“What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is.” p.136
This is a quotation that is found in Phase the Third. It is Angel Clare talking about Tess at Talbothays Dairy. This is one of the first times that Angel sees Tess at the dairy. It turns out that she was the girl who he saw dancing at the beginning of the novel, but he wouldn’t dance with her. I think that this quotation is significant to the novel because this is when Angel starts to become interested in Tess, and later asks her to marry him. It is also ironic that Angel says how fresh and virginal she is even though he doesn’t know about her past with Alec d’Urberville. She actually isn’t a virgin and Angel later finds out and leads to controversy between him and Tess.