The transfigurations of Alec D'urberville

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'urbervilles: Reading Notes, Part Seven

Alec D'urberville's conversion; like Tess, he is the same person even as he appears to be totally another.

"It was less a reform than a transfiguration. The former curves of sensuousness were now modulated to lines of devotional passion. The lip-shapes that had meant seductiveness were now made to express divine supplication; the glow on the cheek that yesterday could be translated as riotousness was evangelized today into the splendor of pious enthusiasm; animalism had become fanaticism; Paganism, Paulism; the bold rolling eye that had flashed upon her shrinking form in the old time now beamed with the rude energy of a theolatry that was almost ferocious. Those hard, black angularities which his face had used to put on when his wishes were thwarted by her modesty now did duty in picturing the incorrigible backslider who would insist upon turning again to his wallowing in the mire."

Pursued by the reformed Alec as she returns to Flintcomb Ash, Tess comes to the bleak site known as Cross-in-Hand. "Of all the spots on this bleak and desolate upland, this was the most forlorn. It was so far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by artists and view-seekers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a negative beauty of tragical blankness."

Cross-in-Hand marked by a stone post, which Alec pronounces to Tess as the remaining upright of a holy cross -- a sacred relic. He makes her swear on it before he leaves her to return to his preaching.

Tess asks a local shepherd about the history of the cross. "Cross -- no; 'twere not a Cross! 'Tis a thing of ill omen, miss. It was put up by the relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post, and afterwards hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at times."

Alec comes to Tess again to ask him to be his wife -- which she knows she cannot, being already married -- and then again to confess that she has tempted him away from his new vocation as a ranter.

Alec's third visit to Tess is again in the guise of the rake. He announces his fall from grace and this time demands rather than begs her company, saying he will free her from her endless toil for Farmer Groby. He caustically asks whether her husband is more than a myth and proposes that "even if you have one, I think I am nearer to you than he is. I, at any rate, try to help you out of trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face!"

With the haughtiness of a D'urberville of the old line, Tess slaps him across the face with her farm gauntlet, drawing blood. She then demands to be punished.

On Alec's fifth visit, Tess is exhausted after a day and an evening feeding sheaves to an insatiable mechanical thresher, and she finds herself weakening in the face of his professed kindnesses.


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