Tess tries to redirect Angel's affection toward the other milkmaids

Tess tries to redirect Angel Clare’s affection toward the other milkmaids by praising Retty Priddle and Izz Huett as possible wives and deliberately making herself less available to him. The episode turns her private uncertainty into a course of action: she tries to clear space for the women she sees as better suited to Angel, even as the effort reveals how much she herself is affected by his attention.

The Conversation in the Dairy

After the dairy workers had been stooping together, Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess fell behind. Angel also left the line to look for a weed; when Tess found him nearby, what she had heard the previous night was weighing on her, and she spoke first. She asked whether the other women looked pretty, naming Izz Huett and Retty Priddle. The question opened a discussion of their attractiveness and their prospects rather than a direct statement of her own feelings.

Tess had privately decided that either woman would make a good farmer’s wife. She therefore praised their abilities as dairywomen, saying they were excellent at the work and even skimmed better than she did. Angel answered that they were not better than Tess, but she persisted in directing his attention away from herself. Her praise serves at once as practical comparison and self-effacement: she presents the other women as suitable, while minimizing her own claim.

Making Room for the Other Women

When Tess noticed Retty colouring under Angel’s gaze, she pointed it out to him and said that Retty was blushing because he was looking at her. The gesture makes the attempted redirection more pointed than general praise: Tess identifies a possible response between Angel and Retty and invites him to notice it. Yet the narrator makes clear that Tess could not bring herself to say the fuller request she was approaching—that he should marry one of them instead of thinking of her.

The scene turns on a gap between what Tess does and what she cannot say. Her words offer Angel alternatives, but she does not openly disclose that she is trying to remove herself from consideration. She follows Dairyman Crick, and takes a mournful satisfaction in seeing that Angel remains behind. The result is mixed: her attempt to arrange his attention toward the others has not plainly succeeded, but she has created a moment of separation and can tell herself that she has made room for them.

Withdrawal and Its Motive

From that day Tess made a sustained effort to avoid Angel. She no longer allowed herself to remain long in his company, even when their proximity happened by chance, and she gave the other three milkmaids every opportunity. The redirection thus continues beyond the conversation: it becomes a deliberate pattern of withdrawal rather than a single tactful exchange.

Tess’s action is rooted in her belief that she ought to obscure her own attractions and in her awareness that the dairymaids have confided their feelings about Angel to her. She understands that he holds the affections of all the women in his keeping. At the same time, she respects his care not to compromise any of them or risk their happiness. That restraint, whether she judges it rightly or wrongly, awakens in her a tender respect for his sense of duty—a quality she had not expected from a man and which, she thinks, prevents the simpler-hearted women from suffering through false encouragement.

Significance

The episode places Tess in the uneasy position of caring for the other women while managing her own attachment. Her intervention is compassionate, but it is also self-denying: she tries to redirect Angel without plainly telling him not to choose her. By praising the others’ looks and skill, noticing Retty’s blush, and then limiting her own company with Angel, Tess attempts to shape a romantic situation whose outcome she cannot control.

The scene also establishes an important contrast between Angel’s conduct and Tess’s expectations. She reads his care toward the dairymaids as a disciplined sense of responsibility and values it precisely because she has not expected such restraint from a man. Yet her own respect for that quality helps sustain her withdrawal: rather than press her claim, she gives the others a chance. The action therefore reveals both her tenderness toward her companions and the cost of her reluctance to put her own desire into words.