Angel parts from Tess, unable to reconcile himself to her "past." Hardy is clear to mark this as his "limitation" in spite of all his forward thinking.
Incredible scene where Tess hears noises in the night and discovers in the morning that the sounds come from birds that have been shot during a hunt and that are dropping, wounded. She compares them to herself: "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.
Marian and Izz work with her on Flintcomb-Ash, a hell-like place made bearable by friendship.
Birds from the arctic circle appear, omens of bad times.
Milk: "Londoners will drink it at their breakfasts tomorrow won't they? Strange people that we have never seen."
She meets again with Alec who is now a preacher, fire and brimstone, but who immediately relapses when he sees Tess.
Fantastic book--incredible descriptions of farms and farming conditions, of the hardiness of the people and the difficulty of their lives, of religion, superstition, and of Tess. Faulkner is known as the writer of characters who endure, but Tess surpasses all, and yet remains real, not too long-suffering to be true. I was worried that the book would follow a too obvious trajectory. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Plot is interesting and characters are even more so.
Incredible scene where Tess hears noises in the night and discovers in the morning that the sounds come from birds that have been shot during a hunt and that are dropping, wounded. She compares them to herself: "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.
Marian and Izz work with her on Flintcomb-Ash, a hell-like place made bearable by friendship.
Birds from the arctic circle appear, omens of bad times.
Milk: "Londoners will drink it at their breakfasts tomorrow won't they? Strange people that we have never seen."
She meets again with Alec who is now a preacher, fire and brimstone, but who immediately relapses when he sees Tess.
Fantastic book--incredible descriptions of farms and farming conditions, of the hardiness of the people and the difficulty of their lives, of religion, superstition, and of Tess. Faulkner is known as the writer of characters who endure, but Tess surpasses all, and yet remains real, not too long-suffering to be true. I was worried that the book would follow a too obvious trajectory. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Plot is interesting and characters are even more so.
Comments
Post a Comment