Her Innocence
 
But this encompassment of her own characterization,
based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and
voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mistaken
creation of Tess's fancy--a cloud of moral hobgoblins
by which she was terrified without reason.  It was they
that were out of harmony with the actual world, not
she.  Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges,
watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or
standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon
herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts
of Innocence.  But all the while she was making a
distinction where there was no difference.  Feeling
herself in antagonism she was quite in accord.  She had
been made to break an accepted social law, but no law
know to the environment in which she fancied herself
such an anomaly. (XIII, p. 84)
 
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. (XLI, p. 274)
 
 
"What have I done--what HAVE I done!  I have not told
of anything that interferes with or belies my love for
you.  You don't think I planned it, do you?  It is in
your own mind what you are angry at, Angel; it is not
in me.  O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful
woman you think me!" (XXXV, p. 227)
 
What was the past to me as soon
as I met you?  It was a dead thing altogether.  I
became another woman, filled full of new life from you. (XLVIII, p. 330)
 
 Her husband, Angel Clare himself, had, like others, dealt
out hard measure to her, surely he had!  She had never
before admitted such a thought; but he had surely!
Never in her life--she could swear it from the bottom
of her soul--had she ever intended to do wrong; yet
these hard judgements had come.  Whatever her sins,
they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence,
and why should she have been punished so persistently? (LI, p. 350)
 
 
____________________________________________
A Different Self
 
Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to
complex woman.  Symbols of reflectiveness passed into
her face, and a note of tragedy at times into her
voice.  Her eyes grew larger and more eloquent.  She
became what would have been called a fine creature; her
aspect was fair and arresting; her soul that of a woman
whom the turbulent experiences of the last year or two
had quite failed to demoralize.  But for the world's
opinion those experiences would have been simply a
liberal education. (XV, p. 97)
 
"O my love, why do I love you so!" she whispered there
alone; "for she you love is not my real self, but one
in my image; the one I might have been!" (XXXIII, p. 211)
 
"I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self!
If it is I you do love, O how can it be that you look
and speak so?  It frightens me! Having begun to love
you, I love you for ever--in all changes, in all
disgraces, because you are yourself.  I ask no more.
Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?"
"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."
"But who?"
"Another woman in your shape."
She perceived in his words the realization of her own
apprehensive foreboding in former times.  He looked
upon her as a species of imposter; a guilty woman in
the guise of an innocent one.  (XXXV, p. 224)
_________________________________________
Tess and Alec and Angel
 
"'Tis quite true.  If I had gone for love o' you, if I
had ever sincerely loved you, if I loved you still, I
should not so loathe and hate myself for my weakness as
I do now! ... My eyes were dazed by you for a little,
and that was all." (XII, p. 75)
 
No, by my word and truth, I
never despised you; if I had I should not love you now!
Why I did not despise you was on account of your being
unsmirched in spite of all; you withdrew yourself from
me so quickly and resolutely when you saw the
situation; you did not remain at my pleasure; so there
was one petticoat in the world for whom I had no
contempt, and you are she. (XLVI, p. 317)
 
He was still her Antinous, her Apollo
even; his sickly face was beautiful as the morning to
her affectionate regard on this day no less than when
she first beheld him; for was it not the face of the
one man on earth who had loved her purely, and who had
believed in her as pure! (LVII, p. 378)
 
_____________________________________________
The Violent Woman
 
"How can you dare to use such words!" she cried,
turning impetuously upon him, her eyes flashing as the
latent spirit (of which he was to see more some day)
awoke in her.  "My God!  I could knock you out of the
gig!  Did it never strike your mind that what every
woman says some women may feel?" (XII, p. 75)
 
 She was conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Laurence:
"These violent delights have violent ends."  It might
be too desperate for human conditions--too rank, to
wild, too deadly. (XXXIII, p. 211)
 
 "This was once a Holy Cross. Relics are not in my creed;
but I fear you at moments--far
more than you need fear me at present; and to lessen my
fear, put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear
that you will never tempt me--by your charms or ways."  (XLV, p. 305)
 
One of her leather gloves, which she had taken off to
eat her skimmer-cake, lay in her lap, and without the
slightest warning she passionately swung the glove by
the gauntlet directly in his face. It was heavy and
thick as a warrior's, and it struck him flat on the
mouth.  Fancy might have regarded the act as the
recrudescence of a trick in which her armed progenitors
were not unpractised. Alec fiercely started up from his
reclining position.  A scarlet oozing appeared where
her blow had alighted, and in a moment the blood began
dropping from his mouth upon the straw.  But he soon
controlled himself, calmly drew his handkerchief fromhis pocket, and mopped his bleeding lips.
 
She too had sprung up, but she sank down again. "Now,
punish me!" she said, turning up her eyes to him with
the hopeless defiance of the sparrow's gaze before its
captor twists its neck.  "Whip me, crush me; you need
not mind those people under the rick!  I shall not cry
out.  Once victim, always victim--that's the law!" (XLVII, p. 325-26)