Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Phase the 6th - the Convert Analysis and Quotes
Phase the 6th: The Convert
Chapter XLV
Physical Journey: Phase the Sixth begins after Tess travels to visit Angel’s family at their house, where she doesn’t find Angel’s parents due to it being a Sunday and they are at Church. Instead, she comes across Angel’s brothers Felix and Cuthburt who are discussing his unfortunate marriage to Tess.
In this chapter Tess is travelling back to Flintcomb-Ash farm where she comes across Alec D’Urberville on the northern half of Long-Ash Lane.
At the end she arrives back at Flintcomb Ash, and finds Izz, who tells her that a man who worked on the farm with them, Amby Seedling, has been madly in love with her for two years.
Outcomes for Tess:
She is faced with meeting the converted Alec after four years. She is bewildered by his transformation, yet does not fully believe that he is truly converted, or that his conversion will give him a place in heaven, due to her newfound view on religion as a result of Angel.
“You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted! Out upon such – I don’t believe you – I hate it!”
“’What don’t you believe...Why?’
She dropped her voice. ‘Because a better man than you does not believe in such.’” (pg.309)
Written from the authors perspective, Tess has a sense of belief at this, “The greater the sinner the greater the saint; it was not necessary to dive into Christian history to discover that.” (Pg.306)
“All the way along to this point her heart has been heavy with an inactive sorrow; now there was a change in the quality of its trouble. That hunger for affection too long withheld was for the time displaced by an almost physical sense of an implacable past which still engirdled her.
Outcomes for Alec:
The reader now sees Alec from a new perspective; a transformed Christian with
Chapter XLV
Physical Journey: Phase the Sixth begins after Tess travels to visit Angel’s family at their house, where she doesn’t find Angel’s parents due to it being a Sunday and they are at Church. Instead, she comes across Angel’s brothers Felix and Cuthburt who are discussing his unfortunate marriage to Tess.
In this chapter Tess is travelling back to Flintcomb-Ash farm where she comes across Alec D’Urberville on the northern half of Long-Ash Lane.
At the end she arrives back at Flintcomb Ash, and finds Izz, who tells her that a man who worked on the farm with them, Amby Seedling, has been madly in love with her for two years.
Outcomes for Tess:
She is faced with meeting the converted Alec after four years. She is bewildered by his transformation, yet does not fully believe that he is truly converted, or that his conversion will give him a place in heaven, due to her newfound view on religion as a result of Angel.
“You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted! Out upon such – I don’t believe you – I hate it!”
“’What don’t you believe...Why?’
She dropped her voice. ‘Because a better man than you does not believe in such.’” (pg.309)
Written from the authors perspective, Tess has a sense of belief at this, “The greater the sinner the greater the saint; it was not necessary to dive into Christian history to discover that.” (Pg.306)
“All the way along to this point her heart has been heavy with an inactive sorrow; now there was a change in the quality of its trouble. That hunger for affection too long withheld was for the time displaced by an almost physical sense of an implacable past which still engirdled her.
Outcomes for Alec:
The reader now sees Alec from a new perspective; a transformed Christian with