Bullfinches

Bullfinches are the songbirds kept in Mrs d'Urberville's bedroom at The Slopes, and whistling to them becomes one of Tess's duties after she enters the household's service. The task links her natural musical ability to the daily routine of the house, but it also exposes the unequal conditions of her employment: Alec's mother assigns the work, while Alec is able to approach Tess, observe her, and offer himself as the person to turn to if she needs help. The birds' care is therefore a small but revealing thread through Tess's first days in the household.

Place in the Household

Mrs d'Urberville explains that she likes to hear the birds because she cannot see them. She wants Tess to whistle to them every day, as a former boy who had played for them has left and the birds have been neglected for several days. Elizabeth adds that Alec had whistled to them that morning. Mrs d'Urberville responds with a sound of repugnance and makes no further reply. This exchange places the birds within a household in which the blind woman depends on sound for part of her experience, while also hinting at a strained relation between mother and son.

The bullfinches live in the same bedroom as Mrs d'Urberville, in a large four-poster bed hung with heavy damask curtains. At certain hours they fly freely around the room, leaving small white spots on the furniture and upholstery. Their cages are ranged by the window, where Tess gives her lessons. The detail makes their care part of the domestic fabric rather than a separate occupation: the birds' movements and droppings share the room with the bed and its curtains, and Tess's music enters the space in which Mrs d'Urberville sleeps.

Tess Learns Their Tunes

At first, Tess cannot perform the task. Although she can whistle like other country girls, she has not practiced for a long time. Alone in the walled garden, she sits on a coop and screws up her mouth, but can produce only a hollow rush of air, not a clear note. The failed practice shows the difference between possessing an ability in the past and being able to use it on demand as paid work; her chance of keeping the post seems, for the moment, tied to recovering the skill.

She does recover it. Tess has learned numerous airs from her musical mother, and once she can whistle again she finds the daily lessons in Mrs d'Urberville's room far less onerous than the first solitary practice. Unobserved by Alec, she raises her mouth toward the cage bars and pipes the tunes with ease and grace to the attentive birds. The task becomes a regular morning routine and an occasion on which her inherited musical aptitude is useful, rather than a mere test she fears failing.

Alec's Presence and the Work's Unequal Conditions

Before Tess can regain her skill, Alec comes over the garden wall while she is trying to whistle. He teases her about her unsuccessful efforts and calls her his cousin with a faintly mocking tone. He later presents himself as a source of assistance, telling her to come to him rather than to the bailiff if she encounters difficulties. The offer accompanies a broader pattern: he cultivates familiarity through playful dialogue and the private use of the cousinly address, while Tess's position leaves her dependent on Mrs d'Urberville and, because of the older woman's comparative helplessness, on Alec as well.

The daily lessons do not take place in the young man's company; the narrative stresses that Tess can whistle freely when he is absent. But that separation is not complete protection. One morning, with Mrs d'Urberville away, Tess thinks she hears movement behind the bed and glimpses the toes of boots beneath the curtain fringe. Her whistling breaks up, betraying that she suspects someone is there. From then on she searches the curtains every morning, though she never finds anyone concealed inside. The account identifies Alec as having evidently reconsidered a freak of ambushing her to frighten her. The scene turns a familiar domestic task into an encounter shaped by the possibility of being watched: even without finding him, Tess must check the space where she works.

Narrative Significance

The bullfinches connect sound, service, and surveillance. Mrs d'Urberville cannot see the birds and asks Tess to make them audible; Tess, in turn, finds a way to make her own musical ability part of her work. Yet the same room that accommodates this gentle routine also contains the curtains behind which Tess fears a hidden observer. The contrast is sharpened by the different meanings of the birds' song: for Mrs d'Urberville it supplies a pleasure unavailable through sight, while for Tess it is a duty she can perform most comfortably when Alec is not present.

The birds are not themselves presented as agents in the household's conflict. Their narrative importance lies in how their care organizes Tess's mornings and places her repeatedly in the bedroom, where the conditions of her dependence and Alec's access to her become visible. The progression from failed whistling in the garden to fluent playing at the cages traces Tess's adaptation to her new work, while her daily inspection of the curtains preserves the unease beneath that growing competence.