Summary: Chapter XL
Angel puts the jewelry in the bank and arranges to have
some additional money sent to Tess, then travels to the Wellbridge
Farm to finish some business there. He encounters Izz and impetuously
invites her to go to Brazil with him. Izz agrees, and says that
she loves him. He asks if she loves him more than Tess, and Izz
replies that no one could love him as much as Tess did. Angel sadly
takes Izz to her home and leaves for Brazil alone a few days later.
Summary: Chapter XLI
Tess finds sporadic work at different dairies and manages
to conceal from her family that she is separated from her husband.
When her money begins to run low, she is forced to dip into the
money Angel left for her. Her parents write to her asking for money
to help repair the cottage roof, and she sends them nearly everything
she has. In the meantime, Angel is ill and struggling in Brazil
as part of a desperate and failing community of British farmers.
Even though she is short on money, Tess is too ashamed to ask the
Clares for money.
Tess has heard from Marian of a farm where she might
find work, and although it is purportedly a difficult place in which
to get by, Tess decides to travel there. She encounters the man
from Alec d’Urberville’s village who accused her of promiscuity
in front of Angel and is forced to run and hide from him. She feels
as if Alec is hunting her.
Continuing on her way, Tess stumbles upon a flock of
pheasants, some of which have died and others that are in agony
and pain. She suspects that hunters have shot them and will return
to collect them. She feels an affinity for the birds in pain, and
she instinctively breaks their necks to kill them and put them out
of their misery. Afterward she compares her own plight with that
of the pheasants and becomes angry at herself for thinking that
she is the most miserable being on Earth.
“Poor darlings—to suppose myself the
most miserable being on earth in the sight o’ such misery as yours!”
she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary: Chapter XLII
Tess takes to making herself ugly to protect herself from
lustful men, and she cuts off her eyebrows and dresses in old, unattractive
clothing. When Tess reaches the farm near the village of Flintcomb-Ash, Marian
is curious about Angel, but Tess asks her not to inquire about him.
The proprietress of the farm agrees to give Tess a job, and Tess
sends her new address to her parents—though she does not acknowledge
her marital or financial difficulties.
Summary: Chapter XLIII
Tess and Marian work digging up rutabagas in rocky ground.
After a time, Izz Huett joins them. They are sent to work in the
barn in the winter, and Tess meets the man who owns the farm—it
is the same man from Alec d’Urberville’s village. He accuses her
of being a poor worker, and she offers to work harder to compensate.
Marian tells Tess that Angel invited Izz to travel with him to Brazil,
and Tess at first feels as though she should write to him. Before
long, however, she is overcome by doubt as to whether she really
should.
