What Happened To Angel?
After Tess was arrested, was charges also filed against Angel as well in abiding Tess in her escape? I would like to know what might happen to Angel.
shareIn the novel, Angel doesn't face any kind of charges for helping Tess. It's implied that Angel might start a new life with Tess's sister Liza-Lu, which is Tess' final wish before she is arrested. At the end of the novel he and Liza watch for the signal of Tess' execution and then leave together.
"Any idiot can face a crisis, it is this day-to-day living that wears you out". Chekhov
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Any man who could go from a woman he supposedly loved, to her sister, is a pig.
"I say,open this door at once! We're British !"
Important relevant cultural note: The country was a church-state. In the Bible it was traditional for a widower to take the next unmarried sister of his deceased wife. This helped everyone in the family. Not all marriages were about romantic love back then.
I feel certain that Mr. Thomas Hardy would have disagreed with the practice, though, given his advanced moral code as evidenced in his other writings.
I know that is in the Talmud but I wasn't aware that it was a Christian practice as well.
Angel should have helped Tess' family whether or not that included marrying her sister,considering that he set in motion the killing of their previous benefactor. Of course, he would need to get a job first. Perhaps the dairy was hiring, as he had no other skills other than being a jerk.
Once victim, always victim. That's the law.
Angel was indeed rather uppity in his classist entitlements, no?
His skills went beyond dairy farming, to be fair. He was a student and his stint at the dairy was an internship. He was headed to Brazil (remember his invitation to Izzie? THAT was tacky! Iz was great about it - even though she came very close to agreeeing to go, it seemed. ) He was going to Brazil to purchase a large ranch if I recall correctly, but illness (malaria?) brought him low. And in that low state, he sought his true love - Tess.
What a shame that he had to get to that point to finally realize how cruel he had been to her and even sadder that his reappearance in her life set in motion the very thing that doomed her. It would have been far better for her (and Alec) if Angel had stayed in Brazil. And frankly, I have always believed that if either of them truly loved it, it was Alec. He told he would take care of her "if circumstances should arise", he gave her a job,bought a horse for her family, took care of her family after Angel's abandonment of Tess and was apparently taking care of Tess. Despite his behavior in the forest, he did more for her and genuinely cared far more than Angel.
Rescue the damsel in distress, whip the bad guy, save the world.
All good points. I suppose herein lies the romance: Dead in love is preferable to life in torment.
shareLOL! Tess's fate isn't Angel's fault. Angel didn't make her kill Alec. That was her decision. She knew what the consequences would be.
shareWhat you say is true but, to be fair to the other poster, he didn't say Angel made Tess kill Alec, but rather that "his reappearance in her life set in motion the very thing that doomed her."
Someone might argue that Tess was so emotionally fudged up that she would've likely killed Alec somewhere down the line anyway. But it was Angel's reappearance that awakened her dormant love for Angel and buried hostility for Alec.