Inspired by Elaine V. Emeth and reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
After two "silent reconstructive years" of achieving a tenuous inner repose in the reclusive aftermath of being taken advantage of while trying to claim kinship and thus reverse the demise of her family; shortly before her child Sorrow's death which was preceded by her emergency home baptism of the hotly loved though inwardly spurned child, but a few months after the all-too-expected outcome of her stay with her "bogus kinsfolk"; well after settling in her mind that her home village would not be where she would be able to veil and outgrow her fate and at the age of 20 make a new start; again, through the arrangement of her mother, Tess Durbeyfield sets off for a neighboring county to the southeast of her Blackmoor Vale, Wessex roots. Tess "felt the pulse of hopeful life still warm within her; she might be happy in some nook which had no memories. To escape the past and all that appertained thereto was to annihilate it, and to do that she would have to get away." Yet is her taking off in fact her own choice or a reaction to tenets abroad at the time? Hardy drops a clue and considers her movements through semi-omniscient eyes. As she leaves her home once again and its nearby scene of her entanglement with the 'brut' lover, Hardy's narration gives the story a naturalistic overtone and her more settled mind is still rift with a troubled outlook and conflicted sentiments, in fact her whole train of rationalizing and perplexed thought is played off by the figure she forms upon the changing landscape--insignificant, only noticed by an alighting heron, only fleetingly called to mind by her family after her departure from her home village. This is Hardy juxtaposing the innermost feeling of his heroine against the fabric of village and rural life and letting it play out on the Wessex scene and therefore making his readers long for more of his writing.
In Hardy's words: Tess stood still upon the hemmed expanse of verdant flatness, like a fly on a billiard-table of indefinite length, and of no more consequence to the surroundings than that fly. The sole effect of her presence upon the placid valley so far has been to excite the mind of a solitary heron, which, after descending to the ground not far from her path, stood with neck erect, looking at her.
Flash association: Successfully ministering as an elder in the United Methodist Church while combatting the effects of multiple sclerosis, Elaine V. Emeth hits on similar sentiments of a spiritual journey in her poem "Dancing in the Dark."
"... having to crawl cautiously to an unfamiliar place,
testing the ground each step of the way.
What perils lie in my path?
Where am I?
What inner light can guide me
when I am lost
and cannot see at all?"
[Weavings, XVII: I January/February 2002, p. 23]
The difference here is spun by Hardy so that we know Tess is in a twin state of thoughtfulness and unreflected action which makes her countenance light up to the warm spring air of May in the less confining space of the new county's verdant expanse. However, there are clues dropped by Hardy that she is still not on her very own journey but had the prospects of work for the summer by dint of her mother's letter arranging the position. Another clue is how her emotional growth has gone from a very reclusive phase to one which is transmuted to optimism by the spring air - a sunny view and lack of thoughtfulness Hardy says is John Durbeyfield's character in her, to celebrate at the slightest of gains. I think her frame of mind is only a reprieve from the conflict she will face later. For now she is making a change, but the conflict remains below the surface and she hasn't formulated her response to this deeper theme and is not acting but, instead, reacting, making wrong turnings as she wends her way through new undiscovered country to the dairy and the forthcoming events which will take her precarious reprieve from her home and local village and her temporary delight in life she longs for but has as yet to earn and give it the next vexing spin.
