Angel Clare Character Analysis

What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!

He was surprised to find this young woman – who though but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the envied of her housemates – shaping such sad imaginings. She was expressing in her own native phrases… feelings which might almost have been called those of the age – the ache of modernism.

Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at the season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of fermentation, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate.

Distinction does not consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report – as you are, my Tess.

“I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you.”
“But who?”
“Another woman in your shape.”

Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy!

Because nobody could love ‘ee more than Tess did! …She would have laid down her life for ‘ee. I could do no more.

“It is as it should be,” she murmured. “Angel, I am almost glad – yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!”

What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!

He was surprised to find this young woman – who though but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the envied of her housemates – shaping such sad imaginings. She was expressing in her own native phrases… feelings which might almost have been called those of the age – the ache of modernism.

Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at the season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of fermentation, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate.

Distinction does not consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report – as you are, my Tess.

“I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you.”
“But who?”
“Another woman in your shape.”

Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy!

Because nobody could love ‘ee more than Tess did! …She would have laid down her life for ‘ee. I could do no more.

“It is as it should be,” she murmured. “Angel, I am almost glad – yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!”