Summary: Chapter LIX
“Justice” was done, and the President
of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with
Tess.
See Important Quotations Explained
Sometime later, from a hillside outside Wintoncester,
Angel and Liza-Lu watch as a black flag is raised above the tower.
Tess has been put to death. Angel and Liza-Lu are motionless for
a time, and then they join hands and go on.
Analysis: Chapters LIII–LIX
Phase the Seventh brings the novel to a tragic close through
a shift in perspective. It begins in an aura of mystery, as Hardy
chooses not to narrate the climax of Tess’s struggle—her return
to the bed of Alec d’Urberville. The first part of this section
is told instead from Angel’s perspective. When he arrives at The
Herons, we have a gradual, sickening sense of what to expect, but
Angel has no idea. He is too late because the race is over, and
Tess’s loyalty to her family has overmastered her integrity. Torn
apart, Tess now kills her lover in a murderous rage out of love
for her husband. From that moment, the novel simply becomes a mechanical
process leading to the inevitable conclusion—Tess’s death.
As Angel returns with renewed loyalty and love for Tess,
it becomes apparent that Alec has considerably broken down Tess’s loyalty
to Angel. Tess recovers this love and loyalty when she sees Angel
again, and she feels guilty about how far she has drifted. Her pride
in poverty when Angel is away stands in direct contrast with her
fancy clothing and luxurious lodging, which physically measures
how far into temptation she has gone with Alec. Her shame and grief
cause her violent side to explode, and she kills Alec. Whether intentionally
or not, Tess has fulfilled Angel’s proclamation that they cannot
be together as long as Alec is alive. The murder may appear justified
to us at this point, after everything through which Alec has put
Tess. But, though we may sympathize with Tess’s actions, we know
that Tess must now flee and live the life of a hunted criminal.
The short section narrated from the perspective of Mrs.
Brooks is almost an exact double of the technique Hardy uses with
Angel at the beginning of Phase the Seventh. Just as he excludes
Tess’s return to Alec, he excludes her murder of Alec. Just as an
unsuspecting third party shows us that she has gone back to him,
another unsuspecting third party shows us that she has killed him.
Tess’s mind has been at the center of the novel from its beginning,
and practically everything that has happened has been shown solely
in its relation to her. By shifting attention away from her so suddenly,
Hardy creates the sense that Tess is already lost—though she is
still alive, she has partially vanished into the gloom of her fate.
At the end, despite the atmosphere of Gothic mystery and supernatural
portent that infuses much of the novel, Hardy still manages to surprise
us by setting the conclusion at Stonehenge, one of the most famous
and mysterious monuments in the world.
