Tess of the D'Urbervilles Deconstruction Essay (B +)
...h Alec that night? Was she intelligent enough to know what situation she was putting herself in? To try to justify Tess's actions Angel states , " Oh, you cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not..." But after being reassured that Tess is in fact a person with a stable mindset, Angel realizes that Tess is not the idealism he had once loved. She is now a lower person. "How can forgiveness meet such a grotesque-- prestidigitation as that," Angel explains to Tess. The reader sees that is not Angels job to make Tess happy, but Tess's job to make Angel's life happy. When realizing that Tess had caused Angel to become grief stricken, she asks "I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?" Tess's statements are seen as inferior to Angel's. She does not just simply say "I no longer belong to you," but asks Angel if she does, because her decisions are not valid ones. They are decisions that need to be reviewed by the rational Angel. Angels love for Tess in the first scene of Phase the Fifth is the primary concern of the first chapter. Tess's love for Angel is seen as a peripheral concern. She repeats over and over that she is in love with Angel, but this not important, what is important is if Angel is in love with Tess. It is Angels love for Tess that makes life worth living for the young woman. The superiority of Angel seen throughout the first scene of Phase the Fifth is due to the effect of Tess's inferiority to Angel. Without the presence of Tess, Angel has nothing to be superior too. Angel's emotions and troubles only seem important and more urgent because Tess's feelings are less important and are trivial. After Tess says to herself that Angel liked another woman like her and not her, she breaks into tears. Angel simply watches Tess apathetically till the "violence of her grief," dissipates. Because Tess is seen as less important we are more intrigued that Angel does not care, and less that Tess is deeply hurt by Angel no longer loving her. Tess's "flood of self-sympathetic tears," serve the purpose of showing the mental shock her husband is dealing with. It is also Tess's "lower status" in the relationship that help's shape Angel's character as a person with more authority in the relationship. Tess demonstrates her obedience to Angel by saying "I shan't do anything unless you order me to.." This submissive behavior of Tess shows that Angel is in control, that he is the "captain" of the married couple. With the previous statement from Tess, the idea that the marriage between the two is a mutual one is discarded. The superiority of Angel remains heavily dependent on the inferiority of Tess throughout the first scene of Phase the Fifth. The different social classes of Angel and Tess are mentioned in the first scene of Phase the Fifth. Angel is from a middle class family, and Tess is from a poorer peasant family. In the eyes of socioeconomic status, Angel is seen as the higher ranked of the two. But more economically sound translates to being more mentally sound as well. Tess tries pleading her case to Angel. She tries telling him that her mother has told her many stories of women who went through the same situation that she did with Alec. Upon hearing this, Angel realizes that this information would only seem rational to the irrational minds of peasant societies. To Tess’s statement, Angel quickly tells her that she is from, “Different societies, different manners….a peasant-woman, who have never been initiated into the proportions of social things,” and to finish it off he simply states, “You don’t k...