PHASE THE FOURTH: THE CONSEQUENCE
TESS AND ANGEL
 Guilt prompts
Tess to resist her attraction to Angel; similarly, scruples about
damaging her life move Angel to resist expressing his love. However,
the appetite for joy and nature's drive to reproduction and fulfillment
carry them into an engagement and marriage. Nature, unfortunately,
proves
unable to overcome either the misconceptions each has of the other or
the conventions and social rules that Angel and Tess have internalized.
The meaning of the title, "The Consequence," is not as
clear cut as previous titles. What is the consequence? and what is the
source of the consequence? Possible sources are Tess's sexual
experience, her rally, her guilt and need to confess, nature's drive to
joy and fulfillment, or the marriage of Tess and Angel. What do you
think?
MUTUAL MISCONCEPTIONS
Both Tess and Angel are deluded about the true character of the other.
Because of her unfortunate experience with Alec, Tess overestimates
Angel's moral integrity and his personal superiority to herself.
Initially she sees him not as a man but as an "intelligence" (page
126); she learns, to her sorrow, how hard his reliance on intellect can
make him. She admires his self-control and sense of duty in making no
effort to seduce Marion, Izz, and Retty, even though all three would be
easy prey because of their love for him. She well knows the suffering
that he could cause them. Tess attributes a chivalrous, honorable
attitude toward women to Angel, who
was far from all that she thought him in this
respect; absurdly far, indeed; but he was, in truth, more spiritual
than animal; he had himself well in hand, and was singularly free from
grossness. Though not cold-natured, he was rather bright than hot–less
Byronic than Shelleyan; could love desperately, but with a love more
especially inclined to the imaginative and ethereal; it was a
fastidious emotion which could jealously guard the loved one against
his very self. (pages 193-4)
This passage stresses his intellectuality--"spirituality,"
"imaginative," and "ethereal," which originate in the mind; his
predisposition to the mind is contrasted with "grossness," i.e., the
sexual
or animal, which is the channel for nature's drives. "Bright" connotes mind, which
predominates in Shelley; "hot" connotes passion, which predominates in
Byron. His love, being fastidious, is the product
of the mind or imagination [fastidious: paying careful attention
to detail; difficult to please; excessively scrupulous or sensitive,
especially concerning what is proper or customary]. What does Hardy
mean when he says that Angel's fastidious love could "guard the loved
one against his very self"? Is he protecting her against his baser
nature? is he protecting his own idea of her? or does it mean something
else altogether?
Angel perceives Tess as "a fresh
and virginal daughter of Nature" (page 121). The idea of her purity
recurs in Angel's thoughts and in conversations about her with his
parents. Unfortunately for Tess, his idea of "purity" and "virtue" is
conventional and narrow; he equates them with physical virginity. Angel
seems intellectually liberated; he does not subscribe to the religious
beliefs of his father and brothers and refuses to become a minister. In
reality, his underlying emotions and basic principles remain
conventional, perhaps as conventional as theirs. Angel chooses
intellect and ideas over emotion and instinct; in this, he contrasts
with Tess who is "a vessel of emotions." In the crisis of their wedding
night, his ideas have more influence than his feelings, the appetite
for joy, and the drive to reproduction. A similar conflict between his
expressed beliefs and underlying values exists in his view of families
glorious in the past; from a political point of view, he scorns them
and regards their descendants as doomed to failure, but from an
imaginative or poetic point of view, he sees their glamor and romance.
From a social point of view, he is pleased with Tess's ancestry, which
he thinks will make her more socially acceptable; does this make him a
snob?
Their misunderstandings about each
other contribute to their alienation on their wedding night.
Tess makes two attempts to confess her
past to Angel. The first time his indulgent attitude causes her to
retreat and tell him about her d'Urberville ancestry. The second time,
her letter slips
under the rug, so that this effort to confess also fails. Are
circumstances stacked against her, or does she bear responsibility for
not telling him about her past? Would her telling him before marriage
have made any difference?
Once they are married, Tess's
spirits become depressed by a series of occurrences–the cock's crowing,
Angel's reference to the d'Urberville coach, the horrid women in the
portraits, and Retty's suicide attempt. Immediately after the ceremony
she wonders whether she has any right to be his wife, whether her real
husband is Alec. Hardy compares her fear that their marriage might be
"ill-omened" to a quotation from Romeo and Juliet, "These
violent delights have violent ends" (page 216). Does the reference to
Romeo and Juliet, who were star-crossed lovers, i.e., were doomed by
circumstances, suggest that Tess and Alec too are doomed by
circumstances? Was chance operating against her when he did not dance
with her when she was still a virgin? But would she have attracted him
then? He did not choose her then because she was indistinguishable from
the
other country girls; Hardy notes that discerning strangers might notice
her freshness but to "to almost everybody she was a fine and
picturesque country-girl, and no more" (page 10). Would Angel have been
that discerning stranger? And would the inexperienced vessel of emotion
that Tess was then have interested him? Angel first notices her when
she explains how watching stars induces an out-of-body experience, but
is it her "liberal education" or sexual experience which has given her
the depth and individuality that hold his attention?
Angel is moved to confess his sexual
transgression on their wedding night. Like Tess, he wanted to confess
during their courtship; unlike her, he made no effort to tell, afraid
he might lose her. She warmly and immediately forgives him, and he
accepts her forgiveness easily, "Then we will dismiss it at once and
forever!" (page 227). Tess is "almost glad" at his lapse because she
thinks it is the same as hers and that he will forgive her just as she
has forgiven him. The details hint that her revelation will have an
unfortunate outcome, with the reference to the Last Day and to her
diamond necklace having "a sinister wink like a toad's" (page 227).
This section ends with her
confession and ends the rally in the Froom Valley. Is it meaningful
that the death of her rally occurs in a home of her dead d'Urberville
ancestors or is it a meaningless coincidence? Is her personal history
repeating her family history? As the d'Urbervilles decayed into the
Durbeyfields, does Tess experience a deterioration in her status and
life?
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