Foil Characters

A foil character is someone who is the complete opposite of another character. In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urberville, Alec and Angel seem to be foil characters to one another. Alec and Angel represent the type of men in Tess’s life, Alec being the villain and Angel being the hero, but these characters are more complex than that. These two characters are made out to be foil characters but can be seen as similar in many areas. Even though Angel and Alec seem polar opposites of each other, their actions and behavior with Tess continuously show how similar they really are and how difficult it is to label them as good or evil.

As soon as these characters are introduced, Hardy conveys the type of character they are set up to be with Angel being

Angel does this when he asks Tess to marry him and she refuses. He asks her over and over again and asks why she won’t marry him. Alec tries to seduce Tess on two different occasions in the novel. The first time was in the beginning of the novel when Tess first gets the job at the d’Urberville house and the second time was when Alec sees Tess again and follows her from the Flintcomb Ash Farm, to her house, and to Kingsbere. Angel also similarly tries to get near to Tess when they are in the rain delivering milk to the station and he says, “Creep close to me, and perhaps the drizzle won’t hurt you much” (190). They are also similar in their treatment of Tess and how they view her. Alec views her as a object and she is “like a puppet” to him and also calls himself her master. Angel also sees Tess as an object and falls in love with an idealized Tess. Angel and Alec dress Tess up making her like a doll or an object they can change. Their love of Tess may differ, but their actions show how similar they actually

After discovering that Tess is a fallen woman, Angel does not seem to recognize Tess to be the person he once knew. He tells her that “You were one person; now you are another” (235), and also says he does not love her but “ Another women in your shape” (236). Angel looks at Tess as if she is a whole other person and leaves her because of it. Meanwhile when Alec sees Tess for the second time and explains to her how he is still in love with her offering to marry her to make things right. He again tries to pursue her for sexual reasons and says “...I was your master once! I will be your master again” (344). Even though Alec seems evil he constantly reminds Tess that he is the only person seeking her out and devoting time to try to help Tess escape from her horrible situation. Alec even offers to help her family telling her, “We’ll get up a regular colony of fowl, and your mother can attend to them excellently; and the children can go to school” (369). With Angel nowhere to be seen, Alec offers to help Tess and her family, even though it maybe just to win Tess over. But Angel and Alec are similar when Angel realizes he has done wrong by Tess and returns to win her back. Angel tries his best to win Tess back by telling her that he still loved her and that “...my mother and father will welcome you now!” (394). He is now willing to help Tess and love her