chapter 42


It was now broad day, and she started again, emerging cautiously upon
the highway.  But there was no need for caution; not a soul was at
hand, and Tess went onward with fortitude, her recollection of the
birds' silent endurance of their night of agony impressing upon her
the relativity of sorrows and the tolerable nature of her own, if she
could once rise high enough to despise opinion.  But that she could
not do so long as it was held by Clare.

She reached Chalk-Newton, and breakfasted at an inn, where several
young men were troublesomely complimentary to her good looks.
Somehow she felt hopeful, for was it not possible that her husband
also might say these same things to her even yet?  She was bound to
take care of herself on the chance of it, and keep off these casual
lovers.  To this end Tess resolved to run no further risks from her
appearance.  As soon as she got out of the village she entered a
thicket and took from her basket one of the oldest field-gowns, which
she had never put on even at the dairy--never since she had worked
among the stubble at Marlott.  She also, by a felicitous thought,
took a handkerchief from her bundle and tied it round her face under
her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks and temples, as if
she were suffering from toothache. Then with her little scissors,
by the aid of a pocket looking-glass, she mercilessly nipped her
eyebrows off, and thus insured against aggressive admiration, she
went on her uneven way.

"What a mommet of a maid!" said the next man who met her to a
companion.

Tears came into her eyes for very pity of herself as she heard him.

"But I don't care!" she said.  "O no--I don't care!  I'll always be
ugly now, because Angel is not here, and I have nobody to take care
of me.  My husband that was is gone away, and never will love me any
more; but I love him just the same, and hate all other men, and like
to make 'em think scornfully of me!"

Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a
fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a
red woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough
wrapper, and buff-leather gloves.  Every thread of that old attire
has become faded and thin under the stroke of raindrops, the burn of
sunbeams, and the stress of winds.  There is no sign of young passion
in her now--


     The maiden's mouth is cold
     . . .
     Fold over simple fold
     Binding her head.


Inside this exterior, over which the eye might have roved as over a
thing scarcely percipient, almost inorganic, there was the record of
a pulsing life which had learnt too well, for its years, of the dust
and ashes of things, of the cruelty of lust and the fragility of
love.

Next day the weather was bad, but she trudged on, the honesty,
directness, and impartiality of elemental enmity disconcerting her
but little.  Her object being a winter's occupation and a winter's
home, there was no time to lose.  Her experience of short hirings
had been such that she was determined to accept no more.

Thus she went forward from farm to farm in the direction of the place
whence Marian had written to her, which she determined to make use of
as a last shift only, its rumoured stringencies being the reverse of
tempting.  First she inquired for the lighter kinds of employment,
and, as acceptance in any variety of these grew hopeless, applied
next for the less light, till, beginning with the dairy and poultry
tendance that she liked best, she ended with the heavy and course
pursuits which she liked least--work on arable land: work of such
roughness, indeed, as she would never have deliberately voluteered
for.

Towards the second evening she reached the irregular chalk table-land
or plateau, bosomed with semi-globular tumuli--as if Cybele the
Many-breasted were supinely extended there--which stretched between
the valley of her birth and the valley of her love.

Here the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown
white and dusty within a few hours after rain.  There were few trees,
or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly
plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural
enemies of tree, bush, and brake.  In the middle distance ahead of
her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout,
and they seemed friendly.  They had a low and unassuming aspect from
this upland, though as approached on the other side from Blackmoor
in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the sky.
Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges
coastward, she could discern a surface like polished steel: it was
the English Channel at a point far out towards France.

Before her, in a slight depression, were the remains of a village.
She had, in fact, reached Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's
sojourn.  There seemed to be no help for it; hither she was doomed to
come.  The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the
kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind; but it was
time to rest from searching, and she resolved to stay, particularly
as it began to rain.  At the entrance to the village was a cottage
whose gable jutted into the road, and before applying for a lodging
she stood under its shelter, and watched the evening close in.

"Who would think I was Mrs Angel Clare!" she said.

The wall felt warm to her back and shoulders, and she found that
immediately within the gable was the cottage fireplace, the heat of
which came through the bricks.  She warmed her hands upon them, and
also put her cheek--red and moist with the drizzle--against their
comforting surface.  The wall seemed to be the only friend she had.
She had so little wish to leave it that she could have stayed there
all night.

Tess could hear the occupants of the cottage--gathered together after
their day's labour--talking to each other within, and the rattle of
their supper-plates was also audible.  But in the village-street she
had seen no soul as yet.  The solitude was at last broken by the
approach of one feminine figure, who, though the evening was cold,
wore the print gown and the tilt-bonnet of summer time.  Tess
instinctively thought it might be Marian, and when she came near
enough to be distinguishable in the gloom, surely enough it was
she.  Marian was even stouter and redder in the face than formerly,
and decidedly shabbier in attire.  At any previous period of her
existence Tess would hardly have cared to renew the acquaintance in
such conditions; but her loneliness was excessive, and she responded
readily to Marian's greeting.

Marian was quite respectful in her inquiries, but seemed much moved
by the fact that Tess should still continue in no better condition
than at first; though she had dimly heard of the separation.

"Tess--Mrs Clare--the dear wife of dear he!  And is it really so bad
as this, my child?  Why is your cwomely face tied up in such a way?
Anybody been beating 'ee?  Not HE?"

"No, no, no!  I merely did it not to be clipsed or colled, Marian."

She pulled off in disgust a bandage which could suggest such wild
thoughts.

"And you've got no collar on" (Tess had been accustomed to wear a
little white collar at the dairy).

"I know it, Marian."

"You've lost it travelling."

"I've not lost it.  The truth is, I don't care anything about my
looks; and so I didn't put it on."

"And you don't wear your wedding-ring?"

"Yes, I do; but not in public.  I wear it round my neck on a ribbon.
I don't wish people to think who I am by marriage, or that I am
married at all; it would be so awkward while I lead my present life."

Marian paused.

"But you BE a gentleman's wife; and it seems hardly fair that you
should live like this!"

"O yes it is, quite fair; though I am very unhappy."

"Well, well.  HE married you--and you can be unhappy!"

"Wives are unhappy sometimes; from no fault of their husbands--from
their own."

"You've no faults, deary; that I'm sure of.  And he's none.  So it
must be something outside ye both."

"Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking
questions?  My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my
allowance, so that I have to fall back upon my old work for a time.
Do not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before.  Do they want a hand
here?"

"O yes; they'll take one always, because few care to come.  'Tis a
starve-acre place.  Corn and swedes are all they grow.  Though I be
here myself, I feel 'tis a pity for such as you to come."

"But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I."

"Yes; but I've got out o' that since I took to drink.  Lord, that's
the only comfort I've got now!  If you engage, you'll be set
swede-hacking.  That's what I be doing; but you won't like it."

"O--anything!  Will you speak for me?"

"You will do better by speaking for yourself."

"Very well.  Now, Marian, remember--nothing about HIM if I get the
place.  I don't wish to bring his name down to the dirt."

Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain
than Tess, promised anything she asked.

"This is pay-night," she said, "and if you were to come with me you
would know at once.  I be real sorry that you are not happy; but 'tis
because he's away, I know.  You couldn't be unhappy if he were here,
even if he gie'd ye no money--even if he used you like a drudge."

"That's true; I could not!"

They walked on together and soon reached the farmhouse, which was
almost sublime in its dreariness. There was not a tree within sight;
there was not, at this season, a green pasture--nothing but fallow
and turnips everywhere, in large fields divided by hedges plashed to
unrelieved levels.

Tess waited outside the door of the farmhouse till the group of
workfolk had received their wages, and then Marian introduced her.
The farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who
represented him this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on
her agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day.  Female field-labour was
seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks
which women could perform as readily as men.

Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do
at present than to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at
whose gable-wall she had warmed herself.  It was a poor subsistence
that she had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter
at any rate.

That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in
case a letter should arrive at Marlott from her husband.  But she
did not tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have
brought reproach upon him.



gradesaver
Tess starts again alone toward Chalk-Newton, where she has breakfast at an inn. At this inn, several young men are troublesomely complimentary to her because of her good looks. After leaving the inn, Tess covers her chin and hair with a handkerchief and cuts off her eyebrows to deflect against men's admiration. She thinks that she will always be ugly as long as Angel is not with her. Tess walks onward, from farm to farm in the direction of the place from which Marian had written her. Tess finally reaches Flintcomb-Ash, the place of Marian's sojourn. The place is barren and rough. Tess's plain appearance surprises Marian, who thinks that she has been abused. Tess asks that Marian not call her Mrs. Clare. Marian tells Tess that she will be employed at swede-hacking, a rough profession. Tess asks Marian to say nothing about Angel, for she does not wish to bring his name down to the dirt.
In this chapter, Hardy focuses on the innate sexuality within Tess Durbeyfield, framing it as a force that Tess can do little to control and which remains the center of her life's maladies. Tess has remained the focus of sexual attention for primarily manipulative or self-serving reasons, as when her parents use her looks to gain her a gentleman husband and Alec d'Urberville uses her only as an object for his lust. By rejecting Tess, Angel Clare himself frames Tess in terms of her sexuality. Her attempt to remove this sexual component of herself by making herself less attractive therefore represents a measure of self-defense. Tess mutilates herself in order to ward off the attention that has damaged her. Flintcomb-Ash serves as a territorial representation of the adversity that Tess faces. The territory is barren and rough, in contrast to the more idyllic region of Talbothays Dairy; this parallels Tess's impoverished situation as well as her new appearance. Yet Tess accepts the surroundings at Flintcomb-Ash largely because of the adversity it offers; she considers it as a form of purgatory, as shown when she refuses to allow Marian to speak about Angel, whom she still considers too noble for the conditions she now faces
shmoop
The next day, several more young men bother her with compliments about her good looks. So Tess decides to try to make herself ugly, and clips off her eyebrows and ties a handkerchief around her face as though she had a toothache. This has the desired effect--now when she passes men on the road, they mumble to each other about what an ugly girl she is. Tess arrives at the place where Marian has been working, and is happy to see her, even though it's clear that Marian's fallen on hard times, too. Marian is surprised at Tess's appearance, since she's married to a gentleman and all. Marian assumes that whatever's wrong, it must be the fault of something outside both Tess and Angel, since she won't admit that either of them has any real faults. Marian offers to help Tess to get a job at the farm where she's working, even though it's tough work and not much fun. Tess doesn't really care what she does, so long as Marian agrees not to tell anyone about Angel--Tess doesn't want Angel's name to be associated with farm labor. Tess signs an agreement with the farmer's wife to stay and work until "Old Lady Day" . She sends a letter to her parents telling them where she's living, but not how poor she is--she's afraid that they'd think badly of Angel if they knew.
pinkmonkey
CHAPTER 42 Summary After the encounter with the Trantridge man, Tess decides that she must make herself unattractive to prevent further incidents. She puts on her ugliest clothes and ties her hair up in a handkerchief. When she arrives at her destination, Marian is astonished at her appearance and questions her about Angel. Tess finds temporary work at the farm. She writes to her parents, giving them her new address; but she does not tell them of her situation. Notes Tess continues to be very hard on herself. She never feels that Angel did anything wrong to her, but readily accepts that she is being punished for her own wrongdoings. She refuses to say anything bad about her husband at all. She also blames herself for the affair with Alec and the pursuit by the Trantridge man. To add to her misery, Tess also finds Flintcomb-Ash to be hard. The setting is dreary, especially in comparison to the lush fields around the dairy farms; the soil is not fertile and is very hard to work and the camaraderie found at Talbothay's is missing from this farm. Fortunately, there is one bright spot for Tess. Marian becomes her loyal friend, who is willing to help in all sorts of ways