Top 4 Tess of the D'Urbervilles quotes
“Her face was dry and pale as though she regarded herself in the light of a murderess.”
Part 1, Chapter 4
Tess’s father is too drunk to drive the farm produce to the market, so Tess is forced to drive the cart along with her younger brother. The two of them fall asleep during the journey and the cart has an accident that leads to the death of the only family horse, Prince. Tess blames herself for the death, and the horse's death foreshadows the murder of a human being that she will later commit.
“Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting’s import she might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the wrong man.”
Part 1, Chapter 5
The Omniscient limited narrator comments on Alec’s first meeting with Tess as she comes to see his mother at the request of her parents. Fate is one of the major themes of the novel, and the author points out several such coincidences that lead Tess to her execution at the end of the novel.
“The recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not denied to maidenhood alone.”
Part 2, Chapter 15
Tess shares a close relationship with nature, given her upbringing in the countryside. This connection is especially clear when Tess begins to retreat to the forest to find solace from the judgment-filled eyes of her neighbors after she returns from the D’Urberville estate. As Tess heads back out of her village for a new job, she can’t help but notice the changes in nature that the seasons bring. She realizes that nature is filled with beginnings and ends and that all things move in cycles. She understands that she is a part of nature, and thus under the influence of similar cycles of regeneration.
“There was revived in her the wretched sentiment which had often come to her before, that in inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her, she was somehow doing wrong.”
Part 6, Chapter 45
Tess experiences these thoughts as she runs into Alec after his religious conversion, and he tells her that her appearance continues to tempt him. Through this quote, readers can observe how Tess has internalized the patriarchal Victorian viewpoint that she is somehow at fault for appearing desirable to men like Alec. However, Hardy also emphasizes that her attraction was a result of nature through this quote, and reinforces the idea that she is not at fault for being beautiful.