feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_5_part_7.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xli
feat_summary_id: chapter xli
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter XLI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44", "summary": "Despite a variety of agricultural jobs, Tess runs short of money but sends her parents the money Angel gave her to repair their roof. She doesn't know that Angel is ill in Brazil. Marian, another milkmaid from Talbothays, has written telling Tess about a job, and Tess travels to join her. She meets the man whom Angel attacked for insulting her. She runs to hide and takes refuge for the night in a thicket of bushes. In the morning she discovers a flock of dying pheasants who sought refuge in the bushes during a hunt. Tearfully, she breaks their necks to put them out of their misery. She feels a personal affinity for the tortured birds and \"in the sight of such misery,\" realizes that comparatively she is not so bad off", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  From the foregoing events of the winter-time let us press on to
  an October day, more than eight months subsequent to the parting
  of Clare and Tess.  We discover the latter in changed conditions;
  instead of a bride with boxes and trunks which others bore, we see
  her a lonely woman with a basket and a bundle in her own porterage,
  as at an earlier time when she was no bride; instead of the ample
  means that were projected by her husband for her comfort through
  this probationary period, she can produce only a flattened purse.
  
  After again leaving Marlott, her home, she had got through the
  spring and summer without any great stress upon her physical powers,
  the time being mainly spent in rendering light irregular service
  at dairy-work near Port-Bredy to the west of the Blackmoor Valley,
  equally remote from her native place and from Talbothays.  She
  preferred this to living on his allowance.  Mentally she remained in
  utter stagnation, a condition which the mechanical occupation rather
  fostered than checked.  Her consciousness was at that other dairy,
  at that other season, in the presence of the tender lover who had
  confronted her there--he who, the moment she had grasped him to keep
  for her own, had disappeared like a shape in a vision.
  
  The dairy-work lasted only till the milk began to lessen, for she
  had not met with a second regular engagement as at Talbothays, but
  had done duty as a supernumerary only.  However, as harvest was now
  beginning, she had simply to remove from the pasture to the stubble
  to find plenty of further occupation, and this continued till harvest
  was done.
  
  Of the five-and-twenty pounds which had remained to her of Clare's
  allowance, after deducting the other half of the fifty as a
  contribution to her parents for the trouble and expense to which
  she had put them, she had as yet spent but little.  But there now
  followed an unfortunate interval of wet weather, during which she was
  obliged to fall back upon her sovereigns.
  
  She could not bear to let them go.  Angel had put them into her hand,
  had obtained them bright and new from his bank for her; his touch had
  consecrated them to souvenirs of himself--they appeared to have had
  as yet no other history than such as was created by his and her own
  experiences--and to disperse them was like giving away relics.  But
  she had to do it, and one by one they left her hands.
  
  She had been compelled to send her mother her address from time to
  time, but she concealed her circumstances.  When her money had almost
  gone a letter from her mother reached her.  Joan stated that they
  were in dreadful difficulty; the autumn rains had gone through the
  thatch of the house, which required entire renewal; but this could
  not be done because the previous thatching had never been paid for.
  New rafters and a new ceiling upstairs also were required, which,
  with the previous bill, would amount to a sum of twenty pounds.  As
  her husband was a man of means, and had doubtless returned by this
  time, could she not send them the money?
  
  Tess had thirty pounds coming to her almost immediately from Angel's
  bankers, and, the case being so deplorable, as soon as the sum was
  received she sent the twenty as requested.  Part of the remainder
  she was obliged to expend in winter clothing, leaving only a nominal
  sum for the whole inclement season at hand.  When the last pound
  had gone, a remark of Angel's that whenever she required further
  resources she was to apply to his father, remained to be considered.
  
  But the more Tess thought of the step, the more reluctant was she to
  take it.  The same delicacy, pride, false shame, whatever it may be
  called, on Clare's account, which had led her to hide from her own
  parents the prolongation of the estrangement, hindered her owning to
  his that she was in want after the fair allowance he had left her.
  They probably despised her already; how much more they would despise
  her in the character of a mendicant!  The consequence was that by no
  effort could the parson's daughter-in-law bring herself to let him
  know her state.
  
  Her reluctance to communicate with her husband's parents might,
  she thought, lessen with the lapse of time; but with her own the
  reverse obtained.  On her leaving their house after the short visit
  subsequent to her marriage they were under the impression that she
  was ultimately going to join her husband; and from that time to the
  present she had done nothing to disturb their belief that she was
  awaiting his return in comfort, hoping against hope that his journey
  to Brazil would result in a short stay only, after which he would
  come to fetch her, or that he would write for her to join him; in any
  case that they would soon present a united front to their families
  and the world.  This hope she still fostered.  To let her parents
  know that she was a deserted wife, dependent, now that she had
  relieved their necessities, on her own hands for a living, after the
  _eclat_ of a marriage which was to nullify the collapse of the first
  attempt, would be too much indeed.
  
  The set of brilliants returned to her mind.  Where Clare had
  deposited them she did not know, and it mattered little, if it were
  true that she could only use and not sell them.  Even were they
  absolutely hers it would be passing mean to enrich herself by a legal
  title to them which was not essentially hers at all.
  
  Meanwhile her husband's days had been by no means free from trial.
  At this moment he was lying ill of fever in the clay lands near
  Curitiba in Brazil, having been drenched with thunder-storms and
  persecuted by other hardships, in common with all the English farmers
  and farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded into going
  thither by the promises of the Brazilian Government, and by the
  baseless assumption that those frames which, ploughing and sowing on
  English uplands, had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they
  had been born, could resist equally well all the weathers by which
  they were surprised on Brazilian plains.
  
  To return.  Thus it happened that when the last of Tess's sovereigns
  had been spent she was unprovided with others to take their place,
  while on account of the season she found it increasingly difficult
  to get employment.  Not being aware of the rarity of intelligence,
  energy, health, and willingness in any sphere of life, she refrained
  from seeking an indoor occupation; fearing towns, large houses,
  people of means and social sophistication, and of manners other
  than rural.  From that direction of gentility Black Care had come.
  Society might be better than she supposed from her slight experience
  of it.  But she had no proof of this, and her instinct in the
  circumstances was to avoid its purlieus.
  
  The small dairies to the west, beyond Port-Bredy, in which she
  had served as supernumerary milkmaid during the spring and summer
  required no further aid.  Room would probably have been made for her
  at Talbothays, if only out of sheer compassion; but comfortable as
  her life had been there, she could not go back.  The anti-climax
  would be too intolerable; and her return might bring reproach upon
  her idolized husband.  She could not have borne their pity, and their
  whispered remarks to one another upon her strange situation; though
  she would almost have faced a knowledge of her circumstances by every
  individual there, so long as her story had remained isolated in the
  mind of each.  It was the interchange of ideas about her that made
  her sensitiveness wince.  Tess could not account for this
  distinction; she simply knew that she felt it.
  
  She was now on her way to an upland farm in the centre of the county,
  to which she had been recommended by a wandering letter which had
  reached her from Marian.  Marian had somehow heard that Tess was
  separated from her husband--probably through Izz Huett--and the
  good-natured and now tippling girl, deeming Tess in trouble, had
  hastened to notify to her former friend that she herself had gone to
  this upland spot after leaving the dairy, and would like to see her
  there, where there was room for other hands, if it was really true
  that she worked again as of old.
  
  With the shortening of the days all hope of obtaining her husband's
  forgiveness began to leave her; and there was something of the
  habitude of the wild animal in the unreflecting instinct with which
  she rambled on--disconnecting herself by littles from her eventful
  past at every step, obliterating her identity, giving no thought to
  accidents or contingencies which might make a quick discovery of her
  whereabouts by others of importance to her own happiness, if not to
  theirs.
  
  Among the difficulties of her lonely position not the least was
  the attention she excited by her appearance, a certain bearing of
  distinction, which she had caught from Clare, being superadded to her
  natural attractiveness.  Whilst the clothes lasted which had been
  prepared for her marriage, these casual glances of interest caused
  her no inconvenience, but as soon as she was compelled to don the
  wrapper of a fieldwoman, rude words were addressed to her more than
  once; but nothing occurred to cause her bodily fear till a particular
  November afternoon.
  
  She had preferred the country west of the River Brit to the upland
  farm for which she was now bound, because, for one thing, it was
  nearer to the home of her husband's father; and to hover about that
  region unrecognized, with the notion that she might decide to call at
  the Vicarage some day, gave her pleasure.  But having once decided to
  try the higher and drier levels, she pressed back eastward, marching
  afoot towards the village of Chalk-Newton, where she meant to pass
  the night.
  
  The lane was long and unvaried, and, owing to the rapid shortening of
  the days, dusk came upon her before she was aware.  She had reached
  the top of a hill down which the lane stretched its serpentine length
  in glimpses, when she heard footsteps behind her back, and in a few
  moments she was overtaken by a man.  He stepped up alongside Tess and
  said--
  
  "Good night, my pretty maid": to which she civilly replied.
  
  The light still remaining in the sky lit up her face, though the
  landscape was nearly dark.  The man turned and stared hard at her.
  
  "Why, surely, it is the young wench who was at Trantridge awhile--
  young Squire d'Urberville's friend?  I was there at that time, though
  I don't live there now."
  
  She recognized in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down
  at the inn for addressing her coarsely.  A spasm of anguish shot
  through her, and she returned him no answer.
  
  "Be honest enough to own it, and that what I said in the town was
  true, though your fancy-man was so up about it--hey, my sly one?  You
  ought to beg my pardon for that blow of his, considering."
  
  Still no answer came from Tess.  There seemed only one escape for her
  hunted soul.  She suddenly took to her heels with the speed of the
  wind, and, without looking behind her, ran along the road till she
  came to a gate which opened directly into a plantation.  Into this
  she plunged, and did not pause till she was deep enough in its shade
  to be safe against any possibility of discovery.
  
  Under foot the leaves were dry, and the foliage of some holly bushes
  which grew among the deciduous trees was dense enough to keep off
  draughts.  She scraped together the dead leaves till she had formed
  them into a large heap, making a sort of nest in the middle.  Into
  this Tess crept.
  
  Such sleep as she got was naturally fitful; she fancied she heard
  strange noises, but persuaded herself that they were caused by the
  breeze.  She thought of her husband in some vague warm clime on the
  other side of the globe, while she was here in the cold.  Was there
  another such a wretched being as she in the world?  Tess asked
  herself; and, thinking of her wasted life, said, "All is vanity."
  She repeated the words mechanically, till she reflected that this
  was a most inadequate thought for modern days.  Solomon had thought
  as far as that more than two thousand years ago; she herself,
  though not in the van of thinkers, had got much further.  If all
  were only vanity, who would mind it?  All was, alas, worse than
  vanity--injustice, punishment, exaction, death.  The wife of Angel
  Clare put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges of
  her eye-sockets perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she
  did so that a time would come when that bone would be bare.  "I wish
  it were now," she said.
  
  In the midst of these whimsical fancies she heard a new strange sound
  among the leaves.  It might be the wind; yet there was scarcely any
  wind.  Sometimes it was a palpitation, sometimes a flutter; sometimes
  it was a sort of gasp or gurgle.  Soon she was certain that the
  noises came from wild creatures of some kind, the more so when,
  originating in the boughs overhead, they were followed by the fall
  of a heavy body upon the ground.  Had she been ensconced here under
  other and more pleasant conditions she would have become alarmed;
  but, outside humanity, she had at present no fear.
  
  Day at length broke in the sky.  When it had been day aloft for some
  little while it became day in the wood.
  
  Directly the assuring and prosaic light of the world's active hours
  had grown strong, she crept from under her hillock of leaves, and
  looked around boldly.  Then she perceived what had been going on to
  disturb her.  The plantation wherein she had taken shelter ran down
  at this spot into a peak, which ended it hitherward, outside the
  hedge being arable ground.  Under the trees several pheasants lay
  about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some
  feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating
  quickly, some contorted, some stretched out--all of them writhing in
  agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the
  night by the inability of nature to bear more.
  
  Tess guessed at once the meaning of this.  The birds had been driven
  down into this corner the day before by some shooting-party; and
  while those that had dropped dead under the shot, or had died before
  nightfall, had been searched for and carried off, many badly wounded
  birds had escaped and hidden themselves away, or risen among the
  thick boughs, where they had maintained their position till they grew
  weaker with loss of blood in the night-time, when they had fallen one
  by one as she had heard them.
  
  She had occasionally caught glimpses of these men in girlhood,
  looking over hedges, or peeping through bushes, and pointing their
  guns, strangely accoutred, a bloodthirsty light in their eyes.  She
  had been told that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they
  were not like this all the year round, but were, in fact, quite civil
  persons save during certain weeks of autumn and winter, when, like
  the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made
  it their purpose to destroy life--in this case harmless feathered
  creatures, brought into being by artificial means solely to gratify
  these propensities--at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards
  their weaker fellows in Nature's teeming family.
  
  With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as
  much as for herself, Tess's first thought was to put the still living
  birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she
  broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie
  where she had found them till the game-keepers should come--as they
  probably would come--to look for them a second time.
  
  "Poor darlings--to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth
  in the sight o' such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears
  running down as she killed the birds tenderly.  "And not a twinge of
  bodily pain about me!  I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and
  I have two hands to feed and clothe me."  She was ashamed of herself
  for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a
  sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no
  foundation in Nature.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter XLI
target: Despite a variety of agricultural jobs, Tess runs short of money but sends her parents the money Angel gave her to repair their roof. She doesn't know that Angel is ill in Brazil. Marian, another milkmaid from Talbothays, has written telling Tess about a job, and Tess travels to join her. She meets the man whom Angel attacked for insulting her. She runs to hide and takes refuge for the night in a thicket of bushes. In the morning she discovers a flock of dying pheasants who sought refuge in the bushes during a hunt. Tearfully, she breaks their necks to put them out of their misery. She feels a personal affinity for the tortured birds and "in the sight of such misery," realizes that comparatively she is not so bad off