finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_7_part_7.txt
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter lix
chapter lix
{"name": "Chapter LIX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase7-chapter53-59", "summary": "In the final chapter, Angel and Liza-Lu, now a couple, watch as a black flag is raised on a tower signaling Tess's death: \"justice was done. they joined hands again and went on\".", "analysis": ". Although she is still alive, in the final and shortest section, it seems as if Tess is already dead. While most of the novel has been narrated from Tess's perspective, the final section is told from Angel's perspective, and since he knows nothing of what has happed to Tess in his absence, the reader is left just as much in the dark, having never seen Tess leave with Alec. She just appears at Sandbourne without a second seduction scene, as expected. Indeed, at this point even the minor characters have more agency than Tess. Angel hears from her mother that Tess is no longer at Marlott. Mrs. Brooks is central to the murder scene. When Angel arrives at Sandbourne, Tess is a \"different woman,\" dressed in cashmere, living in the lap of luxury--a far, far remove from the Tess shivering and starving at Flintcomb-Ash. It is as if she has come so far under Alec's spell that she has lost her \"self. It takes Angel's renewed presence to force Tess into taking action against Alec. And act she does. Seeing Angel once more ignites in Tess a storm of pent-up emotion that results in Alec's death. For once she manages to break out of the fragile female role and kills her lover violently with a phallic knife--but readers never see her act and it is the minor nosey character Mrs. Brooks who reports the murder. At the end of the novel, Tess and Angel are finally equal. As they make their escape, there is no more hesitancy about their socially inferior or superior backgrounds. Finally, they are just themselves and cannot worry about how society will judge them. Angel has undergone great mental anguish that has resulted in conversion and forgiveness, and physical pain that has left him weakened, aged, and not at all handsome. Tess similarly has undergone privations beyond endurance and doesn't owe anyone an apology. In the old mansion in the woods they stand as equals and finally experience a joyous honeymoon. However, as Hardy makes clear in his title \"Phase the Fifth, the woman pays\" Tess must mount the scaffold alone while Angel walks off with a new Tess. hat of Alec d'Urberville, who leaves his selfish self behind to be replaced, albeit temporarily, with a man of the cloth bent on saving others. But this man of the cloth is a sham. Hardy compares him with \"the Other,\" otherwise known as Satan, who tempts Eve in the garden paradise. And, just as he did years before, Alec seduces Tess. However, Alec appears to love Tess, who has some kind of hold on him. Why else the transformation into a man of God when she leaves, and why else the return to the man-of-old upon her return. Throughout the novel, Hardy paints a picture of, as the title denotes, \"a pure woman,\" and the tenuous position of such a woman, without a man's protection, in nineteenth-century Britain. Because of her fall from maidenhood Tess can only live as a man's mistress but never as his wife. Alec no doubt wanted Tess to remain with him, but he never asked her to marry him. Hardy provides no explanation for this because to his readers it would not be credible for a lower-class servant to marry an upper-class man with a noble name, even though that name is a sham. The upper-class Angel can marry Tess, but he has to justify this decision by pointing out how virtuous she is and how she will benefit him monetarily in his future as a farmer. Tess, however, is never Angel's wife in the physical sense of the word until the end of the novel. when the couple lives outside society's boundaries in the woods. Despite all the maneuverings of his characters, Hardy holds fast to his idea that fate ultimately controls all. Tess attempts to get Angel's attention by visiting his parents to ask for help and support. However, fate would have it that Angel's brothers just happen to be talking of their errant brother's marriage and they pass a veiled Tess. Had Tess spoken to the Clare family, chances are that she never would have encountered Alec, and certainly, if she had, not had the necessity to return to him in desperation. Hardy would thus have us believe that the course of our life, and thus our decisions, is predestined"}


The city of Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime capital
of Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the
brightness and warmth of a July morning.  The gabled brick, tile, and
freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument
of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping
High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediaeval cross, and from
the mediaeval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping
was in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day.

From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every Wintoncestrian
knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a
measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind.  Up this road
from the precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly,
as if unconscious of the trying ascent--unconscious through
preoccupation and not through buoyancy.  They had emerged upon this
road through a narrow, barred wicket in a high wall a little lower
down.  They seemed anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and
of their kind, and this road appeared to offer the quickest means
of doing so.  Though they were young, they walked with bowed heads,
which gait of grief the sun's rays smiled on pitilessly.

One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall budding
creature--half girl, half woman--a spiritualized image of Tess,
slighter than she, but with the same beautiful eyes--Clare's
sister-in-law, 'Liza-Lu.  Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk
to half their natural size.  They moved on hand in hand, and never
spoke a word, the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto's
"Two Apostles".

When they had nearly reached the top of the great West Hill the
clocks in the town struck eight.  Each gave a start at the notes,
and, walking onward yet a few steps, they reached the first
milestone, standing whitely on the green margin of the grass, and
backed by the down, which here was open to the road.  They entered
upon the turf, and, impelled by a force that seemed to overrule their
will, suddenly stood still, turned, and waited in paralyzed suspense
beside the stone.

The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited.  In the valley
beneath lay the city they had just left, its more prominent buildings
showing as in an isometric drawing--among them the broad cathedral
tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and nave,
the spires of St Thomas's, the pinnacled tower of the College, and,
more to the right, the tower and gables of the ancient hospice,
where to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale.
Behind the city swept the rotund upland of St Catherine's Hill;
further off, landscape beyond landscape, till the horizon was lost
in the radiance of the sun hanging above it.

Against these far stretches of country rose, in front of the other
city edifices, a large red-brick building, with level gray roofs,
and rows of short barred windows bespeaking captivity, the whole
contrasting greatly by its formalism with the quaint irregularities
of the Gothic erections.  It was somewhat disguised from the road in
passing it by yews and evergreen oaks, but it was visible enough up
here.  The wicket from which the pair had lately emerged was in the
wall of this structure.  From the middle of the building an ugly
flat-topped octagonal tower ascended against the east horizon, and
viewed from this spot, on its shady side and against the light, it
seemed the one blot on the city's beauty.  Yet it was with this blot,
and not with the beauty, that the two gazers were concerned.

Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed.  Their eyes
were riveted on it.  A few minutes after the hour had struck
something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the
breeze.  It was a black flag.

"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean
phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.  And the d'Urberville knights
and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing.  The two speechless
gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and
remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued
to wave silently.  As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined
hands again, and went on.



Chapter LIX
In the final chapter, Angel and Liza-Lu, now a couple, watch as a black flag is raised on a tower signaling Tess's death: "justice was done. they joined hands again and went on".
. Although she is still alive, in the final and shortest section, it seems as if Tess is already dead. While most of the novel has been narrated from Tess's perspective, the final section is told from Angel's perspective, and since he knows nothing of what has happed to Tess in his absence, the reader is left just as much in the dark, having never seen Tess leave with Alec. She just appears at Sandbourne without a second seduction scene, as expected. Indeed, at this point even the minor characters have more agency than Tess. Angel hears from her mother that Tess is no longer at Marlott. Mrs. Brooks is central to the murder scene. When Angel arrives at Sandbourne, Tess is a "different woman," dressed in cashmere, living in the lap of luxury--a far, far remove from the Tess shivering and starving at Flintcomb-Ash. It is as if she has come so far under Alec's spell that she has lost her "self. It takes Angel's renewed presence to force Tess into taking action against Alec. And act she does. Seeing Angel once more ignites in Tess a storm of pent-up emotion that results in Alec's death. For once she manages to break out of the fragile female role and kills her lover violently with a phallic knife--but readers never see her act and it is the minor nosey character Mrs. Brooks who reports the murder. At the end of the novel, Tess and Angel are finally equal. As they make their escape, there is no more hesitancy about their socially inferior or superior backgrounds. Finally, they are just themselves and cannot worry about how society will judge them. Angel has undergone great mental anguish that has resulted in conversion and forgiveness, and physical pain that has left him weakened, aged, and not at all handsome. Tess similarly has undergone privations beyond endurance and doesn't owe anyone an apology. In the old mansion in the woods they stand as equals and finally experience a joyous honeymoon. However, as Hardy makes clear in his title "Phase the Fifth, the woman pays" Tess must mount the scaffold alone while Angel walks off with a new Tess. hat of Alec d'Urberville, who leaves his selfish self behind to be replaced, albeit temporarily, with a man of the cloth bent on saving others. But this man of the cloth is a sham. Hardy compares him with "the Other," otherwise known as Satan, who tempts Eve in the garden paradise. And, just as he did years before, Alec seduces Tess. However, Alec appears to love Tess, who has some kind of hold on him. Why else the transformation into a man of God when she leaves, and why else the return to the man-of-old upon her return. Throughout the novel, Hardy paints a picture of, as the title denotes, "a pure woman," and the tenuous position of such a woman, without a man's protection, in nineteenth-century Britain. Because of her fall from maidenhood Tess can only live as a man's mistress but never as his wife. Alec no doubt wanted Tess to remain with him, but he never asked her to marry him. Hardy provides no explanation for this because to his readers it would not be credible for a lower-class servant to marry an upper-class man with a noble name, even though that name is a sham. The upper-class Angel can marry Tess, but he has to justify this decision by pointing out how virtuous she is and how she will benefit him monetarily in his future as a farmer. Tess, however, is never Angel's wife in the physical sense of the word until the end of the novel. when the couple lives outside society's boundaries in the woods. Despite all the maneuverings of his characters, Hardy holds fast to his idea that fate ultimately controls all. Tess attempts to get Angel's attention by visiting his parents to ask for help and support. However, fate would have it that Angel's brothers just happen to be talking of their errant brother's marriage and they pass a veiled Tess. Had Tess spoken to the Clare family, chances are that she never would have encountered Alec, and certainly, if she had, not had the necessity to return to him in desperation. Hardy would thus have us believe that the course of our life, and thus our decisions, is predestined