Phase The Seventh: The Fulfilment

Question 1

What is interesting about the narrative in this phase?

Answer 1

Throughout the novel we have am omniscient 3rd person narrator and most of the novel is following Tess. However in this phase, the narration shifts to 3rd person limited. Tess isn’t narrated in this chapter creating a sense of mystery.

Question 2

MRS. CLARE: Don’t, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the soil! (LIII, 369)

Answer 2

• Mrs. Clare uses this to show Tess’ lower social class, but Hardy is also using the phrase to demonstrate Tess’ alignment with nature - she has ‘indoor fears’ and feels more comfortable in nature
• ironic because according to Christianity, the first man was made from dust, and the first woman was made from one of Adam’s ribs - so really, everyone is a ‘child of the soil’, everyone is equal before God

Question 3

Sandbourne description

This fashionable watering place, with its eastern and its western stations, its piers, its groves of pines, its promenades, and its covered gardens, was…like a fairy place suddenly created by the stroke of a wand (LV, 375)

Answer 3

• Bournemouth, then an up-and-coming seaside resort - the typical honeymoon/ holiday spot for someone extravagant and modernist like Alec D’Urberville
• the setting puts Tess in profoundly unnatural surroundings: rich, staying at a smart, expensive guest house
• we have no access to Tess’ mind through any of her scenes which take place in Sandbourne
• the nature of the beach being corrupted by industry and tourism
• The Herons (p.g 377): Hardy was an ex-architect and dedicates a lot of time in the book to describing The Herons: it is a commonplace, identical with the other houses in the street: a product of modern capitalist enterprise
• Simile = too good to be true/unrealistic

Question 4

Stonehenge

Answer 4

Tess and Angel stop at Stonehenge on the run.
Angel recognises that Tess is “lying on an altar” - like a sacrifice to the ancient Pagans who used to practice there. This is symbolic in a modern sense, Tess is sacrificed to the laws and morals of the 19th century. Following her death, Stonehenge becomes apparent in Tess’ rebirth in Liza-lu.

Question 5

“O you have torn my life all to pieces… made me a victim, a caged bird!” 381
“your cruel persuasion”
“you did not stop!”
“you taunted me”

Answer 5

Tess to Alec

Question 6

Tess is hanged at Winoncester

Answer 6

‘Large red-brick building’
The reader is spared the details of Tess’ hanging . The deed is not witnessed but the death is signified by the rising of a black flag over the town’s tower.

Question 7

“The wound was small, but the point of the blade had touched the heart of the victim

Answer 7

crime of passion

Question 8

‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Eschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

Answer 8

Aeschylean phrase - Aeschylean = an ancient Greek playwright who wrote plays centred on individual will and the influence of divine power over mortals. Tess seems to have been the “toy” of the gods or morality and religion in Victorian England, and she had to be sacrificed for the good of mankind.