Tess’s baptism of her infant, whom she names Sorrow, is a private ceremony performed in the family bedroom when the child appears close to death. Tess turns a washing-stand, a jug of water, a Prayer-Book, and her younger siblings into the means of a church-like rite. The moment makes maternal care inseparable from religious conviction: she cannot secure the baby’s future, but she can act to give him the sacrament and welcome him into the faith. By morning, Sorrow is dead, and the solemnity of the rite meets the blunt finality of loss.

The Emergency Ceremony

After a long spell of incoherent supplication, Tess abruptly hopes that the baby may yet be saved. She lights a candle and wakes her young sisters and brothers, who share the room. Pulling out the washing-stand so she can stand behind it, she pours water from a jug and arranges the children around her with their hands joined and fingers held upright. Their half-awake wonder gives the ordinary bedroom the order of a congregation: one sister holds the Prayer-Book open as a church clerk would hold it for a parson, while Tess takes the infant in her arms and begins the baptism.

The ceremony is improvised, but Tess treats it with full seriousness. She performs the service herself, rather than waiting for a clergyman, and directs the children to participate as witnesses. Their attention is initially sleepy and uncertain; as Tess proceeds, it becomes reverence. The scene therefore turns on both practical urgency and a change in how her siblings see her: the older sister who has awakened them becomes, for the duration of the rite, a commanding religious figure.

Naming and the Rite

The child’s name is not prepared in advance. When one of the children asks what he will be called, a phrase from Genesis suggests a name to Tess as she continues the service. She declares, “SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” The name is given in the very act that welcomes the infant into the religious community, but it also carries a stark resonance beside his precarious condition.

Tess sprinkles water over the child and asks the children to answer “Amen.” She then continues with the words of reception and the sign of the Cross. Dipping her hand in the basin, she draws a large cross on the baby with her forefinger, and follows the customary sentences about his struggle against sin, the world, and the devil and his service through life. The children repeat the Lord’s Prayer in thin, lisping voices, then join again in the final “Amen.” Their small responses make the service communal, though its authority and direction rest with Tess.

Tess as Officiant

The narration emphasizes the contrast between Tess’s worn circumstances and the dignity she assumes in the rite. In her long white nightgown, with her dark hair hanging to her waist, she appears unusually tall and imposing. Candlelight softens the visible marks of labor and fatigue, while her intense faith seems to transform her face. The children, at first physically heavy with sleep, become increasingly absorbed; after the thanksgiving, they no longer question her and regard her as a towering, almost divine presence rather than simply as their sister.

This transformation is not an institutional elevation: Tess has no church office, and the service takes place at home. Its force comes from her care for the infant and from the conviction with which she conducts each part of the rite. The scene gives her siblings an experience of religious authority enacted by a girl-mother in a room arranged from household objects. Their changed attention registers how completely she inhabits that role, even though the sacrament cannot alter the child’s fragile physical prospects.

Death and Significance

The baptism invokes a future in which the infant will fight against sin and remain a faithful servant throughout his life. The narrative immediately cuts against that promised duration: Sorrow’s life is brief, and he dies in the blue of morning. The preceding solemnity is thus not a rescue from death. It is Tess’s answer to the child’s vulnerability, a deliberate act of care made possible in the small interval before his death.

When the other children wake, they cry bitterly and ask Tess to have another pretty baby. Their words return the loss to the family’s everyday life, sharply contrasting with the religious grandeur of the nighttime ceremony. The event consequently holds two scales together: the children’s intimate grief and the ritual’s language of spiritual belonging. Tess cannot give Sorrow a life beyond that morning, but the baptism lets her name him, gather witnesses around him, and meet his peril with an act of faith rather than helpless waiting.