Summary: Chapter XXXII
Tess agrees to leave the dairy with Angel around Christmas,
and their wedding date is set for December 31.
Angel hopes to spend that time visiting a flour mill and staying
in a home that belonged to the d’Urbervilles. Angel buys Tess clothes
for their wedding and, to her relief, quietly takes out a marriage
license rather than publicizing his intent to marry Tess.
Summary: Chapter XXXIII
While out shopping, Angel and Tess encounter a man from
Alec d’Urberville’s village, who disparages Tess and denies her
virginity. Angel strikes the man, but when the man apologizes, Angel
gives him some money. Tess is wracked with guilt, and that night
she writes a confession and slips it under Angel’s door. Strangely,
in the morning, Angel’s behavior toward her has not changed, and
he does not mention the letter. Tess ascertains that it slipped
under the carpet and that Angel never saw it. On the morning of
the wedding, Tess again tries to tell Angel about her past, but
he cuts her off, saying that there will be time for such revelations
after they are married. The dairyman and his wife accompany them
to church, and they are married. As they are leaving for the ceremony,
however, a rooster crows in the mid-afternoon.
Summary: Chapter XXXIV
After the wedding, the couple travels to the old d’Urberville
mansion, where they will have a few days to themselves before the farmer
returns. Tess receives a package from Angel’s father, containing
some jewelry that Angel’s godmother bequeathed to his future wife
some years ago. The newlyweds enjoy a happy moment, which is broken
when the man arrives from the dairy with their luggage, bringing
bad news about Tess’s friends. After the wedding, Retty attempted
suicide and Marian became an alcoholic.
After this disclosure, Angel asks Tess for forgiveness,
telling her of his past indiscretion with an older woman in London.
Tess says that she, too, has a confession and tells him of her past
with Alec.
Analysis: Chapters XXXII–XXXIV
As these chapters mark the end of Phase the Fourth, “The
Consequence,” they permit the phase to fit well with the seesaw
scheme of the novel up to this point. Tess of the d’Urbervilles alternates
sections that build up to a climax with sections that detail the
result of the climax. Phase the First builds steadily toward Tess’s
fall from grace, and Phase the Second lays out the consequences
for Tess—her child and her loss of reputation. Phase the Third builds
inexorably toward Tess’s union with Angel, while Phase the Fourth
brings us the consequences of their love: Angel and Tess marry,
and she confesses her past. Aside from the repeated instances of
supernatural effect and mystical ill omen, such as the cock crowing
in the afternoon and the creaky old mansion, the real conflict in
this section is again moral, between Tess’s desire to be happily
loved by Angel and her conscious obligation to tell him about her
past. Because Tess has such a strong instinct for self-delight,
she is able to delay and resist her conscience through October.
Since Tess has an even stronger sense of moral duty, however, she
cannot resist it forever; the section ends as she begins her story,
“murmuring the words without flinching, and with her eyelids drooping
down.”
The universe is still hostile to Tess, and fate still
toys with her in the form of the accidental mishaps on which the
plot turns. Had Angel received Tess’s note before they were married,
the course of the story might have gone differently. But the letter
happens to slip under the carpet, and another chance for Tess’s
tragedy to be averted is lost. This fluke may seem like an unbelievable
coincidence, except that the universe expresses its hostility toward
Tess through the portentous mishaps that plague her throughout the novel.
The cock crowing in the afternoon does not doom Tess to ill fortune,
but simply announces her foreordained doom to the world.
