Tess of the d’Urbervilles · Chapter
XLIV explained
Tess, spurred by Izz Huett's tale of Angel's near-infidelity, decides to walk fifteen miles to the Emminster Vicarage to seek news of her absent husband.
What happens
Tess, spurred by Izz Huett's tale of Angel's near-infidelity, decides to walk fifteen miles to the Emminster Vicarage to seek news of her absent husband. She sets out on a Sunday morning, dressed in her finest remaining clothes, but upon arriving finds no one home. While resting on a hill, she overhears Angel's brothers and Mercy Chant mock a pair of old boots they find—her own walking boots—and, humiliated, she abandons her plan and returns to Flintcomb-Ash, feeling hopeless and rejected.
Themes in this chapter
Social Class and Inequality
Tess's humiliation by the Clare brothers and Mercy Chant over her worn boots highlights the class divide and her perceived unworthiness as a poor country girl.
Suffering and Resilience
Tess endures the physical hardship of the long walk and the emotional blow of the boot incident, yet continues on with a conviction that a crisis is approaching.
Love and Marriage
Tess's journey is motivated by her desire to reconnect with Angel and salvage her marriage, despite his year-long silence and abandonment.
Characters to notice
- Tess Durbeyfield
Tess walks to Emminster Vicarage to seek news of Angel, but is humiliated by the discovery of her boots and returns without making contact.
- Angel Clare
Angel is absent, having not written to Tess for nearly a year; his silence and his family's attitudes drive Tess's actions.
- Izz Huett
Izz helps Tess dress for her journey and expresses magnanimous hope that Tess will win back Angel's affections.
- Marian
Marian assists Tess in preparing for her walk to Emminster.
- Mercy Chant
Mercy Chant accompanies Angel's brothers and participates in the discovery and appropriation of Tess's boots.
- Felix Clare
Felix Clare, one of Angel's brothers, is part of the group that finds Tess's boots and dismisses them as tramp's belongings.
- Cuthbert Clare
Cuthbert Clare, the other brother, picks up Tess's boots with his stick for Mercy Chant to take home.
Key passages
“By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the direction which they had taken more than once of late—to the distant Emminster Vicarage.”
After hearing Izz's story in the barn, Tess again thought about visiting Angel's family at the Emminster Vicarage.
Tess is motivated by Izz's revelation to seek out Angel's parents.
“She had set herself to stand or fall by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in a church-book beside hers.”
Tess resolved to rely on her own merits rather than on the technicality of being married to Angel.
Tess's independent character is emphasized; she does not want to impose on the Clare family.
“Here's a pair of old boots... Thrown away, I suppose, by some tramp or other.”
Felix Clare finds Tess's boots and assumes they were discarded by a tramp.
The boots are misidentified, leading to Tess's humiliation.
