feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_6_part_3.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xlvii
feat_summary_id: chapter xlvii
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter XLVII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase6-chapter45-52", "summary": "In March, the mean-spirited Farmer Groby picks Tess to be on the thresher-machine, a physically taxing job usually assigned to men. Tess is completely exhausted when, yet once again, Alec approaches her and begs Tess to leave the farm. He feels a husband's responsibility for her, especially since she told him about the death of their child, and he castigates Angel for leaving her penniless. Tess slaps his face with a work glove and draws blood. No longer a preacher, he says he is her real husband and will not give up", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at Flintcomb-Ash farm. The
  dawn of the March morning is singularly inexpressive, and there is
  nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies.  Against the twilight
  rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood forlornly
  here through the washing and bleaching of the wintry weather.
  
  When Izz Huett and Tess arrived at the scene of operations only a
  rustling denoted that others had preceded them; to which, as the
  light increased, there were presently added the silhouettes of two
  men on the summit.  They were busily "unhaling" the rick, that
  is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the
  sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and Tess, with the
  other women-workers, in their whitey-brown pinners, stood waiting
  and shivering, Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on
  the spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the end of
  the day.  Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely
  visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve--a
  timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining--
  the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a
  despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.
  
  A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black,
  with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve.
  The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which
  radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of much
  daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the _primum
  mobile_ of this little world.  By the engine stood a dark, motionless
  being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance,
  with a heap of coals by his side: it was the engine-man.  The
  isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a
  creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the pellucid smokelessness
  of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had
  nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines.
  
  What he looked he felt.  He was in the agricultural world, but not of
  it.  He served fire and smoke; these denizens of the fields served
  vegetation, weather, frost, and sun.  He travelled with his engine
  from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam
  threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex.  He spoke in
  a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon
  himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes
  around him, and caring for them not at all: holding only strictly
  necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom
  compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his
  Plutonic master.  The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of
  his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line
  between agriculture and him.
  
  While they uncovered the sheaves he stood apathetic beside his
  portable repository of force, round whose hot blackness the morning
  air quivered.  He had nothing to do with preparatory labour.  His
  fire was waiting incandescent, his steam was at high pressure, in
  a few seconds he could make the long strap move at an invisible
  velocity.  Beyond its extent the environment might be corn, straw,
  or chaos; it was all the same to him.  If any of the autochthonous
  idlers asked him what he called himself, he replied shortly, "an
  engineer."
  
  The rick was unhaled by full daylight; the men then took their
  places, the women mounted, and the work began.  Farmer Groby--or, as
  they called him, "he"--had arrived ere this, and by his orders Tess
  was placed on the platform of the machine, close to the man who fed
  it, her business being to untie every sheaf of corn handed on to her
  by Izz Huett, who stood next, but on the rick; so that the feeder
  could seize it and spread it over the revolving drum, which whisked
  out every grain in one moment.
  
  They were soon in full progress, after a preparatory hitch or two,
  which rejoiced the hearts of those who hated machinery.  The work
  sped on till breakfast time, when the thresher was stopped for half
  an hour; and on starting again after the meal the whole supplementary
  strength of the farm was thrown into the labour of constructing the
  straw-rick, which began to grow beside the stack of corn.  A hasty
  lunch was eaten as they stood, without leaving their positions, and
  then another couple of hours brought them near to dinner-time; the
  inexorable wheel continuing to spin, and the penetrating hum of the
  thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near the revolving
  wire-cage.
  
  The old men on the rising straw-rick talked of the past days
  when they had been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oaken
  barn-floor; when everything, even to winnowing, was effected by
  hand-labour, which, to their thinking, though slow, produced better
  results.  Those, too, on the corn-rick talked a little; but the
  perspiring ones at the machine, including Tess, could not lighten
  their duties by the exchange of many words.  It was the ceaselessness
  of the work which tried her so severely, and began to make her
  wish that she had never some to Flintcomb-Ash.  The women on the
  corn-rick--Marian, who was one of them, in particular--could stop to
  drink ale or cold tea from the flagon now and then, or to exchange
  a few gossiping remarks while they wiped their faces or cleared the
  fragments of straw and husk from their clothing; but for Tess there
  was no respite; for, as the drum never stopped, the man who fed
  it could not stop, and she, who had to supply the man with untied
  sheaves, could not stop either, unless Marian changed places with
  her, which she sometimes did for half an hour in spite of Groby's
  objections that she was too slow-handed for a feeder.
  
  For some probably economical reason it was usually a woman who was
  chosen for this particular duty, and Groby gave as his motive in
  selecting Tess that she was one of those who best combined strength
  with quickness in untying, and both with staying power, and this may
  have been true.  The hum of the thresher, which prevented speech,
  increased to a raving whenever the supply of corn fell short of the
  regular quantity.  As Tess and the man who fed could never turn their
  heads she did not know that just before the dinner-hour a person had
  come silently into the field by the gate, and had been standing under
  a second rick watching the scene and Tess in particular.  He was
  dressed in a tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay
  walking-cane.
  
  "Who is that?" said Izz Huett to Marian.  She had at first addressed
  the inquiry to Tess, but the latter could not hear it.
  
  "Somebody's fancy-man, I s'pose," said Marian laconically.
  
  "I'll lay a guinea he's after Tess."
  
  "O no.  'Tis a ranter pa'son who's been sniffing after her lately;
  not a dandy like this."
  
  "Well--this is the same man."
  
  "The same man as the preacher?  But he's quite different!"
  
  "He hev left off his black coat and white neckercher, and hev cut off
  his whiskers; but he's the same man for all that."
  
  "D'ye really think so?  Then I'll tell her," said Marian.
  
  "Don't.  She'll see him soon enough, good-now."
  
  "Well, I don't think it at all right for him to join his preaching to
  courting a married woman, even though her husband mid be abroad, and
  she, in a sense, a widow."
  
  "Oh--he can do her no harm," said Izz drily.  "Her mind can no more
  be heaved from that one place where it do bide than a stooded waggon
  from the hole he's in.  Lord love 'ee, neither court-paying, nor
  preaching, nor the seven thunders themselves, can wean a woman when
  'twould be better for her that she should be weaned."
  
  Dinner-time came, and the whirling ceased; whereupon Tess left her
  post, her knees trembling so wretchedly with the shaking of the
  machine that she could scarcely walk.
  
  "You ought to het a quart o' drink into 'ee, as I've done," said
  Marian.  "You wouldn't look so white then.  Why, souls above us,
  your face is as if you'd been hagrode!"
  
  It occurred to the good-natured Marian that, as Tess was so tired,
  her discovery of her visitor's presence might have the bad effect of
  taking away her appetite; and Marian was thinking of inducing Tess
  to descend by a ladder on the further side of the stack when the
  gentleman came forward and looked up.
  
  Tess uttered a short little "Oh!"  And a moment after she said,
  quickly, "I shall eat my dinner here--right on the rick."
  
  Sometimes, when they were so far from their cottages, they all did
  this; but as there was rather a keen wind going to-day, Marian and
  the rest descended, and sat under the straw-stack.
  
  The newcomer was, indeed, Alec d'Urberville, the late Evangelist,
  despite his changed attire and aspect.  It was obvious at a glance
  that the original _Weltlust_ had come back; that he had restored
  himself, as nearly as a man could do who had grown three or four
  years older, to the old jaunty, slapdash guise under which Tess
  had first known her admirer, and cousin so-called.  Having decided
  to remain where she was, Tess sat down among the bundles, out of
  sight of the ground, and began her meal; till, by-and-by, she heard
  footsteps on the ladder, and immediately after Alec appeared upon the
  stack--now an oblong and level platform of sheaves.  He strode across
  them, and sat down opposite of her without a word.
  
  Tess continued to eat her modest dinner, a slice of thick pancake
  which she had brought with her.  The other workfolk were by this
  time all gathered under the rick, where the loose straw formed a
  comfortable retreat.
  
  "I am here again, as you see," said d'Urberville.
  
  "Why do you trouble me so!" she cried, reproach flashing from her
  very finger-ends.
  
  "I trouble YOU?  I think I may ask, why do you trouble me?"
  
  "Sure, I don't trouble you any-when!"
  
  "You say you don't?  But you do!  You haunt me.  Those very eyes that
  you turned upon me with such a bitter flash a moment ago, they come
  to me just as you showed them then, in the night and in the day!
  Tess, ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as if
  my feelings, which have been flowing in a strong puritanical stream,
  had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at
  once gushed through.  The religious channel is left dry forthwith;
  and it is you who have done it!"
  
  She gazed in silence.
  
  "What--you have given up your preaching entirely?" she asked.  She
  had gathered from Angel sufficient of the incredulity of modern
  thought to despise flash enthusiasm; but, as a woman, she was
  somewhat appalled.
  
  In affected severity d'Urberville continued--
  
  "Entirely.  I have broken every engagement since that afternoon I was
  to address the drunkards at Casterbridge Fair.  The deuce only knows
  what I am thought of by the brethren.  Ah-ha!  The brethren!  No
  doubt they pray for me--weep for me; for they are kind people in
  their way.  But what do I care?  How could I go on with the thing
  when I had lost my faith in it?--it would have been hypocrisy of
  the basest kind!  Among them I should have stood like Hymenaeus and
  Alexander, who were delivered over to Satan that they might learn
  not to blaspheme.  What a grand revenge you have taken!  I saw you
  innocent, and I deceived you.  Four years after, you find me a
  Christian enthusiast; you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete
  perdition!  But Tess, my coz, as I used to call you, this is only
  my way of talking, and you must not look so horribly concerned.
  Of course you have done nothing except retain your pretty face and
  shapely figure.  I saw it on the rick before you saw me--that tight
  pinafore-thing sets it off, and that wing-bonnet--you field-girls
  should never wear those bonnets if you wish to keep out of danger."
  He regarded her silently for a few moments, and with a short cynical
  laugh resumed: "I believe that if the bachelor-apostle, whose deputy
  I thought I was, had been tempted by such a pretty face, he would
  have let go the plough for her sake as I do!"
  
  Tess attempted to expostulate, but at this juncture all her fluency
  failed her, and without heeding he added:
  
  "Well, this paradise that you supply is perhaps as good as any other,
  after all.  But to speak seriously, Tess."  D'Urberville rose and
  came nearer, reclining sideways amid the sheaves, and resting upon
  his elbow.  "Since I last saw you, I have been thinking of what
  you said that HE said.  I have come to the conclusion that there
  does seem rather a want of common-sense in these threadbare old
  propositions; how I could have been so fired by poor Parson Clare's
  enthusiasm, and have gone so madly to work, transcending even him, I
  cannot make out!  As for what you said last time, on the strength of
  your wonderful husband's intelligence--whose name you have never told
  me--about having what they call an ethical system without any dogma,
  I don't see my way to that at all."
  
  "Why, you can have the religion of loving-kindness and purity at
  least, if you can't have--what do you call it--dogma."
  
  "O no!  I'm a different sort of fellow from that!  If there's nobody
  to say, 'Do this, and it will be a good thing for you after you are
  dead; do that, and if will be a bad thing for you,' I can't warm up.
  Hang it, I am not going to feel responsible for my deeds and passions
  if there's nobody to be responsible to; and if I were you, my dear,
  I wouldn't either!"
  
  She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull
  brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days
  of mankind had been quite distinct.  But owing to Angel Clare's
  reticence, to her absolute want of training, and to her being a
  vessel of emotions rather than reasons, she could not get on.
  
  "Well, never mind," he resumed.  "Here I am, my love, as in the old
  times!"
  
  "Not as then--never as then--'tis different!" she entreated.  "And
  there was never warmth with me!  O why didn't you keep your faith,
  if the loss of it has brought you to speak to me like this!"
  
  "Because you've knocked it out of me; so the evil be upon your sweet
  head!  Your husband little thought how his teaching would recoil upon
  him!  Ha-ha--I'm awfully glad you have made an apostate of me all the
  same!  Tess, I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity you too.
  For all your closeness, I see you are in a bad way--neglected by one
  who ought to cherish you."
  
  She could not get her morsels of food down her throat; her lips
  were dry, and she was ready to choke.  The voices and laughs of the
  workfolk eating and drinking under the rick came to her as if they
  were a quarter of a mile off.
  
  "It is cruelty to me!" she said.  "How--how can you treat me to this
  talk, if you care ever so little for me?"
  
  "True, true," he said, wincing a little.  "I did not come to reproach
  you for my deeds.  I came Tess, to say that I don't like you to be
  working like this, and I have come on purpose for you.  You say you
  have a husband who is not I.  Well, perhaps you have; but I've never
  seen him, and you've not told me his name; and altogether he seems
  rather a mythological personage.  However, even if you have one, I
  think I am nearer to you than he is.  I, at any rate, try to help you
  out of trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face!  The words
  of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to read come back to me.
  Don't you know them, Tess?--'And she shall follow after her lover,
  but she shall not overtake him; and she shall seek him, but shall
  not find him; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first
  husband; for then was it better with me than now!' ...  Tess, my trap
  is waiting just under the hill, and--darling mine, not his!--you know
  the rest."
  
  Her face had been rising to a dull crimson fire while he spoke; but
  she did not answer.
  
  "You have been the cause of my backsliding," he continued, stretching
  his arm towards her waist; "you should be willing to share it, and
  leave that mule you call husband for ever."
  
  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 from his 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!"
  
  "O no, no, Tess," he said blandly.  "I can make full allowance for
  this.  Yet you most unjustly forget one thing, that I would have
  married you if you had not put it out of my power to do so.  Did I
  not ask you flatly to be my wife--hey?  Answer me."
  
  "You did."
  
  "And you cannot be.  But remember one thing!"  His voice hardened
  as his temper got the better of him with the recollection of his
  sincerity in asking her and her present ingratitude, and he stepped
  across to her side and held her by the shoulders, so that she shook
  under his grasp.  "Remember, my lady, I was your master once!  I will
  be your master again.  If you are any man's wife you are mine!"
  
  The threshers now began to stir below.
  
  "So much for our quarrel," he said, letting her go.  "Now I shall
  leave you, and shall come again for your answer during the afternoon.
  You don't know me yet!  But I know you."
  
  She had not spoken again, remaining as if stunned.  D'Urberville
  retreated over the sheaves, and descended the ladder, while the
  workers below rose and stretched their arms, and shook down the beer
  they had drunk.  Then the threshing-machine started afresh; and amid
  the renewed rustle of the straw Tess resumed her position by the
  buzzing drum as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf in endless
  succession.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter XLVII
target: In March, the mean-spirited Farmer Groby picks Tess to be on the thresher-machine, a physically taxing job usually assigned to men. Tess is completely exhausted when, yet once again, Alec approaches her and begs Tess to leave the farm. He feels a husband's responsibility for her, especially since she told him about the death of their child, and he castigates Angel for leaving her penniless. Tess slaps his face with a work glove and draws blood. No longer a preacher, he says he is her real husband and will not give up