In October, four months after her arrival in Trantridge, Tess leaves the d’Urberville estate to return home. Alec pursues her, offers her a ride home, and she accepts. He admits to his mistake and begs Tess’ forgiveness, but to no avail. She leaves Alec in the road near her home, walking the remainder of the way. Along the way, she encounters a sign painter whose signs preach against vice and sin.
Tess’ mother is the first to encounter Tess when she enters the family home, and the two talk about Tess’ experiences. Here, Tess asks her mother, “Why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk?” Joan still believes that her daughter might have a chance to marry Alec d’Urberville and become a real lady, but she is too simple or ignorant to understand Tess’ dilemma. Joan’s response is to, “make the best of it, I suppose. ’Tis nater, after all, and what do please God!”
Tess has visits from her village friends, but these visits are not enough to erase her impending depression. Even church affords no comfort to her as the churchgoers whisper and gossip about her. After suffering the fall and winter at home, Tess is next seen the following August working as a field laborer harvesting corn. We see for the first time that Tess has a baby and stops to breastfeed him during the lunch break the harvesting crew takes.
Later that night, the infant falls ill. All sense that the child will die sometime in the next few days. Tess, realizing that her baby has not been baptized, gathers her siblings and baptizes the infant herself. During the ceremony, we learn that the child’s name is “Sorrow” after the phrase in Genesis 3:16, “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” Sorrow is buried in a nearly forgotten part of the church graveyard, where the “unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.”
The fall turns to winter and winter turns to spring. In May, Tess, now 20, sets out again, on her second excursion, to find work in a nearby town, at Talbothays Dairy. She wants solitude and time away from home where “she might be happy in some nook which had no memories.” Her journey takes her to a beautiful valley called Blackmoor on the river Froom/Frome where a new phase of her life begins.
