But now, of course, I don't want to go to bed

Okay. "Tess of the d'Ubervilles" is consuming me. Last week, on my lunch break, I went and grabbed a coffee and just read for twenty minutes because I couldn't make it until the bus ride home before cracking the book open again. And the weird thing? Way back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I had cable (and was obviously single, because I believe this occurred on a Saturday night) I remember getting sucked into this period piece on PBS. God I miss PBS. Anyways, it was this heart wrenching tale of the woe that befell this good-hearted and pure woman that did nothing exceptionally wrong except make the mistake of choosing the way of Nature over the Church during the rigid Victorian era (to be read: got knocked up and didn't get married). I remember calling my mom to tell her to watch this program because, even though it didn't have the flair and garishness of a Hollywood production, the acting was painfully sincere and it utterly enraptured me. Long story short: I believe I was watching "Tess of the d'Ubervilles". I think I missed the first half of it on t.v., but now things in the book are becoming familiar and I have a good idea of the ending and as much as I can hardly bear to put the book down I drag my feet at the looming idea of the end of the book. Ah. God. I'm actually going to reproduce a quote here so you can get a mere taste of the descriptive angst and emotion of this book. This passage occurs after Tess marries Angel Clare. She married him without disclosing that she had had a child out of wedlock (the child died) a few years before. Prior to her admission of this fact (the guilt of which she was unable to shed from herself or forgive herself for), Angel had admitted to her that he had had a tryst with a woman before he had met her and had asked for Tess' forgiveness.
"Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. O you cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not... My wife, my Tess - nothing in you warrants such a supposition as that?"
"I am not out of my mind," she said.
"And yet - " He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses: "Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a way - but I hindered you, I remember!"
These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not weep. Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and from this position she crouched in a heap.
"In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry mouth. "I have forgiven you for the same!"
And, as he did not answer, she said again - "Forgive me as your are forgiven! I forgive you, Angel."
"You - yes, you do."
"But you do not forgive me?"
"O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case. You were one person: now you are another. My God - how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque - prestidigitation as that!"
He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into horrible laughter - as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.
"Don't - don't! It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked. "Oh have mercy upon me - have mercy!"
He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.
"Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out. "Do you know what this is to me?"
He shook his head.
"I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy! I have thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall be if I do not! That's what I have felt, Angel!"
"I know that."
"I though, Angel, that you loved me - me, my very self! If it is I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It frightens me! Having begun to love you, I love you for ever - in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more. Then how can you, O my own husband, stop love me?"
"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."
"But who?"
"Another woman in your shape."
I would add here that this book was written by a man, Thomas Hardy, and was first published in 1891. It was considered "controversial" and was released in an edited form, though I am reading the original version. It was also said that Hardy's affinity for the character was such that he used to refer to her as though she were a real person.
And I wanted to write a book about what?? Sure, I'll just bang off a little something that comes up against societal mores, preconceived notions, Nature versus the Church, classicism, romantic love, the encroaching industrial revolution against a pastural and naturous background, and sprinkle in some women's lib to boot.
I'm going to write a book about unicorns. I think they're pretty.