Angel's sojourn among the various farms of Wessex gives him an appreciation for the variety of rural Englishmen, usually thought of collectively, and dismissively, as "Hodge."
"The typical and unvarying 'Hodge' ceased to exist. He had disintegrated into a number of varied fellow-creatures -- some happy, many serene, a few depressed, one here and there bright even to genius, some stupid, others wanton, others austere . . . men every one of whom walked in his own individual way the dusty road to death."
Angel and Tess begin to be drawn to one another. Thinking, no doubt, of her disasterous encounter with Alec D'urberville, "Tess was trying to lead a repressed life, but she little reckoned the intensity of her own vitality."
Tess wondering whether her "noble" D'urberville heritage might earn her the honest attention of Angel Clare, inquires of the young man's opinions with the master dairyman Crick, and learns from him that such "noble blood" is common among the local poor -- several locals, including one of her fellow milkmaids, are descended from once great families. Angel, Crick expounds, "is one of the most rebellest rozums you ever knowed . . . And if there's one thing he hate more than another 'tis the notion of what's called an old family. He says that it stands to reason that old families have done their spurt of work in past days, and can't have anything left in 'em now."
Angel finds himself falling in love with Tess and they have their first kiss in a pasture. He goes to visit his family to sort through his conflicted thoughts and confesses his intent to propose.
As Angel Clare returns to the farm from the sanctimonious atmosphere of his family home it is like "throwing off splints and bandages" to him."
Angel proposes to Tess and she is alarmed due to the secret of her lost maidenhood. Telling Tess of his father, Angel mentions that the Reverend recently expostulated against a young rake-hell, whom Tess immediately recognizes as D'urberville, making her sense of doom even deeper.
Hardy describes Tess and her fellow milkmaids going out into the fields as "advancing with the bold grace of wid animals -- the reckless, unchastened motion of women accustomed to unlimited space."
Angel presses his suit: "But you will make me happy."
Tess responds: "Ah -- you think so, but you don't know!"
Tess begins to reconsider her cautious refusal of Angel's declaration of love: "In reality, she was drifting into acquiescense. Every see-saw of her breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was a voice that joined with Nature in revolt against her scrupulousness."
Together alone on an errand for the dairy, Angel points out a fragment of a manor house, formerly a seat of the extinct D'urbervilles. Arriving at the railway, Hardy speaks of Tess's unmechanized (pre-modern) nature: "The light of the engine flashed for a moment on Tess Durbeyfield's figure, motionless under the great holly tree. No object could have looked as foreign to the gleaming cranks and wheels than this unsophisticated girl . . . [with] the suspended attitude of a friendly leopard at pause."
As Tess gives in to Angel, she abandons trying to control "the 'appetite for joy' which stimulates all creation; that tremendous force which sways humanity to its purpose."
[In certain ways, Tess' animalistic, premodern nature, conflicting with Victorian social morays, actually prefigures postmodern morality].
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