Phases of Life and Cycles of Time in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Abstract

This account of the rape/seduction of Tess Durbeyfield by Alec d’Urberville is strategically placed at the close of ‘PHASE THE FIRST: The Maiden’, in Tess of the dUrbervilles.² In the kind of analysis proposed by cognitive narratology, whereby narrative perspective can be regarded as a conceptual structuring system,³ the scene can be realized in its perceptual detail. Focalized or viewed initially through the subjective proximity of d’Urberville, the narrative shifts across the senses from hearing to touch to vision, in a close-up of Tess’s eyelashes, before the new paragraph opens with a more detached summary, engages cinematically in a tilt shot upwards to the trees, followed by horizontal pan shots of the surrounding undergrowth.

D’Urberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.

Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which were poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess’s guardian angel? where was the Providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked.¹