feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_0_part_2.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 2
feat_summary_id: chapter 2
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-1-chapters-1-11", "summary": "Durbeyfield was returning home during the May Day dance in which the younger women of Marlott walked in procession in white gowns, holding willow wands and white flowers. Among the girls is Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of John. Tess is no more handsome than the other girls, but has large, innocent eyes. She sees her father riding in a carriage singing that he has a great family vault in Kingsbere and knighted forefathers. Tess reprimands her friends for mocking her father. At this time Tess is a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. She still has the local dialect, but also can affect more educated speech. Three young onlookers of superior class watch the women in the procession. The three are brothers and consider asking the women to dance. Angel does not dance with Tess Durbeyfield, but among the girls he notices her the most and wishes that he asked her to dance, for she was so modest and soft.", "analysis": "Tess Durbeyfield, the titular character of the novel, is in this chapter introduced as an innocent, malleable and pure. As a member of the May Day procession, adorned in white, she symbolizes purity and virginity, while her physical characteristics equally suggest her innocence. Hardy suggests that this purity comes from lack of experience, foreshadowing her later development as a person and a character once she is exposed to different and more dangerous forces. However, despite this innocence and essential purity Tess is not a mere cipher: she does defend her father, confronting the other girls in the procession who disparage him. Angel is an equal symbol of purity and goodness, as shown by his name and his demeanor. He immediately realizes that Tess is special because of her innocence. Hardy also develops the issues of class introduced in the first chapter. Tess Durbeyfield comes from a lower class background, but she can affect a higher position because of her education. This fluidity of her class background will prove significant throughout the novel, for she can move from the upper to the lower classes"}
text: 
  
  The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the
  beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled
  and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or
  landscape-painter, though within a four hours' journey from London.
  
  It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the
  summits of the hills that surround it--except perhaps during the
  droughts of summer.  An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad
  weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous,
  and miry ways.
  
  This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are
  never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the
  bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill,
  Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down.  The
  traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score
  of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches
  the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted
  to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing
  absolutely from that which he has passed through.  Behind him the
  hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give
  an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the
  hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless.  Here, in the
  valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more
  delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from
  this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads
  overspreading the paler green of the grass.  The atmosphere beneath
  is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the
  middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond
  is of the deepest ultramarine.  Arable lands are few and limited;
  with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass
  and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major.  Such is
  the Vale of Blackmoor.
  
  The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest.
  The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from
  a curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by
  a certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king
  had run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine.
  In those days, and till comparatively recent times, the country was
  densely wooded.  Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be
  found in the old oak copses and irregular belts of timber that yet
  survive upon its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so
  many of its pastures.
  
  The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades
  remain.  Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised
  form.  The May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on
  the afternoon under notice, in the guise of the club revel, or
  "club-walking," as it was there called.
  
  It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott,
  though its real interest was not observed by the participators in the
  ceremony.  Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of
  walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the
  members being solely women.  In men's clubs such celebrations were,
  though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural shyness of the
  softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives,
  had denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) or this
  their glory and consummation.  The club of Marlott alone lived to
  uphold the local Cerealia.  It had walked for hundreds of years, if
  not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked
  still.
  
  The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns--a gay survival from
  Old Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms--days
  before the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a
  monotonous average.  Their first exhibition of themselves was in a
  processional march of two and two round the parish.  Ideal and real
  clashed slightly as the sun lit up their figures against the green
  hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop
  wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them.  Some
  approached pure blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the
  older characters (which had possibly lain by folded for many a year)
  inclined to a cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style.
  
  In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl
  carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a
  bunch of white flowers.  The peeling of the former, and the selection
  of the latter, had been an operation of personal care.
  
  There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train,
  their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and
  trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance
  in such a jaunty situation.  In a true view, perhaps, there was more
  to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom
  the years were drawing nigh when she should say, "I have no pleasure
  in them," than of her juvenile comrades.  But let the elder be passed
  over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and
  warm.
  
  The young girls formed, indeed, the majority of the band, and their
  heads of luxuriant hair reflected in the sunshine every tone of gold,
  and black, and brown.  Some had beautiful eyes, others a beautiful
  nose, others a beautiful mouth and figure: few, if any, had all.  A
  difficulty of arranging their lips in this crude exposure to public
  scrutiny, an inability to balance their heads, and to dissociate
  self-consciousness from their features, was apparent in them, and
  showed that they were genuine country girls, unaccustomed to many
  eyes.
  
  And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each
  had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some
  affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which,
  though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will.
  They were all cheerful, and many of them merry.
  
  They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the
  high road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of
  the women said--
  
  "The Load-a-Lord!  Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn't thy father
  riding hwome in a carriage!"
  
  A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation.
  She was a fine and handsome girl--not handsomer than some others,
  possibly--but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added
  eloquence to colour and shape.  She wore a red ribbon in her hair,
  and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such
  a pronounced adornment.  As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen
  moving along the road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven
  by a frizzle-headed brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above
  her elbows.  This was the cheerful servant of that establishment,
  who, in her part of factotum, turned groom and ostler at times.
  Durbeyfield, leaning back, and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was
  waving his hand above his head, and singing in a slow recitative--
  
  "I've-got-a-gr't-family-vault-at-Kingsbere--and
  knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!"
  
  The clubbists tittered, except the girl called Tess--in whom a slow
  heat seemed to rise at the sense that her father was making himself
  foolish in their eyes.
  
  "He's tired, that's all," she said hastily, "and he has got a lift
  home, because our own horse has to rest to-day."
  
  "Bless thy simplicity, Tess," said her companions.  "He's got his
  market-nitch.  Haw-haw!"
  
  "Look here; I won't walk another inch with you, if you say any jokes
  about him!" Tess cried, and the colour upon her cheeks spread over
  her face and neck.  In a moment her eyes grew moist, and her glance
  drooped to the ground.  Perceiving that they had really pained her
  they said no more, and order again prevailed.  Tess's pride would not
  allow her to turn her head again, to learn what her father's meaning
  was, if he had any; and thus she moved on with the whole body to the
  enclosure where there was to be dancing on the green.  By the time
  the spot was reached she has recovered her equanimity, and tapped her
  neighbour with her wand and talked as usual.
  
  Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of
  emotion untinctured by experience.  The dialect was on her tongue
  to some extent, despite the village school: the characteristic
  intonation of that dialect for this district being the voicing
  approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an
  utterance as any to be found in human speech.  The pouted-up deep red
  mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled
  into its definite shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the
  middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word.
  
  Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still.  As she walked
  along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could
  sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling
  from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her
  mouth now and then.
  
  Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this.  A small minority,
  mainly strangers, would look long at her in casually passing by, and
  grow momentarily fascinated by her freshness, and wonder if they
  would ever see her again: but to almost everybody she was a fine and
  picturesque country girl, and no more.
  
  Nothing was seen or heard further of Durbeyfield in his triumphal
  chariot under the conduct of the ostleress, and the club having
  entered the allotted space, dancing began.  As there were no men in
  the company, the girls danced at first with each other, but when the
  hour for the close of labour drew on, the masculine inhabitants of
  the village, together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered
  round the spot, and appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner.
  
  Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class,
  carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout
  sticks in their hands.  Their general likeness to each other, and
  their consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might
  be, what in fact they were, brothers.  The eldest wore the white tie,
  high waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the
  second was the normal undergraduate; the appearance of the third and
  youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there
  was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying
  that he had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional
  groove.  That he was a desultory tentative student of something and
  everything might only have been predicted of him.
  
  These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending
  their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of
  Blackmoor, their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston
  on the north-east.
  
  They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the
  meaning of the dance and the white-frocked maids.  The two elder of
  the brothers were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment,
  but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners
  seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on.  He
  unstrapped his knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank,
  and opened the gate.
  
  "What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest.
  
  "I am inclined to go and have a fling with them.  Why not all of
  us--just for a minute or two--it will not detain us long?"
  
  "No--no; nonsense!" said the first.  "Dancing in public with a troop
  of country hoydens--suppose we should be seen!  Come along, or it
  will be dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there's no place we
  can sleep at nearer than that; besides, we must get through another
  chapter of _A Counterblast to Agnosticism_ before we turn in, now I
  have taken the trouble to bring the book."
  
  "All right--I'll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don't
  stop; I give my word that I will, Felix."
  
  The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their
  brother's knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest
  entered the field.
  
  "This is a thousand pities," he said gallantly, to two or three of
  the girls nearest him, as soon as there was a pause in the dance.
  "Where are your partners, my dears?"
  
  "They've not left off work yet," answered one of the boldest.
  "They'll be here by and by.  Till then, will you be one, sir?"
  
  "Certainly.  But what's one among so many!"
  
  "Better than none.  'Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one
  of your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all.  Now, pick and
  choose."
  
  "'Ssh--don't be so for'ard!" said a shyer girl.
  
  The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some
  discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could
  not very well exercise it.  He took almost the first that came to
  hand, which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it
  happen to be Tess Durbeyfield.  Pedigree, ancestral skeletons,
  monumental record, the d'Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in
  her life's battle as yet, even to the extent of attracting to her a
  dancing-partner over the heads of the commonest peasantry.  So much
  for Norman blood unaided by Victorian lucre.
  
  The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed
  down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury
  of a masculine partner that evening.  Yet such was the force of
  example that the village young men, who had not hastened to enter
  the gate while no intruder was in the way, now dropped in quickly,
  and soon the couples became leavened with rustic youth to a marked
  extent, till at length the plainest woman in the club was no longer
  compelled to foot it on the masculine side of the figure.
  
  The church clock struck, when suddenly the student said that he must
  leave--he had been forgetting himself--he had to join his companions.
  As he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbeyfield,
  whose own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of
  reproach that he had not chosen her.  He, too, was sorry then that,
  owing to her backwardness, he had not observed her; and with that in
  his mind he left the pasture.
  
  On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane
  westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise.
  He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath,
  and looked back.  He could see the white figures of the girls in the
  green enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among
  them.  They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.
  
  All of them, except, perhaps, one.  This white shape stood apart
  by the hedge alone.  From her position he knew it to be the pretty
  maiden with whom he had not danced.  Trifling as the matter was, he
  yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight.  He wished
  that he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name.  She
  was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin
  white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly.
  
  However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to
  a rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 2
target: Durbeyfield was returning home during the May Day dance in which the younger women of Marlott walked in procession in white gowns, holding willow wands and white flowers. Among the girls is Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of John. Tess is no more handsome than the other girls, but has large, innocent eyes. She sees her father riding in a carriage singing that he has a great family vault in Kingsbere and knighted forefathers. Tess reprimands her friends for mocking her father. At this time Tess is a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. She still has the local dialect, but also can affect more educated speech. Three young onlookers of superior class watch the women in the procession. The three are brothers and consider asking the women to dance. Angel does not dance with Tess Durbeyfield, but among the girls he notices her the most and wishes that he asked her to dance, for she was so modest and soft.
feat_summary_analysis: Tess Durbeyfield, the titular character of the novel, is in this chapter introduced as an innocent, malleable and pure. As a member of the May Day procession, adorned in white, she symbolizes purity and virginity, while her physical characteristics equally suggest her innocence. Hardy suggests that this purity comes from lack of experience, foreshadowing her later development as a person and a character once she is exposed to different and more dangerous forces. However, despite this innocence and essential purity Tess is not a mere cipher: she does defend her father, confronting the other girls in the procession who disparage him. Angel is an equal symbol of purity and goodness, as shown by his name and his demeanor. He immediately realizes that Tess is special because of her innocence. Hardy also develops the issues of class introduced in the first chapter. Tess Durbeyfield comes from a lower class background, but she can affect a higher position because of her education. This fluidity of her class background will prove significant throughout the novel, for she can move from the upper to the lower classes