FROM THE PAGES OF
TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES
“Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the d‘Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan d’Urberville, that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey Roll?”
(pages 11-12)
Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word.
(page 21 )
“You are mighty sensitive for a cottage girl!”
(page 69)
She knew how to hit to a hair’s-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions. She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind—or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.
(page 106)
Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor life for its own sake, and for what it brought, apart from its bearing on his own proposed career. Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with the decline of belief in a beneficent Power.
(page 147)
She was no longer the milklnaid, but a visionary essence of woman—a whole sex condensed into one typical form.
(page 160)
The rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed quartet looked so charming in their light summer attire, clinging to the roadside bank like pigeons on a roof-slope, that he stopped a moment to regard them before coming close. Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary. Angel’s eye at last fell upon Tess, the hindmost of the four; she, being full of suppressed laughter at their dilemma, could not help meeting his glance radiantly.
(pages 174—175)
“I can’t bear to let anybody have him but me! Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows!”
(page 217)
Modern life stretched out its steam feeler to this point three or four times a day, touched the native existences, and quickly withdrew its feeler again, as if what it touched had been uncongenial.
(page 226)
“I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!”
(page 276)
In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.
(page 312)
“You temptress, Tess; you dear damned witch of Babylon—I could not resist you as soon as I met you again!”
(page 377)
“It is too late.”
(page 442)