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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Mrs. D'Urberville's Birds:
When Tess first brings the birds to Mrs. D'Urberville in Chapter 9, the narrator notes Tess's feelings about the encounter, observing with a simile that such proceedings are similar to the sacrament of Confirmation in the Catholic tradition:
It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs. D'Urberville was the bishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the maidservant the parson and curate of the parish bringing them up.
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Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Tantridge Villagers:
In the following passage from Chapter 10, the narrator uses personification and a simile to describe the behavior of the drunk Tantridge villagers, whom Tess walks with on her way back home at night:
Unlock with LitCharts A+They followed the road with a knowledge that they were soaring along in a supporting medium, possessed of original and profound thoughts, themselves and surrounding nature forming an organism of which all the parts harmoniously and joyously interpenetrated each other. They were as sublime as the moon and stars above them, and the moon and stars were as ardent as they.
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Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Tess as an Object:
Alec demands a goodbye kiss from Tess in the following excerpt from Chapter 12. In this passage, the narrator uses a simile to convey Tess’s apathy and lack of agency:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Tess] thereupon turned round and lifted her face to his, and remained like a marble term while he imprinted a kiss upon her cheek . . . . She turned her head in the same passive way, as one might turn at the request of a sketcher or hairdresser, and he kissed the other side, his lips touching cheeks that were damp and smoothly chill as the skin of the mushrooms growing around them.
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Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—The Fall of Babylon:
At the end of Chapter 15, the narrator makes an allusion to the downfall of Babylon—documented in the Bible—and compares it to the fall of the House of D'Urberville:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Tess] would be able to look at [the former D'Urberville estates], and think not only that D'Urberville, like Babylon, had fallen, but that the individual innocence of a humble descendant could lapse as silently.
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Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Tess's New Beginning:
In Chapter 16, the narrator describes the Vale of Little Dairies as full of wide open spaces. This spatial imagery mirrors Tess's current journey—both physical and emotional—which, in her mind, will provide her with new opportunities and freedom:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[The Vale of Little Dairies] lacked the intensely blue atmosphere of the rival Vale, and its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear, bracing, ethereal. The river itself, which nourished the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed not like streams in Blackmoor. Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowing over beds of mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanish unawares. The Var waters were clear as the pure River of Life shown to the Evangelist.
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Explanation and Analysis—Tess the Fly:
In Chapter 16, as Tess descends into the Vale, the narrator likens her to a fly on a billiard-table:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Not quite sure of her direction 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 had 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.
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Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—Angel's Profession:
In Chapter 18, the narrator uses a simile to describe Angel's career prospects, as understood through the eyes of his father:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And if Angel were not going to enter the Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge? The University as a step to anything but ordination seemed, to this man of fixed ideas, a preface without a volume.
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Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—Tess and the Snake:
In the following passage from Chapter 27, Angel catches Tess off-guard. The narrator uses a simile to liken Tess to a snake:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Tess] had not heard [Angel] enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake’s. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn.
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Chapter 30
Explanation and Analysis—The Appetite for Joy:
In Chapter 30, Hardy uses a simile to compare a quintessential human “appetite for joy” to an overwhelming tide of water:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The "appetite for joy" which pervades all creation, that tremendous force which sways humanity to its purpose, as the tide sways the helpless weed, was not to be controlled by vague lucubrations over the social rubric.
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Chapter 35
Explanation and Analysis—Tess and Sarcasm:
In Chapter 35, the narrator uses a simile to describe Tess’s response to Angel’s biting sarcasm:
Unlock with LitCharts A+To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled.
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Chapter 36
Explanation and Analysis—Angel's Logical Side:
In the following passage from Chapter 36, the narrator remarks on the logical core of Angel's temperament, using a simile to liken it to metal hidden in soft soil:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Within the remote depths of [Angel's] constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general, there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to traverse it.
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Explanation and Analysis—Ideal versus Reality:
The tension between Tess and Angel mounts in Chapter 36 as both characters reckon with their respective sexual histories. Towards the end of the chapter, the narrator makes a key observation about Angel’s behavior, using a simile to remark on the fact that Angel tends to favor image over substance:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Tess] was appalled by the determination revealed in the depths of this gentle being she had married — the will to subdue the grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the flesh to the spirit. Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.
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