Phase 6- The Convert Flashcards
…a fear overcame her, paralysing her movement so that she neither retreated nor advanced.
Links to her passive state in phase 2- Alec affects her both physically and emotionally, and haunts her.
It was less a reform than a transfiguration…lip-shapes that had meant seductiveness were no made to express supplication…animalism had become fanaticism
Alec seems to be transformed, yet Tess can still see his old self, and his sins.
He who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit, while she remained unregenerate.
Tess’s frustration towards attitudes of society, juxtaposition between social and natural law. Religious hypocrisy!
…a negative beauty of tragic blackness.
Cross-In-Hand- Symbolises Tess as a tragic heroine, and a victim of external forces
Tess, Tess I was on the way to salvation till I saw you again!…surely there was never such a maddening mouth since Eve’s…you temptress…you dear witch of Babylon…
Alec’s criminalisation of Tess for his own actions- Biblical reference is ironic, as he was the one tempted by Tess, yet her calls her Eve.
red tyrant…threshing machine…despotic demand…
Threshing machine- industrialisation, hellish imagery
creature from Tophet…pellucid smokelessness…yellow grain and pail soil…in the service of his plutonic master.
Biblical references allude to Alec being a satanic figure- Gothic
A scarlet oozing appeared where her blow had alighted, and in a moment the blood began dropping from his mouth upon the straw.
Foreshadows her murder of Alec
How the little limbs tremble! You are as weak as a bled calf…
Tess compared with animals again- hunted animal, Tess as a victim.
You are Eve and I am the old Other One, come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal.
Use of self deprecation to manipulate her, satanic imagery.
Thus the Durbeyfields, once D’urbervilles, saw descending upon them destiny which, no doubt, when they were among the Olympians of the country, they had caused to descend many at a time.
Karma, peripeteia
…D’urberville blood…ill-omen…murder, committed by one of the family, centuries ago.
Tragic inheritance
Why am I on the wrong side of this door!
Heaven/Hell- social and religious injustice
