Tess of the d’Urbervilles · Chapter
XXIII explained
On a hot July Sunday, Tess and three other dairymaids—Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty Priddle—attempt to walk to Mellstock Church but find their path flooded.
What happens
On a hot July Sunday, Tess and three other dairymaids—Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty Priddle—attempt to walk to Mellstock Church but find their path flooded. Angel Clare appears, offers to carry each of them across the water, and chooses Tess to go last, prolonging their contact. The girls later confess their hopeless love for him, acknowledging that Tess is his favorite, yet Tess resolves not to stand in their way. The chapter explores the painful, natural passion the women feel, contrasted with social expectations.
Themes in this chapter
Nature vs. Society
The girls' natural passions are contrasted with the social constraints of churchgoing and propriety; their love is described as 'lacking nothing in the eye of Nature' but unjustified in civilization.
Love and Marriage
The chapter explores the girls' hopeless love for Angel, their awareness that he is socially above them, and the futility of their romantic expectations.
Suffering and Resilience
The dairymaids endure emotional torment over their love for Angel, yet they find a resigned dignity in their hopelessness.
Characters to notice
- Tess Durbeyfield
Tess is one of the four dairymaids; she is carried last by Angel and feels both love for him and guilt toward her friends.
- Angel Clare
Angel appears in his dairy clothes, carries the girls across the flood, and shows particular attention to Tess.
- Marian
Marian is the first to speak about the flood and later confesses her despair over her love for Angel.
- Izz Huett
Izz whispers to Tess at night and admits she hoped Angel would kiss her.
- Retty Priddle
Retty is the youngest and most emotional, weeping and wishing she were dead because of her unrequited love.
Key passages
“The full recognition of the futility of their infatuation, from a social point of view; its purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of Nature); the one fact that it did exist, ecstasizing them to a killing joy—all this imparted to them a resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid expectation of winning him as a husband would have destroyed.”
The girls understood that their love for Angel was socially hopeless and had no future, but because it was natural and real, they accepted their pain with a kind of noble grace.
This passage captures the central tension between natural emotion and social judgment.
“The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate with the hopeless passion of the girls. They writhed feverishly under the oppressiveness of an emotion thrust on them by cruel Nature’s law—an emotion which they had neither expected nor desired.”
The bedroom felt charged with the girls' desperate longing, a painful feeling forced upon them by nature that they never asked for.
Highlights the theme of nature's power over human emotions.