Not Looking Good for Tess

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ‘Here!’ to body’s cry of ‘Where?’ till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.


By chapter 5 of Tess, the noose is beginning to tighten around the precious neck. Falling In Love, not to be mistaken with Love, perhaps is only coincidental, only ironic and temperamental. We meet and disjoin, the tiny rivulets of our daily lives diverge, but how often we reflect upon these brief meetings and their possible contingency within our little schemes. How are we to know of our own possible Saviors? She has been fed the crimson fruit, her electric blood and crimson lips polluted by the "narcotic blue-haze" of Alec the tempter. Where is Nature to help her out? Why can Nature devise so many cruel twists of fate to lead her to his house all alone? So many intricacies, yet no help to fend off the wolves.