Journal #2 – Excerpt from Chapter 47, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

I am working on another, similar passage from this book for my midterm, so I thought I would offer up this one for some analysis. I am struck by the sense of doom in this scene. In the novel, Tess is raped and “ruined” at 16 by her supposed cousin. She eventually marries for love but when she confesses her impurity, her husband deserts her. In this scene, she is working herself to death to survive while being pursued a second time by her cousin.

It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at Flintcomb-Ash Farm. The dawn of the March morning is singularly inexpressive, and there is nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies. Against the twilight rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood forlornly here through the washing and bleaching of the wintry weather.
When Izz Huett and Tess arrived at the scene of operations, only a rustling denoted that others had preceded them; to which, as the light increased, there were presently added the silhouettes of two men on the summit. They were busily “unhailing” the rick, that is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and Tess with the other women-workers in their whitey-brown pinners stood waiting and shivering, Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on the spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the end of the day. Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve—a timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining—the threshing machine, which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.

Everything in the passage seems symbolic of men dominating, raping, and torturing women. The machine is a medieval torture device with “straps and wheels.” I could change the first sentence to, “It is the beating of the last ounce of stamina from Tess.” I find it interesting that the tense changes from present to past between the two paragraphs.
Words that signify dominance: operations, stripping, throw down, insisted, tyrant, serve, demand, despotic, endurance.
Words that signify submission: inexpressive, lies, forlornly, bleaching, washing, waiting, shivering.