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Allusion
Explanation and Analysis—Tess as Eve:
As Tess heads to her new job as a milkmaid in Chapter 16, she remembers a song she used to sing as a child, before she had her tragic encounter with Alec D'Urberville. Using a biblical allusion, the narrator likens this pre-Alec time to the time before Eve ate the apple in the Garden of Eden:
She tried several ballads, but found them inadequate; till, recollecting the psalter that her eyes had so often wandered over of a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree of knowledge, she chanted: "O ye Sun and Moon … O ye Stars … ye Green Things upon the Earth … ye Fowls of the Air … Beasts and Cattle … Children of Men … bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever!"
In biblical scripture, Satan tempts Eve—the mother of mankind—into eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After consuming this fruit—against the wishes of God—both Eve and her husband, Adam, acquire forbidden knowledge and inflict sinfulness upon the human race. Similarly, before Tess met Alec, she had no knowledge of the various ways in which cruel and evil men exploit women. After Alec rapes her, then, it's as if Tess has "eaten of the tree of knowledge" and is aware of sin's presence in the world. Unlike Eve, though, Tess does not have agency: she did not choose to be raped, she was just forced to acquire this knowledge and did not seek it out on her own.
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