harvesters kill every one of them with sticks and stones. This is symbolic of Tess’s own situation as she is being separated little by little from family and friends and from her childhood innocence, it is suggestive of the loneliness she now feels. The baby she has baptized as Sorrow dies, his name being an indication of the anguish that has taken place within Tess due to the circumstances of his conception and it also epitomizes what is to follow through the events of her own sorrowful life. In an attempt to start her life anew, Tess decides to move away from the seclusion of Marlott to Talbothays - where no one will know of her past. Although filled with natural optimism, Tess’s past has already begun to weave the fatalistic web that will trap her like a fly and from which the ravenous spider of chaotic doom will draw all of her life’s animation out. Talbothay’s Dairy is the phase of Tess’s life in which she experiences her only period of sheer happiness, although at times this is tinctured by mental hesitations as to her purity and righteousness. Here we can see in an abstracted form the way society has entrapped Tess by its assertions of what is supposedly morally correct. ‘Like a fascinated bird’ Tess is drawn into the wild and overgrown garden by the sound of Angel Clare’s harp - playing. We gain here, a sense of Tess’s affinity within the natural environment as she proceeds as stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth. Hardy has likened Tess to an animal and this is symbolic of the eminent disaster to follow. Tess is trapped once again - although on this occasion she is bound to Angel by ideological fetters. Tess is transformed in Angel’s sight ‘... a visionary essence of woman - a whole sex condensed into one typical form’. Tess’s material, physical relationship with Alec has been replaced by a spiritual, idealized one with Angel...
