feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_48_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 49
feat_summary_id: chapter 49
feat_summary: {"name": "Phase VI: \"The Convert,\" Chapter Forty-Nine", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-49", "summary": "Tess's letter is addressed to Angel's parents, since they are the ones who had his current address in Brazil. Mrs. Clare forwards it to Angel immediately, and hopes that it will make him hurry home for the visit he's been planning. Mr. Clare still feels guilty about not allowing Angel to go to the university like his brothers, and blames himself for Angel's unhappy marriage. Angel, meanwhile, has grown up an awful lot since he left for Brazil. The fever he caught soon after arriving almost killed him, and he's still weak. He's re-considering a lot of things he used to take for granted. He's decided that morality has more to do with your intentions than your actions. And Tess never intended to be raped, so was she still pure? At one point, Angel meets another Englishman in Brazil, and they become friends. Angel confides his whole story to the man, and the man tells Angel that deserting Tess was the dumbest move, ever. The man dies shortly afterwards, but his words have a lasting effect on Angel. He realizes how wrong he's been about Tess. Tess, meanwhile, is convinced that Angel will soon come back in response to her letter, and so she starts thinking about what she can do to please him when he gets back. She starts studying up on all the ballads and songs that he liked best, and daydreaming about life with Angel after his return. One day in late March, her sister 'Liza-Lu shows up at her door, telling her that their mother is sick, and their father isn't doing well, either. And their father is refusing to work on account of his noble background. Tess decides she has to go home, even though she's supposed to stick around until Old Lady Day . 'Liza-Lu is too tired to head back that night , so Tess decides to let her sister spend the night in her bed, and follow her in the morning. Tess herself leaves a message with Marian and Izz to try to excuse her to the farmer, and then sets out for home.", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  The appeal duly found its way to the breakfast-table of the quiet
  Vicarage to the westward, in that valley where the air is so soft and
  the soil so rich that the effort of growth requires but superficial
  aid by comparison with the tillage at Flintcomb-Ash, and where to
  Tess the human world seemed so different (though it was much the
  same).  It was purely for security that she had been requested by
  Angel to send her communications through his father, whom he kept
  pretty well informed of his changing addresses in the country he
  had gone to exploit for himself with a heavy heart.
  
  "Now," said old Mr Clare to his wife, when he had read the envelope,
  "if Angel proposes leaving Rio for a visit home at the end of next
  month, as he told us that he hoped to do, I think this may hasten his
  plans; for I believe it to be from his wife."  He breathed deeply at
  the thought of her; and the letter was redirected to be promptly sent
  on to Angel.
  
  "Dear fellow, I hope he will get home safely," murmured Mrs Clare.
  "To my dying day I shall feel that he has been ill-used.  You should
  have sent him to Cambridge in spite of his want of faith and given
  him the same chance as the other boys had.  He would have grown out
  of it under proper influence, and perhaps would have taken Orders
  after all.  Church or no Church, it would have been fairer to him."
  
  This was the only wail with which Mrs Clare ever disturbed her
  husband's peace in respect to their sons.  And she did not vent this
  often; for she was as considerate as she was devout, and knew that
  his mind too was troubled by doubts as to his justice in this matter.
  Only too often had she heard him lying awake at night, stifling sighs
  for Angel with prayers.  But the uncompromising Evangelical did not
  even now hold that he would have been justified in giving his son,
  an unbeliever, the same academic advantages that he had given to the
  two others, when it was possible, if not probable, that those very
  advantages might have been used to decry the doctrines which he had
  made it his life's mission and desire to propagate, and the mission
  of his ordained sons likewise.  To put with one hand a pedestal
  under the feet of the two faithful ones, and with the other to exalt
  the unfaithful by the same artificial means, he deemed to be alike
  inconsistent with his convictions, his position, and his hopes.
  Nevertheless, he loved his misnamed Angel, and in secret mourned
  over this treatment of him as Abraham might have mourned over the
  doomed Isaac while they went up the hill together.  His silent
  self-generated regrets were far bitterer than the reproaches which
  his wife rendered audible.
  
  They blamed themselves for this unlucky marriage.  If Angel had never
  been destined for a farmer he would never have been thrown with
  agricultural girls.  They did not distinctly know what had separated
  him and his wife, nor the date on which the separation had taken
  place.  At first they had supposed it must be something of the nature
  of a serious aversion.  But in his later letters he occasionally
  alluded to the intention of coming home to fetch her; from which
  expressions they hoped the division might not owe its origin to
  anything so hopelessly permanent as that.  He had told them that she
  was with her relatives, and in their doubts they had decided not to
  intrude into a situation which they knew no way of bettering.
  
  The eyes for which Tess's letter was intended were gazing at this
  time on a limitless expanse of country from the back of a mule which
  was bearing him from the interior of the South-American Continent
  towards the coast.  His experiences of this strange land had been
  sad.  The severe illness from which he had suffered shortly after
  his arrival had never wholly left him, and he had by degrees almost
  decided to relinquish his hope of farming here, though, as long as
  the bare possibility existed of his remaining, he kept this change
  of view a secret from his parents.
  
  The crowds of agricultural labourers who had come out to the country
  in his wake, dazzled by representations of easy independence, had
  suffered, died, and wasted away.  He would see mothers from English
  farms trudging along with their infants in their arms, when the child
  would be stricken with fever and would die; the mother would pause
  to dig a hole in the loose earth with her bare hands, would bury the
  babe therein with the same natural grave-tools, shed one tear, and
  again trudge on.
  
  Angel's original intention had not been emigration to Brazil but a
  northern or eastern farm in his own country.  He had come to this
  place in a fit of desperation, the Brazil movement among the English
  agriculturists having by chance coincided with his desire to escape
  from his past existence.
  
  During this time of absence he had mentally aged a dozen years.
  What arrested him now as of value in life was less its beauty than
  its pathos.  Having long discredited the old systems of mysticism,
  he now began to discredit the old appraisements of morality.  He
  thought they wanted readjusting.  Who was the moral man?  Still more
  pertinently, who was the moral woman?  The beauty or ugliness of
  a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and
  impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among
  things willed.
  
  How, then, about Tess?
  
  Viewing her in these lights, a regret for his hasty judgement began
  to oppress him.  Did he reject her eternally, or did he not?  He
  could no longer say that he would always reject her, and not to say
  that was in spirit to accept her now.
  
  This growing fondness for her memory coincided in point of time
  with her residence at Flintcomb-Ash, but it was before she had felt
  herself at liberty to trouble him with a word about her circumstances
  or her feelings.  He was greatly perplexed; and in his perplexity as
  to her motives in withholding intelligence, he did not inquire.  Thus
  her silence of docility was misinterpreted.  How much it really said
  if he had understood!--that she adhered with literal exactness to
  orders which he had given and forgotten; that despite her natural
  fearlessness she asserted no rights, admitted his judgement to be in
  every respect the true one, and bent her head dumbly thereto.
  
  In the before-mentioned journey by mules through the interior of the
  country, another man rode beside him. Angel's companion was also an
  Englishman, bent on the same errand, though he came from another part
  of the island.  They were both in a state of mental depression, and
  they spoke of home affairs.  Confidence begat confidence.  With that
  curious tendency evinced by men, more especially when in distant
  lands, to entrust to strangers details of their lives which they
  would on no account mention to friends, Angel admitted to this man
  as they rode along the sorrowful facts of his marriage.
  
  The stranger had sojourned in many more lands and among many more
  peoples than Angel; to his cosmopolitan mind such deviations from the
  social norm, so immense to domesticity, were no more than are the
  irregularities of vale and mountain-chain to the whole terrestrial
  curve.  He viewed the matter in quite a different light from Angel;
  thought that what Tess had been was of no importance beside what she
  would be, and plainly told Clare that he was wrong in coming away
  from her.
  
  The next day they were drenched in a thunder-storm. Angel's companion
  was struck down with fever, and died by the week's end.  Clare waited
  a few hours to bury him, and then went on his way.
  
  The cursory remarks of the large-minded stranger, of whom he knew
  absolutely nothing beyond a commonplace name, were sublimed by his
  death, and influenced Clare more than all the reasoned ethics of the
  philosophers.  His own parochialism made him ashamed by its contrast.
  His inconsistencies rushed upon him in a flood.  He had persistently
  elevated Hellenic Paganism at the expense of Christianity; yet in
  that civilization an illegal surrender was not certain disesteem.
  Surely then he might have regarded that abhorrence of the un-intact
  state, which he had inherited with the creed of mysticism, as at
  least open to correction when the result was due to treachery.  A
  remorse struck into him.  The words of Izz Huett, never quite stilled
  in his memory, came back to him.  He had asked Izz if she loved him,
  and she had replied in the affirmative.  Did she love him more than
  Tess did?  No, she had replied; Tess would lay down her life for him,
  and she herself could do no more.
  
  He thought of Tess as she had appeared on the day of the wedding.
  How her eyes had lingered upon him; how she had hung upon his words
  as if they were a god's!  And during the terrible evening over the
  hearth, when her simple soul uncovered itself to his, how pitiful her
  face had looked by the rays of the fire, in her inability to realize
  that his love and protection could possibly be withdrawn.
  
  Thus from being her critic he grew to be her advocate.  Cynical
  things he had uttered to himself about her; but no man can be always
  a cynic and live; and he withdrew them.  The mistake of expressing
  them had arisen from his allowing himself to be influenced by general
  principles to the disregard of the particular instance.
  
  But the reasoning is somewhat musty; lovers and husbands have gone
  over the ground before to-day.  Clare had been harsh towards her;
  there is no doubt of it.  Men are too often harsh with women they
  love or have loved; women with men.  And yet these harshnesses are
  tenderness itself when compared with the universal harshness out
  of which they grow; the harshness of the position towards the
  temperament, of the means towards the aims, of to-day towards
  yesterday, of hereafter towards to-day.
  
  The historic interest of her family--that masterful line of
  d'Urbervilles--whom he had despised as a spent force, touched his
  sentiments now.  Why had he not known the difference between the
  political value and the imaginative value of these things?  In
  the latter aspect her d'Urberville descent was a fact of great
  dimensions; worthless to economics, it was a most useful ingredient
  to the dreamer, to the moralizer on declines and falls.  It was a
  fact that would soon be forgotten--that bit of distinction in poor
  Tess's blood and name, and oblivion would fall upon her hereditary
  link with the marble monuments and leaded skeletons at Kingsbere.  So
  does Time ruthlessly destroy his own romances.  In recalling her face
  again and again, he thought now that he could see therein a flash of
  the dignity which must have graced her grand-dames; and the vision
  sent that _aura_ through his veins which he had formerly felt, and
  which left behind it a sense of sickness.
  
  Despite her not-inviolate past, what still abode in such a woman as
  Tess outvalued the freshness of her fellows.  Was not the gleaning
  of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?
  
  So spoke love renascent, preparing the way for Tess's devoted
  outpouring, which was then just being forwarded to him by his father;
  though owing to his distance inland it was to be a long time in
  reaching him.
  
  Meanwhile the writer's expectation that Angel would come in response
  to the entreaty was alternately great and small.  What lessened it
  was that the facts of her life which had led to the parting had
  not changed--could never change; and that, if her presence had not
  attenuated them, her absence could not.  Nevertheless she addressed
  her mind to the tender question of what she could do to please him
  best if he should arrive.  Sighs were expended on the wish that she
  had taken more notice of the tunes he played on his harp, that she
  had inquired more curiously of him which were his favourite ballads
  among those the country-girls sang.  She indirectly inquired of Amby
  Seedling, who had followed Izz from Talbothays, and by chance Amby
  remembered that, amongst the snatches of melody in which they had
  indulged at the dairyman's, to induce the cows to let down their
  milk, Clare had seemed to like "Cupid's Gardens", "I have parks, I
  have hounds", and "The break o' the day"; and had seemed not to care
  for "The Tailor's Breeches" and "Such a beauty I did grow", excellent
  ditties as they were.
  
  To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire. She practised
  them privately at odd moments, especially "The break o' the day":
  
  
     Arise, arise, arise!
     And pick your love a posy,
     All o' the sweetest flowers
     That in the garden grow.
     The turtle doves and sma' birds
     In every bough a-building,
     So early in the May-time
     At the break o' the day!
  
  
  It would have melted the heart of a stone to hear her singing these
  ditties whenever she worked apart from the rest of the girls in this
  cold dry time; the tears running down her cheeks all the while at the
  thought that perhaps he would not, after all, come to hear her, and
  the simple silly words of the songs resounding in painful mockery of
  the aching heart of the singer.
  
  Tess was so wrapt up in this fanciful dream that she seemed not to
  know how the season was advancing; that the days had lengthened, that
  Lady-Day was at hand, and would soon be followed by Old Lady-Day, the
  end of her term here.
  
  But before the quarter-day had quite come, something happened which
  made Tess think of far different matters.  She was at her lodging as
  usual one evening, sitting in the downstairs room with the rest of
  the family, when somebody knocked at the door and inquired for Tess.
  Through the doorway she saw against the declining light a figure
  with the height of a woman and the breadth of a child, a tall, thin,
  girlish creature whom she did not recognize in the twilight till the
  girl said "Tess!"
  
  "What--is it 'Liza-Lu?" asked Tess, in startled accents.  Her sister,
  whom a little over a year ago she had left at home as a child, had
  sprung up by a sudden shoot to a form of this presentation, of which
  as yet Lu seemed herself scarce able to understand the meaning.
  Her thin legs, visible below her once-long frock, now short by her
  growing, and her uncomfortable hands and arms revealed her youth and
  inexperience.
  
  "Yes, I have been traipsing about all day, Tess," said Lu, with
  unemotional gravity, "a-trying to find 'ee; and I'm very tired."
  
  "What is the matter at home?"
  
  "Mother is took very bad, and the doctor says she's dying, and as
  father is not very well neither, and says 'tis wrong for a man of
  such a high family as his to slave and drave at common labouring
  work, we don't know what to do."
  
  Tess stood in reverie a long time before she thought of asking
  'Liza-Lu to come in and sit down.  When she had done so, and 'Liza-Lu
  was having some tea, she came to a decision.  It was imperative that
  she should go home.  Her agreement did not end till Old Lady-Day, the
  sixth of April, but as the interval thereto was not a long one she
  resolved to run the risk of starting at once.
  
  To go that night would be a gain of twelve-hours; but her sister
  was too tired to undertake such a distance till the morrow.  Tess
  ran down to where Marian and Izz lived, informed them of what had
  happened, and begged them to make the best of her case to the farmer.
  Returning, she got Lu a supper, and after that, having tucked the
  younger into her own bed, packed up as many of her belongings as
  would go into a withy basket, and started, directing Lu to follow
  her next morning.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Phase VI: "The Convert," Chapter Forty-Nine
target: Tess's letter is addressed to Angel's parents, since they are the ones who had his current address in Brazil. Mrs. Clare forwards it to Angel immediately, and hopes that it will make him hurry home for the visit he's been planning. Mr. Clare still feels guilty about not allowing Angel to go to the university like his brothers, and blames himself for Angel's unhappy marriage. Angel, meanwhile, has grown up an awful lot since he left for Brazil. The fever he caught soon after arriving almost killed him, and he's still weak. He's re-considering a lot of things he used to take for granted. He's decided that morality has more to do with your intentions than your actions. And Tess never intended to be raped, so was she still pure? At one point, Angel meets another Englishman in Brazil, and they become friends. Angel confides his whole story to the man, and the man tells Angel that deserting Tess was the dumbest move, ever. The man dies shortly afterwards, but his words have a lasting effect on Angel. He realizes how wrong he's been about Tess. Tess, meanwhile, is convinced that Angel will soon come back in response to her letter, and so she starts thinking about what she can do to please him when he gets back. She starts studying up on all the ballads and songs that he liked best, and daydreaming about life with Angel after his return. One day in late March, her sister 'Liza-Lu shows up at her door, telling her that their mother is sick, and their father isn't doing well, either. And their father is refusing to work on account of his noble background. Tess decides she has to go home, even though she's supposed to stick around until Old Lady Day . 'Liza-Lu is too tired to head back that night , so Tess decides to let her sister spend the night in her bed, and follow her in the morning. Tess herself leaves a message with Marian and Izz to try to excuse her to the farmer, and then sets out for home.