Angel Clare Flashcards
How is Angel presented as progressive? (4 points)
He is a secularist who yearns to work for the “honour and glory of man,” as he tells his father in Chapter 18, rather than for that of God
A typical young 19th-century progressive - he sees human society as a thing to be remoulded and improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of man
His love for Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of his disdain for tradition
This independent spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and general attractiveness - makes him the love object of all the milkmaid at Talbothays
How is Angel presented as an ‘angel’? (4 points)
Angel’s ideals of human purity are too elevated to be applied to actual people: Mrs. Durbeyfield’s easygoing moral beliefs are much more easily accommodated to real lives such as Tess’s
Angel awakens to the actual complexities of real-world morality after his failure in Brazil, and only then he realises he has been unfair to Tess
His moral system is readjusted as he is brought down to Earth
Ironically, it is not the angel who guides the human in this novel, but the human who instructs the angel, although at the cost of her own life
