had been packed in
  position, a circular nest was made of the beds and bedding, in which
  Joan Durbeyfield and the young children were to sit through the
  journey.  After loading there was a long delay before the horses were
  brought, these having been unharnessed during the ridding; but at
  length, about two o'clock, the whole was under way, the cooking-pot
  swinging from the axle of the waggon, Mrs Durbeyfield and family
  at the top, the matron having in her lap, to prevent injury to its
  works, the head of the clock, which, at any exceptional lurch of the
  waggon, struck one, or one-and-a-half, in hurt tones.  Tess and the
  next eldest girl walked alongside till they were out of the village.
  
  They had called on a few neighbours that morning and the previous
  evening, and some came to see them off, all wishing them well,
  though, in their secret hearts, hardly expecting welfare possible
  to such a family, harmless as the Durbeyfields were to all except
  themselves.  Soon the equipage began to ascend to higher ground,
  and the wind grew keener with the change of level and soil.
  
  The day being the sixth of April, the Durbeyfield waggon met many
  other waggons with families on the summit of the load, which was
  built on a wellnigh unvarying principle, as peculiar, probably, to
  the rural labourer as the hexagon to the bee.  The groundwork of the
  arrangement was the family dresser, which, with its shining handles,
  and finger-marks, and domestic evidences thick upon it, stood
  importantly in front, over the tails of the shaft-horses, in its
  erect and natural position, like some Ark of the Covenant that they
  were bound to carry reverently.
  
  Some of the households were lively, some mournful; some were stopping
  at the doors of wayside inns; where, in due time, the Durbeyfield
  menagerie also drew up to bait horses and refresh the travellers.
  
  During the halt Tess's eyes fell upon a three-pint blue mug, which
  was ascending and descending through the air to and from the feminine
  section of a household, sitting on the summit of a load that had also
  drawn up at a little distance from the same inn.  She followed one of
  the mug's journeys upward, and perceived it to be clasped by hands
  whose owner she well knew.  Tess went towards the waggon.
  
  "Marian and Izz!" she cried to the girls, for it was they, sitting
  with the moving family at whose house they had lodged.  "Are you
  house-ridding to-day, like everybody else?"
  
  They were, they said.  It had been too rough a life for them at
  Flintcomb-Ash, and they had come away, almost without notice,
  leaving Groby to prosecute them if he chose.  They told Tess their
  destination, and Tess told them hers.
  
  Marian leant over the load, and lowered her voice.  "Do you know that
  the gentleman who follows 'ee--you'll guess who I mean--came to ask
  for 'ee at Flintcomb after you had gone?  We didn't tell'n where you
  was, knowing you wouldn't wish to see him."
  
  "Ah--but I did see him!" Tess murmured.  "He found me."
  
  "And do he know where you be going?"
  
  "I think so."
  
  "Husband come back?"
  
  "No."
  
  She bade her acquaintance goodbye--for the respective carters had now
  come out from the inn--and the two waggons resumed their journey in
  opposite directions; the vehicle whereon sat Marian, Izz, and the
  ploughman's family with whom they had thrown in their lot, being
  brightly painted, and drawn by three powerful horses with shining
  brass ornaments on their harness; while the waggon on which Mrs
  Durbeyfield and her family rode was a creaking erection that would
  scarcely bear the weight of the superincumbent load; one which had
  known no paint since it was made, and drawn by two horses only.
  The contrast well marked the difference between being fetched by a
  thriving farmer and conveying oneself whither no hirer waited one's
  coming.
  
  The distance was great--too great for a day's journey--and it was
  with the utmost difficulty that the horses performed it.  Though they
  had started so early, it was quite late in the afternoon when they
  turned the flank of an eminence which formed part of the upland
  called Greenhill.  While the horses stood to stale and breathe
  themselves Tess looked around.  Under the hill, and just ahead of
  them, was the half-dead townlet of their pilgrimage, Kingsbere,
  where lay those ancestors of whom her father had spoken and sung to
  painfulness: Kingsbere, the spot of all spots in the world which
  could be considered the d'Urbervilles' home, since they had resided
  there for full five hundred years.
  
  A man could be seen advancing from the outskirts towards them, and
  when he beheld the nature of their waggon-load he quickened his
  steps.
  
  "You be the woman they call Mrs Durbeyfield, I reckon?" he said to
  Tess's mother, who had descended to walk the remainder of the way.
  
  She nodded.  "Though widow of the late Sir John d'Urberville, poor
  nobleman, if I cared for my rights; and returning to the domain of
  his forefathers."
  
  "Oh?  Well, I know nothing about that; but if you be Mrs Durbeyfield,
  I am sent to tell 'ee that the rooms you wanted be let.  We didn't
  know that you was coming till we got your letter this morning--when
  'twas too late.  But no doubt you can get other lodgings somewhere."
  
  The man had noticed the face of Tess, which had become ash-pale at
  his intelligence.  Her mother looked hopelessly at fault.  "What
  shall we do now, Tess?" she said bitterly.  "Here's a welcome to
  your ancestors' lands!  However, let's try further."
  
  They moved on into the town, and tried with all their might, Tess
  remaining with the waggon to take care of the children whilst her
  mother and 'Liza-Lu made inquiries.  At the last return of Joan to
  the vehicle, an hour later, when her search for accommodation had
  still been fruitless, the driver of the waggon said the goods must be
  unloaded, as the horses were half-dead, and he was bound to return
  part of the way at least that night.
  
  "Very well--unload it here," said Joan recklessly.  "I'll get shelter
  somewhere."
  
  The waggon had drawn up under the churchyard wall, in a spot screened
  from view, and the driver, nothing loth, soon hauled down the poor
  heap of household goods.  This done, she paid him, reducing herself
  to almost her last shilling thereby, and he moved off and left them,
  only too glad to get out of further dealings with such a family.  It
  was a dry night, and he guessed that they would come to no harm.
  
  Tess gazed desperately at the pile of furniture.  The cold sunlight
  of this spring evening peered invidiously upon the crocks and
  kettles, upon the bunches of dried herbs shivering in the breeze,
  upon the brass handles of the dresser, upon the wicker-cradle they
  had all been rocked in, and upon the well-rubbed clock-case, all of
  which gave out the reproachful gleam of indoor articles abandoned to
  the vicissitudes of a roofless exposure for which they were never
  made.  Round about were deparked hills and slopes--now cut up
  into little paddocks--and the green foundations that showed where
  the d'Urberville mansion once had stood; also an outlying stretch
  of Egdon Heath that had always belonged to the estate.  Hard by,
  the aisle of the church called the d'Urberville Aisle looked on
  imperturbably.
  
  "Isn't your family vault your own freehold?" said Tess's mother, as
  she returned from a reconnoitre of the church and graveyard.  "Why,
  of course 'tis, and that's where we will camp, girls, till the place
  of your ancestors finds us a roof!  Now, Tess and 'Liza and Abraham,
  you help me.  We'll make a nest for these children, and then we'll
  have another look round."
  
  Tess listlessly lent a hand, and in a quarter of an hour the old
  four-post bedstead was dissociated from the heap of goods, and
  erected under the south wall of the church, the part of the building
  known as the d'Urberville Aisle, beneath which the huge vaults lay.
  Over the tester of the bedstead was a beautiful traceried window, of
  many lights, its date being the fifteenth century.  It was called
  the d'Urberville Window, and in the upper part could be discerned
  heraldic emblems like those on Durbeyfield's old seal and spoon.
  
  Joan drew the curtains round the bed so as to make an excellent tent
  of it, and put the smaller children inside.  "If it comes to the
  worst we can sleep there too, for one night," she said.  "But let us
  try further on, and get something for the dears to eat!  O, Tess,
  what's the use of your playing at marrying gentlemen, if it leaves
  us like this!"
  
  Accompanied by 'Liza-Lu and the boy, she again ascended the little
  lane which secluded the church from the townlet.  As soon as they got
  into the street they beheld a man on horseback gazing up and down.
  "Ah--I'm looking for you!" he said, riding up to them.  "This is
  indeed a family gathering on the historic spot!"
  
  It was Alec d'Urberville.  "Where is Tess?" he asked.
  
  Personally Joan had no liking for Alec.  She cursorily signified the
  direction of the church, and went on, d'Urberville saying that he
  would see them again, in case they should be still unsuccessful in
  their search for shelter, of which he had just heard.  When they had
  gone, d'Urberville rode to the inn, and shortly after came out on
  foot.
  
  In the interim Tess, left with the children inside the bedstead,
  remained talking with them awhile, till, seeing that no more could
  be done to make them comfortable just then, she walked about the
  churchyard, now beginning to be embrowned by the shades of nightfall.
  The door of the church was unfastened, and she entered it for the
  first time in her life.
  
  Within the window under which the bedstead stood were the tombs of
  the family, covering in their dates several centuries.  They were
  canopied, altar-shaped, and plain; their carvings being defaced
  and broken; their brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet-holes
  remaining like martin-holes in a sandcliff.  Of all the reminders
  that she had ever received that her people were socially extinct,
  there was none so forcible as this spoliation.
  
  She drew near to a dark stone on which was inscribed:
  
  
     OSTIUM SEPULCHRI ANTIQUAE FAMILIAE D'URBERVILLE
  
  
  Tess did not read Church-Latin like a Cardinal, but she knew that
  this was the door of her ancestral sepulchre, and that the tall
  knights of whom her father had chanted in his cups lay inside.
  
  She musingly turned to withdraw, passing near an altar-tomb, the
  oldest of them all, on which was a recumbent figure.  In the dusk she
  had not noticed it before, and would hardly have noticed it now but
  for an odd fancy that the effigy moved.  As soon as she drew close
  to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living
  person; and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so
  violent that she was quite overcome, and sank down nigh to fainting,
  not, however, till she had recognized Alec d'Urberville in the form.
  
  He leapt off the slab and supported her.
  
  "I saw you come in," he said smiling, "and got up there not to
  interrupt your meditations.  A family gathering, is it not, with
  these old fellows under us here?  Listen."
  
  He stamped with his heel heavily on the floor; whereupon there arose
  a hollow echo from below.
  
  "That shook them a bit, I'll warrant!" he continued.  "And you
  thought I was the mere stone reproduction of one of them.  But no.
  The old order changeth.  The little finger of the sham d'Urberville
  can do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath...
  Now command me.  What shall I do?"
  
  "Go away!" she murmured.
  
  "I will--I'll look for your mother," said he blandly.  But in passing
  her he whispered: "Mind this; you'll be civil yet!"
  
  When he was gone she bent down upon the entrance to the vaults, and
  said--
  
  "Why am I on the wrong side of this door!"
  
  
  In the meantime Marian and Izz Huett had journeyed onward with the
  chattels of the ploughman in the direction of their land of Canaan--
  the Egypt of some other family who had left it only that morning.
  But the girls did not for a long time think of where they were going.
  Their talk was of Angel Clare and Tess, and Tess's persistent lover,
  whose connection with her previous history they had partly heard and
  partly guessed ere this.
  
  "'Tisn't as though she had never known him afore," said Marian.  "His
  having won her once makes all the difference in the world.  'Twould
  be a thousand pities if he were to tole her away again.  Mr Clare can
  never be anything to us, Izz; and why should we grudge him to her,
  and not try to mend this quarrel?  If he could on'y know what straits
  she's put to, and what's hovering round, he might come to take care
  of his own."
  
  "Could we let him know?"
  
  They thought of this all the way to their destination; but the bustle
  of re-establishment in their new place took up all their attention
  then.  But when they were settled, a month later, they heard of
  Clare's approaching return, though they had learnt nothing more of
  Tess.  Upon that, agitated anew by their attachment to him, yet
  honourably disposed to her, Marian uncorked the penny ink-bottle they
  shared, and a few lines were concocted between the two girls.
  
  
     HONOUR'D SIR--
  
     Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do
     love you.  For she is sore put to by an Enemy in the shape
     of a Friend.  Sir, there is one near her who ought to be
     Away.  A woman should not be try'd beyond her Strength,
     and continual dropping will wear away a Stone--ay,
     more--a Diamond.
  
     FROM TWO WELL-WISHERS
  
  
  This was addressed to Angel Clare at the only place they had ever
  heard him to be connected with, Emminster Vicarage; after which they
  continued in a mood of emotional exaltation at their own generosity,
  which made them sing in hysterical snatches and weep at the same
  time.
  
  
  END OF PHASE THE SIXTH
  
  
  
  
  
  Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter LII
target: The Durbeyfields leave Marlott and set off by wagon to rented rooms in Kingsbere. They meet Marian and Izz who are also "house-ridding" and moving to a new farm. At Kingsbere, the family learns they have lost their rooms and are forced to sleep in the churchyard near the d'Urberville family burial vault. Alec finds Tess lying on a tomb and once more offers help. Rejected, he leaves warning her that he will teach her to be civil. Marian and Izz send an anonymous note to Angel telling warning him to return to Tess.
feat_summary_analysis: . Loyalty is one of Tess's greatest virtues but it is misplaced. Indeed, she is loyal to everyone but herself, and this is a key determining factor in her downfall. She blames herself for the accident involving Prince and feels obliged to provide another horse for the family. She fails to blame her father for getting drunk and not taking the wagon to market himself. She remains entirely loyal to Angel, taking on the whole brunt of their troubles, defending his behavior to the death, suffering for years at menial work, barely surviving. Despite her family's ill treatment of her, Tess gives them the last of her money and shoulders the entire responsibility when the father dies. It is only when they no longer have a roof that she finally submits and promises to love Alec. And, while she still loves Angel, she listens to Alec and believes he will never return to her. Angel's journey to Brazil could be interpreted as metaphorical. Away from Tess and the British society that molded his beliefs, he can grow to maturity. When he leaves, he is an adolescent who views the world in black and white, and right and wrong, with nothing in between. Since Tess didn't tell him about Alec, his pride is hurt, he is unable to forgive her and so he has to leave. However, in time, especially when he encounters an older and more mature man in Brazil, he learns that he is guilty of abandoning her. Earnestly, he hopes for her forgiveness, and in this he finally becomes equal to Tess. In a sense, Angel undergoes a form of conversion and tosses away his earlier notions of mystical religion in favor of rationality and maturity. His conversion occurs simultaneously with that of Alec d'Urberville, who leaves his selfish self behind to be replaced, albeit temporarily, with a man of the cloth bent on saving others. But this man of the cloth is a sham. Hardy compares him with "the Other," otherwise known as Satan, who tempts Eve in the garden paradise. And, just as he did years before, Alec seduces Tess. However, Alec appears to love Tess, who has some kind of hold on him. Why else the transformation into a man of God when she leaves, and why else the return to the man-of-old upon her return. Throughout the novel, Hardy paints a picture of, as the title denotes, "a pure woman," and the tenuous position of such a woman, without a man's protection, in nineteenth-century Britain. Because of her fall from maidenhood Tess can only live as a man's mistress but never as his wife. Alec no doubt wanted Tess to remain with him, but he never asked her to marry him. Hardy provides no explanation for this because to his readers it would not be credible for a lower-class servant to marry an upper-class man with a noble name, even though that name is a sham. The upper-class Angel can marry Tess, but he has to justify this decision by pointing out how virtuous she is and how she will benefit him monetarily in his future as a farmer. Tess, however, is never Angel's wife in the physical sense of the word until the end of the novel. when the couple lives outside society's boundaries in the woods. Despite all the maneuverings of his characters, Hardy holds fast to his idea that fate ultimately controls all. Tess attempts to get Angel's attention by visiting his parents to ask for help and support. However, fate would have it that Angel's brothers just happen to be talking of their errant brother's marriage and they pass a veiled Tess. Had Tess spoken to the Clare family, chances are that she never would have encountered Alec, and certainly, if she had, not had the necessity to return to him in desperation. Hardy would thus have us believe that the course of our life, and thus our decisions, is predestined