feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_9.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 43
feat_summary_id: chapter 43
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-5-chapters-35-44", "summary": "Tess sets to work at Flintcomb-Ash, sustained by her sense of patience. For Tess, patience combines moral courage with physical timidity. The movement of the swede-hackers shows a mechanical regularity, as they work hour after hour unconscious of the forlorn aspect they bear on the landscape. Marian now has alcohol as her only comfort. She proposes to Tess that they invite Izz Huett and Retty Priddle to come to Flintcomb-Ash. Marian soon hears from Izz that she is coming. The winter is particularly harsh, one day preventing work altogether. Marian tells Tess that the harsh weather improves Tess's beauty, and that her husband should see her now. Tess reprimands Marian for her mention of him. Along with Tess, Marian and Izz, two other women working at Flintcomb-Ash are Car and Nancy Darch, neither of whom recognize Tess. Tess finds that her employer is the Trantridge native from whom she had taken flight. He laughs that he has regained his superior position. Tess does not answer him, so he demands an apology. Izz tells Tess that Angel was a splendid lover, no doubt, and tells Tess that Angel has left for the New World. Tess claims that she can always find out where Angel is. Tess continues to work, but she finally sinks down upon a heap of wheat-ears at her feet. Marian cries out that the work requires harder flesh than hers. The farmer suddenly enters and reprimands her for not working. Izz and Marian continue working to make up for Tess after the farmer leaves. Marian tells Tess how Angel asked Izz to accompany him to Brazil, but changed his mind. Tess cries at this news, thinking that she has been wrong and neglectful. Tess writes a letter to Angel, but cannot finish it. Afterwards she takes the wedding ring she keeps on a ribbon around her neck and wears it on her finger.", "analysis": "Hardy continues to elaborate the theme of the recurrence of past events through the arrival of several characters present in earlier sections of the novel. Tess finds herself in the presence of the man who insulted Angel for the third time, now as an employer, while the other girls from Talbothays dairy also work at Flintcomb-Ash. Even Car and Nancy Darch, whose threats against Tess served as a catalyst for her nighttime ride with Alec, find themselves working with Tess. The recurrence of these characters is a particular humiliation for Tess; each of them remind Tess of humiliations or indignities she has suffered. Tess even learns about Angel's proposition for Izz Huett, thus shaking her faith in Angel. When Tess wears her wedding ring at the end of the chapter, this is more than anything a mark of desperation. Even without her husband himself, the one reassurance that Tess has is her marriage to Angel Clare. With so little to support her, Tess can rely only on a small reminder of what she once had"}
text: 
  
  There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash
  farm as a starve-acre place.  The single fat thing on the soil was
  Marian herself; and she was an importation.  Of the three classes of
  village, the village cared for by its lord, the village cared for by
  itself, and the village uncared for either by itself or by its lord
  (in other words, the village of a resident squires's tenantry, the
  village of free- or copy-holders, and the absentee-owner's village,
  farmed with the land) this place, Flintcomb-Ash, was the third.
  
  But Tess set to work.  Patience, that blending of moral courage with
  physical timidity, was now no longer a minor feature in Mrs Angel
  Clare; and it sustained her.
  
  The swede-field in which she and her companion were set hacking was
  a stretch of a hundred odd acres in one patch, on the highest ground
  of the farm, rising above stony lanchets or lynchets--the outcrop of
  siliceous veins in the chalk formation, composed of myriads of loose
  white flints in bulbous, cusped, and phallic shapes.  The upper half
  of each turnip had been eaten off by the live-stock, and it was the
  business of the two women to grub up the lower or earthy half of the
  root with a hooked fork called a hacker, that it might be eaten also.
  Every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed, the whole
  field was in colour a desolate drab; it was a complexion without
  features, as if a face, from chin to brow, should be only an expanse
  of skin.  The sky wore, in another colour, the same likeness; a white
  vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone.  So these two upper
  and nether visages confronted each other all day long, the white face
  looking down on the brown face, and the brown face looking up at the
  white face, without anything standing between them but the two girls
  crawling over the surface of the former like flies.
  
  Nobody came near them, and their movements showed a mechanical
  regularity; their forms standing enshrouded in Hessian "wroppers"--
  sleeved brown pinafores, tied behind to the bottom, to keep their
  gowns from blowing about--scant skirts revealing boots that reached
  high up the ankles, and yellow sheepskin gloves with gauntlets.  The
  pensive character which the curtained hood lent to their bent heads
  would have reminded the observer of some early Italian conception of
  the two Marys.
  
  They worked on hour after hour, unconscious of the forlorn aspect
  they bore in the landscape, not thinking of the justice or injustice
  of their lot.  Even in such a position as theirs it was possible
  to exist in a dream.  In the afternoon the rain came on again, and
  Marian said that they need not work any more.  But if they did not
  work they would not be paid; so they worked on.  It was so high a
  situation, this field, that the rain had no occasion to fall, but
  raced along horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them
  like glass splinters till they were wet through.  Tess had not
  known till now what was really meant by that.  There are degrees of
  dampness, and a very little is called being wet through in common
  talk.  But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of
  rain-water, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then
  at back, front, and sides, and yet to work on till the leaden light
  diminishes and marks that the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum
  of stoicism, even of valour.
  
  Yet they did not feel the wetness so much as might be supposed.  They
  were both young, and they were talking of the time when they lived
  and loved together at Talbothays Dairy, that happy green tract of
  land where summer had been liberal in her gifts; in substance to
  all, emotionally to these.  Tess would fain not have conversed with
  Marian of the man who was legally, if not actually, her husband;
  but the irresistible fascination of the subject betrayed her into
  reciprocating Marian's remarks.  And thus, as has been said, though
  the damp curtains of their bonnets flapped smartly into their faces,
  and their wrappers clung about them to wearisomeness, they lived all
  this afternoon in memories of green, sunny, romantic Talbothays.
  
  "You can see a gleam of a hill within a few miles o' Froom Valley
  from here when 'tis fine," said Marian.
  
  "Ah!  Can you?" said Tess, awake to the new value of this locality.
  
  So the two forces were at work here as everywhere, the inherent will
  to enjoy, and the circumstantial will against enjoyment.  Marian's
  will had a method of assisting itself by taking from her pocket as
  the afternoon wore on a pint bottle corked with white rag, from which
  she invited Tess to drink.  Tess's unassisted power of dreaming,
  however, being enough for her sublimation at present, she declined
  except the merest sip, and then Marian took a pull from the spirits.
  
  "I've got used to it," she said, "and can't leave it off now.  'Tis
  my only comfort--You see I lost him: you didn't; and you can do
  without it perhaps."
  
  Tess thought her loss as great as Marian's, but upheld by the dignity
  of being Angel's wife, in the letter at least, she accepted Marian's
  differentiation.
  
  Amid this scene Tess slaved in the morning frosts and in
  the afternoon rains.  When it was not swede-grubbing it was
  swede-trimming, in which process they sliced off the earth and the
  fibres with a bill-hook before storing the roots for future use.  At
  this occupation they could shelter themselves by a thatched hurdle if
  it rained; but if it was frosty even their thick leather gloves could
  not prevent the frozen masses they handled from biting their fingers.
  Still Tess hoped.  She had a conviction that sooner or later the
  magnanimity which she persisted in reckoning as a chief ingredient
  of Clare's character would lead him to rejoin her.
  
  Marian, primed to a humorous mood, would discover the queer-shaped
  flints aforesaid, and shriek with laughter, Tess remaining severely
  obtuse.  They often looked across the country to where the Var or
  Froom was know to stretch, even though they might not be able to see
  it; and, fixing their eyes on the cloaking gray mist, imagined the
  old times they had spent out there.
  
  "Ah," said Marian, "how I should like another or two of our old set
  to come here!  Then we could bring up Talbothays every day here
  afield, and talk of he, and of what nice times we had there, and o'
  the old things we used to know, and make it all come back a'most, in
  seeming!"  Marian's eyes softened, and her voice grew vague as the
  visions returned.  "I'll write to Izz Huett," she said.  "She's
  biding at home doing nothing now, I know, and I'll tell her we be
  here, and ask her to come; and perhaps Retty is well enough now."
  
  Tess had nothing to say against the proposal, and the next she heard
  of this plan for importing old Talbothays' joys was two or three days
  later, when Marian informed her that Izz had replied to her inquiry,
  and had promised to come if she could.
  
  There had not been such a winter for years.  It came on in stealthy
  and measured glides, like the moves of a chess-player.  One morning
  the few lonely trees and the thorns of the hedgerows appeared as if
  they had put off a vegetable for an animal integument.  Every twig
  was covered with a white nap as of fur grown from the rind during the
  night, giving it four times its usual stoutness; the whole bush or
  tree forming a staring sketch in white lines on the mournful gray
  of the sky and horizon.  Cobwebs revealed their presence on sheds
  and walls where none had ever been observed till brought out into
  visibility by the crystallizing atmosphere, hanging like loops of
  white worsted from salient points of the out-houses, posts, and
  gates.
  
  After this season of congealed dampness came a spell of dry frost,
  when strange birds from behind the North Pole began to arrive
  silently on the upland of Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures
  with tragical eyes--eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal
  horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude such as no human
  being had ever conceived, in curdling temperatures that no man could
  endure; which had beheld the crash of icebergs and the slide of
  snow-hills by the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded
  by the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous distortions; and
  retained the expression of feature that such scenes had engendered.
  These nameless birds came quite near to Tess and Marian, but of
  all they had seen which humanity would never see, they brought no
  account.  The traveller's ambition to tell was not theirs, and, with
  dumb impassivity, they dismissed experiences which they did not
  value for the immediate incidents of this homely upland--the trivial
  movements of the two girls in disturbing the clods with their hackers
  so as to uncover something or other that these visitants relished as
  food.
  
  Then one day a peculiar quality invaded the air of this open country.
  There came a moisture which was not of rain, and a cold which was not
  of frost.  It chilled the eyeballs of the twain, made their brows
  ache, penetrated to their skeletons, affecting the surface of the
  body less than its core.  They knew that it meant snow, and in the
  night the snow came.  Tess, who continued to live at the cottage with
  the warm gable that cheered any lonely pedestrian who paused beside
  it, awoke in the night, and heard above the thatch noises which
  seemed to signify that the roof had turned itself into a gymnasium
  of all the winds.  When she lit her lamp to get up in the morning
  she found that the snow had blown through a chink in the casement,
  forming a white cone of the finest powder against the inside, and had
  also come down the chimney, so that it lay sole-deep upon the floor,
  on which her shoes left tracks when she moved about.  Without, the
  storm drove so fast as to create a snow-mist in the kitchen; but as
  yet it was too dark out-of-doors to see anything.
  
  Tess knew that it was impossible to go on with the swedes; and by
  the time she had finished breakfast beside the solitary little lamp,
  Marian arrived to tell her that they were to join the rest of the
  women at reed-drawing in the barn till the weather changed.  As soon,
  therefore, as the uniform cloak of darkness without began to turn
  to a disordered medley of grays, they blew out the lamp, wrapped
  themselves up in their thickest pinners, tied their woollen cravats
  round their necks and across their chests, and started for the barn.
  The snow had followed the birds from the polar basin as a white
  pillar of a cloud, and individual flakes could not be seen.  The
  blast smelt of icebergs, arctic seas, whales, and white bears,
  carrying the snow so that it licked the land but did not deepen on
  it.  They trudged onwards with slanted bodies through the flossy
  fields, keeping as well as they could in the shelter of hedges,
  which, however, acted as strainers rather than screens.  The air,
  afflicted to pallor with the hoary multitudes that infested it,
  twisted and spun them eccentrically, suggesting an achromatic chaos
  of things.  But both the young women were fairly cheerful; such
  weather on a dry upland is not in itself dispiriting.
  
  "Ha-ha! the cunning northern birds knew this was coming," said
  Marian.  "Depend upon't, they keep just in front o't all the way from
  the North Star.  Your husband, my dear, is, I make no doubt, having
  scorching weather all this time.  Lord, if he could only see his
  pretty wife now!  Not that this weather hurts your beauty at all--in
  fact, it rather does it good."
  
  "You mustn't talk about him to me, Marian," said Tess severely.
  
  "Well, but--surely you care for'n!  Do you?"
  
  Instead of answering, Tess, with tears in her eyes, impulsively faced
  in the direction in which she imagined South America to lie, and,
  putting up her lips, blew out a passionate kiss upon the snowy wind.
  
  "Well, well, I know you do.  But 'pon my body, it is a rum life for
  a married couple!  There--I won't say another word!  Well, as for
  the weather, it won't hurt us in the wheat-barn; but reed-drawing is
  fearful hard work--worse than swede-hacking.  I can stand it because
  I'm stout; but you be slimmer than I.  I can't think why maister
  should have set 'ee at it."
  
  They reached the wheat-barn and entered it.  One end of the long
  structure was full of corn; the middle was where the reed-drawing was
  carried on, and there had already been placed in the reed-press the
  evening before as many sheaves of wheat as would be sufficient for
  the women to draw from during the day.
  
  "Why, here's Izz!" said Marian.
  
  Izz it was, and she came forward.  She had walked all the way from
  her mother's home on the previous afternoon, and, not deeming the
  distance so great, had been belated, arriving, however, just before
  the snow began, and sleeping at the alehouse.  The farmer had agreed
  with her mother at market to take her on if she came to-day, and she
  had been afraid to disappoint him by delay.
  
  In addition to Tess, Marian, and Izz, there were two women from a
  neighbouring village; two Amazonian sisters, whom Tess with a start
  remembered as Dark Car, the Queen of Spades, and her junior, the
  Queen of Diamonds--those who had tried to fight with her in the
  midnight quarrel at Trantridge.  They showed no recognition of her,
  and possibly had none, for they had been under the influence of
  liquor on that occasion, and were only temporary sojourners there
  as here.  They did all kinds of men's work by preference, including
  well-sinking, hedging, ditching, and excavating, without any sense of
  fatigue.  Noted reed-drawers were they too, and looked round upon the
  other three with some superciliousness.
  
  Putting on their gloves, all set to work in a row in front of the
  press, an erection formed of two posts connected by a cross-beam,
  under which the sheaves to be drawn from were laid ears outward, the
  beam being pegged down by pins in the uprights, and lowered as the
  sheaves diminished.
  
  The day hardened in colour, the light coming in at the barndoors
  upwards from the snow instead of downwards from the sky.  The girls
  pulled handful after handful from the press; but by reason of the
  presence of the strange women, who were recounting scandals, Marian
  and Izz could not at first talk of old times as they wished to do.
  Presently they heard the muffled tread of a horse, and the farmer
  rode up to the barndoor.  When he had dismounted he came close to
  Tess, and remained looking musingly at the side of her face.  She had
  not turned at first, but his fixed attitude led her to look round,
  when she perceived that her employer was the native of Trantridge
  from whom she had taken flight on the high-road because of his
  allusion to her history.
  
  He waited till she had carried the drawn bundles to the pile outside,
  when he said, "So you be the young woman who took my civility in such
  ill part?  Be drowned if I didn't think you might be as soon as I
  heard of your being hired!  Well, you thought you had got the better
  of me the first time at the inn with your fancy-man, and the second
  time on the road, when you bolted; but now I think I've got the
  better you."  He concluded with a hard laugh.
  
  Tess, between the Amazons and the farmer, like a bird caught in a
  clap-net, returned no answer, continuing to pull the straw.  She
  could read character sufficiently well to know by this time that she
  had nothing to fear from her employer's gallantry; it was rather the
  tyranny induced by his mortification at Clare's treatment of him.
  Upon the whole she preferred that sentiment in man and felt brave
  enough to endure it.
  
  "You thought I was in love with 'ee I suppose?  Some women are such
  fools, to take every look as serious earnest.  But there's nothing
  like a winter afield for taking that nonsense out o' young wenches'
  heads; and you've signed and agreed till Lady-Day.  Now, are you
  going to beg my pardon?"
  
  "I think you ought to beg mine."
  
  "Very well--as you like.  But we'll see which is master here.  Be
  they all the sheaves you've done to-day?"
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  "'Tis a very poor show.  Just see what they've done over there"
  (pointing to the two stalwart women).  "The rest, too, have done
  better than you."
  
  "They've all practised it before, and I have not.  And I thought it
  made no difference to you as it is task work, and we are only paid
  for what we do."
  
  "Oh, but it does.  I want the barn cleared."
  
  "I am going to work all the afternoon instead of leaving at two as
  the others will do."
  
  He looked sullenly at her and went away.  Tess felt that she could
  not have come to a much worse place; but anything was better than
  gallantry.  When two o'clock arrived the professional reed-drawers
  tossed off the last half-pint in their flagon, put down their hooks,
  tied their last sheaves, and went away.  Marian and Izz would have
  done likewise, but on hearing that Tess meant to stay, to make up
  by longer hours for her lack of skill, they would not leave her.
  Looking out at the snow, which still fell, Marian exclaimed, "Now,
  we've got it all to ourselves."  And so at last the conversation
  turned to their old experiences at the dairy; and, of course, the
  incidents of their affection for Angel Clare.
  
  "Izz and Marian," said Mrs Angel Clare, with a dignity which was
  extremely touching, seeing how very little of a wife she was: "I
  can't join in talk with you now, as I used to do, about Mr Clare; you
  will see that I cannot; because, although he is gone away from me for
  the present, he is my husband."
  
  Izz was by nature the sauciest and most caustic of all the four girls
  who had loved Clare.  "He was a very splendid lover, no doubt," she
  said; "but I don't think he is a too fond husband to go away from you
  so soon."
  
  "He had to go--he was obliged to go, to see about the land over
  there!" pleaded Tess.
  
  "He might have tided 'ee over the winter."
  
  "Ah--that's owing to an accident--a misunderstanding; and we won't
  argue it," Tess answered, with tearfulness in her words.  "Perhaps
  there's a good deal to be said for him!  He did not go away, like
  some husbands, without telling me; and I can always find out where
  he is."
  
  After this they continued for some long time in a reverie, as they
  went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering
  it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks,
  nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the
  crunch of the hook.  Then Tess suddenly flagged, and sank down upon
  the heap of wheat-ears at her feet.
  
  "I knew you wouldn't be able to stand it!" cried Marian.  "It wants
  harder flesh than yours for this work."
  
  Just then the farmer entered.  "Oh, that's how you get on when I am
  away," he said to her.
  
  "But it is my own loss," she pleaded.  "Not yours."
  
  "I want it finished," he said doggedly, as he crossed the barn and
  went out at the other door.
  
  "Don't 'ee mind him, there's a dear," said Marian.  "I've worked here
  before.  Now you go and lie down there, and Izz and I will make up
  your number."
  
  "I don't like to let you do that.  I'm taller than you, too."
  
  However, she was so overcome that she consented to lie down awhile,
  and reclined on a heap of pull-tails--the refuse after the straight
  straw had been drawn--thrown up at the further side of the barn.  Her
  succumbing had been as largely owning to agitation at the re-opening
  the subject of her separation from her husband as to the hard work.
  She lay in a state of percipience without volition, and the rustle of
  the straw and the cutting of the ears by the others had the weight of
  bodily touches.
  
  She could hear from her corner, in addition to these noises, the
  murmur of their voices.  She felt certain that they were continuing
  the subject already broached, but their voices were so low that she
  could not catch the words.  At last Tess grew more and more anxious
  to know what they were saying, and, persuading herself that she felt
  better, she got up and resumed work.
  
  Then Izz Huett broke down.  She had walked more than a dozen miles
  the previous evening, had gone to bed at midnight, and had risen
  again at five o'clock.  Marian alone, thanks to her bottle of liquor
  and her stoutness of build, stood the strain upon back and arms
  without suffering.  Tess urged Izz to leave off, agreeing, as she
  felt better, to finish the day without her, and make equal division
  of the number of sheaves.
  
  Izz accepted the offer gratefully, and disappeared through the great
  door into the snowy track to her lodging.  Marian, as was the case
  every afternoon at this time on account of the bottle, began to feel
  in a romantic vein.
  
  "I should not have thought it of him--never!" she said in a dreamy
  tone.  "And I loved him so!  I didn't mind his having YOU.  But this
  about Izz is too bad!"
  
  Tess, in her start at the words, narrowly missed cutting off a finger
  with the bill-hook.
  
  "Is it about my husband?" she stammered.
  
  "Well, yes.  Izz said, 'Don't 'ee tell her'; but I am sure I can't
  help it!  It was what he wanted Izz to do.  He wanted her to go off
  to Brazil with him."
  
  Tess's face faded as white as the scene without, and its curves
  straightened.  "And did Izz refuse to go?" she asked.
  
  "I don't know.  Anyhow he changed his mind."
  
  "Pooh--then he didn't mean it!  'Twas just a man's jest!"
  
  "Yes he did; for he drove her a good-ways towards the station."
  
  "He didn't take her!"
  
  They pulled on in silence till Tess, without any premonitory
  symptoms, burst out crying.
  
  "There!" said Marian.  "Now I wish I hadn't told 'ee!"
  
  "No.  It is a very good thing that you have done!  I have been living
  on in a thirtover, lackaday way, and have not seen what it may lead
  to!  I ought to have sent him a letter oftener.  He said I could not
  go to him, but he didn't say I was not to write as often as I liked.
  I won't dally like this any longer!  I have been very wrong and
  neglectful in leaving everything to be done by him!"
  
  The dim light in the barn grew dimmer, and they could see to work no
  longer.  When Tess had reached home that evening, and had entered
  into the privacy of her little white-washed chamber, she began
  impetuously writing a letter to Clare.  But falling into doubt, she
  could not finish it.  Afterwards she took the ring from the ribbon on
  which she wore it next her heart, and retained it on her finger all
  night, as if to fortify herself in the sensation that she was really
  the wife of this elusive lover of hers, who could propose that Izz
  should go with him abroad, so shortly after he had left her.  Knowing
  that, how could she write entreaties to him, or show that she cared
  for him any more?
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 43
target: Tess sets to work at Flintcomb-Ash, sustained by her sense of patience. For Tess, patience combines moral courage with physical timidity. The movement of the swede-hackers shows a mechanical regularity, as they work hour after hour unconscious of the forlorn aspect they bear on the landscape. Marian now has alcohol as her only comfort. She proposes to Tess that they invite Izz Huett and Retty Priddle to come to Flintcomb-Ash. Marian soon hears from Izz that she is coming. The winter is particularly harsh, one day preventing work altogether. Marian tells Tess that the harsh weather improves Tess's beauty, and that her husband should see her now. Tess reprimands Marian for her mention of him. Along with Tess, Marian and Izz, two other women working at Flintcomb-Ash are Car and Nancy Darch, neither of whom recognize Tess. Tess finds that her employer is the Trantridge native from whom she had taken flight. He laughs that he has regained his superior position. Tess does not answer him, so he demands an apology. Izz tells Tess that Angel was a splendid lover, no doubt, and tells Tess that Angel has left for the New World. Tess claims that she can always find out where Angel is. Tess continues to work, but she finally sinks down upon a heap of wheat-ears at her feet. Marian cries out that the work requires harder flesh than hers. The farmer suddenly enters and reprimands her for not working. Izz and Marian continue working to make up for Tess after the farmer leaves. Marian tells Tess how Angel asked Izz to accompany him to Brazil, but changed his mind. Tess cries at this news, thinking that she has been wrong and neglectful. Tess writes a letter to Angel, but cannot finish it. Afterwards she takes the wedding ring she keeps on a ribbon around her neck and wears it on her finger.
feat_summary_analysis: Hardy continues to elaborate the theme of the recurrence of past events through the arrival of several characters present in earlier sections of the novel. Tess finds herself in the presence of the man who insulted Angel for the third time, now as an employer, while the other girls from Talbothays dairy also work at Flintcomb-Ash. Even Car and Nancy Darch, whose threats against Tess served as a catalyst for her nighttime ride with Alec, find themselves working with Tess. The recurrence of these characters is a particular humiliation for Tess; each of them remind Tess of humiliations or indignities she has suffered. Tess even learns about Angel's proposition for Izz Huett, thus shaking her faith in Angel. When Tess wears her wedding ring at the end of the chapter, this is more than anything a mark of desperation. Even without her husband himself, the one reassurance that Tess has is her marriage to Angel Clare. With so little to support her, Tess can rely only on a small reminder of what she once had