Quotes Flashcards
Alec
Regression to former self
“I was your master once… I will be your master again!”
Phase 6 - The convert
Reflects arrogance, abusive and predatory, maniplutive and domineering, themes of power and oppression
Tess
Rape
“[beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet,] there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive;”
Phase 1 - The Maiden
“sensitive…” delicate picture of tess’s physical form (fragility and ethereality, delicate spider silk - tess’s vulnerabilty, “snow” innocence and purity, freshly fallen snow - untouched and niave, “coarse…” inevitability, foreshadowing destined to face hardships despite her delicate nature
Milkmaids
“They were simple and innocent girls… they’ve deserved better at the hands of fate.”
Phase 4 - The Consequence
See’s herself in them, suggests fate has been unkind to them an dthey did not deserve it
Angels
Love for Tess
“He called her Artemis, Demeter… teasingly.”
“she did not like because she did not understand them.”
Phase 3 - The rally
childish, Goddess of wild animals/childbirth, Goddess of Agriculture/Harvest, idealisation, shows education, did what she said, makes us believe Healthy relationship? unlike Alec
Tess
Guilt/innocence
“She looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of innocence.”
Phase 2 - Maiden no more
societys expectations/judgements, sees herself as an unwelcome presences, self punishing, undeserving of kind environments.
Tess
realisation/injustice
“Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?”
Phase 6 - The Convert
Finally stood up for herself, less self loathing, asserts her integrity - challenges notion that women were inheritly deceitful, “sins of inadvertance” highlights complexity of moral judgement, comentary of social double standard
Tess
Society/her views after rape
“familiar green world beyond, now half-veiled in mist”
Phase 2 - Maiden no more
comment on how views and their impact, view of vale is changed due to mist, view of tess is change due to societys beliefs, but she is still the same person
Tess
Corruption
“the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing”
Phase 2 - Maiden no more
Birds symbolise purity and tess, serpent represents malevolent forces that threaten her innocence, garden of Eden imagery
Alec/Tess
No Fear
“she had no fear of him now, and in the cause of her confidence her sorrow lay”
Phase 2 - Maiden no more
foreshadowing “sorrow”, ALec has already done the worst
Alec
lack of emotion
‘d’Urberville mechanically lit a cigar’ - representation of urbanisation
Phase 2 - Maiden no more
Alec repesents urbanisation, lack of emotion, need for control
Tess is submissive
submissive
“she sat now, like a puppet”
Phase 2 - Maiden no more
Given up hope, Alec can do what he wishes with her now, irony he doesnt want her anymore
Alec
Avoids responsibility
‘I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all probability’
Phase 2 - Maiden no more
Blames nature, fatalism/inevitalbility, pessimism
Tess
Angel
“His soul the soul of a saint.”
Phase 4 - The Consequence
Idealising angel, irony his name, highlights her belief in goodness of other
Women
“I should carry you off then as my property.”
Phase 4 - The Consequence
Context for the late 19th century, women being owned, men in control as if carrying them
Tess
Mouth
“The middle of her top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening.”
foreshadowing mens idealisation of her, her strange affect she has on men, sending them into delusion
Tess
Beauty without Angel
“I’ll always be ugly now, because Angel is not here… but I love him.” -
Women only exsist to please men, without angel she does not exsist, going over the top shows her loyalty
Men
Tess’s Appearance
“one that it will be good for dangerous young females like yerself”
Men constantly make incorrect assumptions about tess, Was he actually right?
Angel
Realisation
“he had asked himself why had he not judged Tess constructively rather than biographically, by the will rather than by the deed?”
Finally realises society was wrong
Tess
God/Religion
“I don’t believe God said such things”
Hardy rejecting the institutionalised religion of Victorian England through Tess
Justice
"”Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.”
“President of the Immortals,” comes from Greek Aeschylus’s play, Prometheus, and Prometheus was considered by many to be the ultimate tragic hero. That play is all about punishment and justice. You should also note that “justice” is ironically set off in quotation marks in this passage.
Angel
Sleepwalking
“My poor poor Tess, my dearest darling Tess! So sweet, so good, so true!” The words of endearment, withheld so severely in his waking hours, were inexpressibly sweet to her forlorn and hungry heart.
He consciously maintains a conviction that Tess is bad, corrupt, and cannot be forgiven, but his unconscious sleepwalking self reveals the tender love and moral respect for her (“so good, so true!”) that he feels somewhere inside him. This revelation foreshadows his final realization, too late,
Tess
Bird
“their rich plumage dabbled with blood; all of them writhing in agony except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more.”
“She broke the necks of as many as she could find”
Phase 5 - The woman pays
strange and unexpected, Farming is associated with production, never with loss or sacrifice, Tess’s killing of these suffering birds suggests that she is killing off that part of herself that has quietly her agony. change in character - stand up for herself. her punishment for the murder, presumably death by hanging, will snap her neck just like she snaps the necks of these pheasants. Nevertheless, it may be preferable to her earlier passivity, providing her with a nobler way to face her fate.
Spring at Talbothays
“air was clear, bracing and ethereal”
Winter at Flintcomb Ash
“air was dry and cold”
Industrialisation
“the teeth of the unerring reaper” / “the red tyrant”
Tess
Beauty
“a visionary essence of a woman”
Tess
defies Victorian convention
“I don’t want to marry…I cannot”
Tess and Angel
Adam and eve
“as if they were Adam and Eve”
Fallen Woman
Symbolism
“apple…fallen” / “milk turned sour”
Sandborne
“the city of detached mansions”
Lack of community like talbothays
Tess and Angel
Love symbolism
“the gold of the summer picture was now grey”
