A Brief Analysis of Tess’s Tragedy
Tess:A Rebellious Woman
学生姓名 韩利娟
学 号 1427340543003
类 型 网 络 教 育
专 业 英语（英语教育）
层 次 专升本
指导教师 肖丹
日 期 2016年4月10日
Contents
Abstract
1 Introduction
1.1Introduction to the Work
1.2 A Brief Introduction to the Author and the Social Background
1.2.1 Introduction to Thomas Hardy
1.2.2 Introduction of the Social Background of Tess of the D’Urbervilles
2 The reasons for her rebellious character
2.1 Reasons for Subsistence
2.1.1. A Hard Life for Peasants
2.1.2 Unequal Morality for Female
2.1.3 Male Domination over Women
2.1.4 Class Oppression
2.2. Reasons for Her Nature
2.2.1 Her Sense of Responsibility
2.2.2 Her self-respect
2.2.3 Her Aggressive Character
3 The Embodiments of Her Rebellious Character
3.1 Never Yield to Pressure from the Society
3.2 Her Rebellion to the Traditional Morality
3.3 Her Indifference to Alec and Killing Him Finally
4 Conclusion
References
1
Tess: A Rebellious Woman in Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Abstract
Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of the representative works of Thomas Hardy. Traditionally, Tess’s tragedy and the reasons for it are usually the focus of most researchers when it comes to this novel. This study, nevertheless, focuses on the careful analysis of the rebellious factors existed in the heroine Tess’s personality based on the detailed reading of Thomas Hardy’s masterpiece Tess of the D’Urbervilles. It aims to help us develop an all-sided understanding of Tess and her tragic life which is influenced deeply by her rebellious character. Also, it is one of my aims to bring a little progress and improvement to the study of the masterpiece Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Key Words: personality; rebellious; victim
1 Introduction
Tess of the D’Urbervilles belongs to the first type of Hardy’s fictions—novels of character and environment. And it is also the most famous one in his series of Wessex Stories. Generally, when it comes to this novel, most researchers focus on Tess’s tragedy and the reasons that lead to it. However, in this essay, I decide to draw people’s attention to the rebellious factors existed in the heroine Tess’s personality as well as her tragic life which is influenced deeply by her rebellious character.
1.1Introduction to the Work
As is known to all, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is the most renowned novel of Thomas Hardy. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tesswas born in a very poor family, and she was a simple, innocent and faithful country girl.Such characters made her unable to integrate with the modern world at that time which was newly industrialized and was full of new unban civilization.At the same time, her simple and kind character also made her unable to put up with the nouveau riche like Alec who wasprofligate and devoid of principles, andled a life of indulgence.She finally becomes the victim of the modern society. Tess, the heroine, is depicted as a victim of the modern society. Being a beautiful, innocent, honest, sweet-natured, and hard-working country girl, she is easily taken in and abused by the hypocritical bourgeoisie, constantly suppressed by the social conventions and moral values of the day, and eventually executed by the unfair legal system of the society. Her absolute obedience to Angel as her husband and her willing suffering and sacrifice to him is not only her weakness in character but also inevitability in a girl of her upbringing. And the most important of all, it is the poverty of the family that forces her to continue the improper relationship again with Alec, and finally, leads to his murder and her execution. In this sense, she is cornered and driven into dead end by the destructive social forces incarnated in the characters of Alec and Angel, with one depriving her of her virginity and purity and the other forcing her back into an immoral relationship and then, catching her at it, reducing her to desperation and self-destruction. On the one hand, Tess’s fate is personal, because she happens to be so beautiful, so pure, so innocent, so obedient, and so poor, and because she happens to get involved with the two men who, though apparent rivals, actually join their forces in bringing about her destruction. On the other hand, her fate is also a social result. It can be the fate of any country girl like her. It can be the fate of all the peasants who are driven out of their land and home and forced to seek somewhere else for sustenance.
1.2 A Brief Introduction to the Author and the Social Background
1.2.1Introduction to Thomas Hardy
Son of mason, Thomas Hardy was born in Dorsetshire, southwest of England, the area that later became the famous “Wessex” in many of his novels. He attended local schools until 15. Then he was apprenticed to a Dorchester architect. Six years later he went to London to work for a famous architect and to continue his study and practice as an architect. Meanwhile, he was completing his general education by attending classes and reading widely: language, literature, history, philosophy and art, and began to develop his interest in fiction and poetry. He even won two prices for essays on architect subjects. But architect was never his desired profession. Soon he was writing poetry; But poetry didn’t brought him success, so thenhe began to write novels. In 1871, his first novel Desperate Remedies was published anonymously. However, the real success of his literary career came with Under the Greenwood Tree.The publication of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1874 finally enabled him to give architectural work for writing. In the following twenty-three years he produced sixteen local-colored novels until 1896 when he was tired of all those criticism against his last two books: Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1896). The hostile reception of the novel sent him back to his first love—poetry. From then on, he abandoned writing novels and devoted himself to poetic creation. Of the eight volumes by him—918 poems in all—the most famous is The Dynasts, a long epic–drama about the Napoleonic wars which came out in three parts between 1903-1908. On January 11, 1928, this last important novelist of the 19th century and the first important poet of the 20th century died. He was buried with impressive ceremonies in the Poet’s Corner in the Westminster Abbey but his heart was brought back to his birthplace.
1.2.2Introduction of the Social Background of Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Many of Hardy’s novels were on the background of his hometown “Wessex”. In the mid-Victorian period, the capitalist industrial civilization invaded into the rural areas. Hardy’s hometown was not an exception. In the meantime, patriarchal society broke up rapidly, which made individual peasants fall into a jobless and impoverished pathetic situation economically. As a humanist, Hardy suffered an intense impact spiritually in the face of the consequences brought by the industrial civilization. He had a strongly emotional attachment to the old patriarchal civilization.Therefore he became hatred of the destruction brought about by the industrial civilization for people’s living condition. The social tragic consciousness in his novels was established in the social background of the time. His novels used the confrontation between industrial and patriarchal civilization as the breakthrough point, depicted objectively from the panorama to the part, reflected the survival predicament of common people deeply.
The era Tess lived was 1880s. With the invasion of the capitalism, British countryside under the patriarchal rule collapsed step by step. This caused the bankruptcy and impoverishment of the individual peasants. Tess, a daughter of a poor famer, as well as a wage earner, her tragic destiny was inevitable. Therefore, the tragedy of Tess was also the tragedy of the time and society.
2 The reasons for her rebellious character
2.1 Reasons for Subsistence
2.1.1.A Hard Life for Peasants
In Tess’s time, the society was full of tremendous changes in almost every respect. The industrial revolution continued to develop in spite of the social evils that accompanied. The emergence of locomotives threwBritain into a frenzy of railway building. Agriculture was further mechanized. Trade and commerce grewpromptly, driving more peasants, hand spinners and weavers to the crowded factories of the cities. The great transformation madeEnglandchange from an agricultural base to an industrial base. In the process of industrialism and the disintegration of peasantry, more and more peasants became impoverished and lived a miserable life. Rural workers produced beyond subsistence. As a daughter of a poor villagerand a wage-laborer later,it is very difficult for Tess to live a better life with her family under such a social environment.
2.1.2 Unequal Morality for Female
In Victorian time, the most important virtue for women was sexual purity. The dress for women was so traditional that it covered their whole body except hands and faces. Even showing the ankle or shoulder was considered improper. Women were required to remain virgin before marriage. The sexual morals were presumably rooted in people’s rational minds: when either men or women engaged in sexual lapses, the former would be forgiven while the later would be condemned. As Engels’s in the “family, private ownership and national origin,” the book states: “All women are considered serious offenders and the legal and social consequences of everything. For men are considered an honor, at best, but can appreciate the moral acceptance of small stain.” (Engels, 1993:9) It seems so innocent from the dialogue, “How could I be expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four months ago, why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know that…”(Thomas Hardy, 2002:53)But Tess won no comfort and consolation, instead, “she is surrounded by ‘a cloud of moral hobgoblins’ which terrify her ‘without reasons’ (Thomas Hardy, 2002:60) Then, the same sexual experience, Angle was pardoned but she was abused. Was it equal that any kind of sexual encounter would earn a young woman moral rebuke and social condemnation, regardless of how the man involved conducted himself? Moreover, the whole society turned against Tess, which aggravated her miserable life.After suffering so much, Tess was not afraid of the dark or the shadows; it was people she was anxious to avoid. Although she had broken an accepted social rule, it was not her mistake.
2.1.3 Male Domination over Women
Half of this world is female and the other part is male. To be exact, man and woman should be equal.Atthat time, a wife was the slave and private property of a husband. Men dominated women like the being](Gatrell,Simon,1993). He expected to be loved, but also to be obeyed. He made all the decisions. His wife was supposed to be his faithful companion. Male domination over women was perhaps even more unsettling. In the novel,Angle’s love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seemed, dominated her in an unhealthy way. Angle, who was born in a family of a pastor, refused to become a pastor to “serve God”. Instead, as an intellectual with an open mind,he loved to be engaged in agriculture, because he loved the countryside, and he desired to lead a natural, simple and refreshing country life. He didn’t want to marry a girl from a wealthy family; instead he would like to marry a girl from a farmer’s family. In his eye, Tess was “Daughter of Nature” (Thomas Hardy, chapter 18)and “Artemis”(Thomas Hardy, chapter 20 ). He regarded Tess as a symbol of purity and a perfect masterpiece,that is to say, he substituted an idealized picture of Tess’s country purity for the real life woman that he continually refused to get to know. Therefore, when Tess told him about her miserable experience with Alex that her purity was torn and stained by the dissolute and amative bad guy, her pure image in his mind soon collapsed.Angel, instead of sympathizing the pity girl, turned a blind eye to her true and deep love with him and abandoned her with an indifferent and cold heart, thus put Tessinto agony and despair. From this section of the novel,we can see that Angelmight be denying Tess’strue self, instead, he was only in favor of a perfect mental image that he preferred. Thus, Tess’srealidentity and experiences were suppressed unknowingly. To some extent, Angel, who is representative of men with open mind at that time, still could not get rid of the traditional view over women that women could not have their free life,and women were only men’s possessions. The purity of women’s body was regarded the most important, because a woman only belongs to her husband, who is dominant over both her body and her mind. That is one of the most important reasons for the tragedy of many women like Tess.
2.1.4 Class Oppression
When the novel was created, the British society was going through great and deep social changes, thus various kinds of social conflicts and crisis were brought about. Among them, the class prejudice against the poor was obvious ( In the novel, Thomas Hardy depicted the impact on the rural area brought by the newly developed industry and urban civilization. People began to desire material wealth and high social status, because that was symbol of status. While the poor people’s life got worse and worse, because their land was devoured by the modern industry thus they could not earn enough money, let alone to acquire a higher social status.Therefore, the poor inevitably suffered the class suppression from the rich. In the novel, though Tess was more polished than many people, she was not quite up to the level of the upper and middle classes both socially and culturally. She still represented many bad things to Mrs. Clare. Angel’s motherdid not accept Tess as a suitable daughter-in-law because she believed that Tess would bring down the status of the family. The Clares hope that Angle would find a suitable bride, meaning a highborn, well-bred woman of society. For them, marriage is not about love, but rather social, financial, and religious prosperity.
Though old family lines retained their earlier glamour, the old economic realities made wealth more important than inner nobility.Alec didn’t just use his wealth and social status to violate Tess; he also took advantage of her innocence and poverty. Also, at the end, he controlled Tess the second time by means of his wealth and the poorness of Tess’s family.
2.2. Reasons for Her Nature
2.2.1 Her Sense of Responsibility
The other main reason which caused Tess’s rebellion is her nature. By nature, Tess was a fresh country girl who was full of the sense of responsibility for her family which was a result ofher father’s laziness and mother’s simple mindedness. Her sense of responsibility is a main thread in the novel, and several stories reveal her sense of responsibility. First, the horse’s deathleads her into deep consideration. She thought she was responsible for this accident and she must earn money to support her poor family. This sense of guilt led her to visit the D’Urbervilles and put her into an uncertain and potentially dangerous situation which destroyed her purity and the happiness of her whole life. After thedeath of her father, her familywas put into a worse situation.In order to help her family survive the difficulties, she hadno other option but to bear the sadness to live with Alec again.WithoutTess, the family might suffer more. But Tess’s self-sacrifice gainedher nothing excepta series of blameand misunderstanding from the neighbors and the end of her whole life’s happiness.
2.2.2 Her self-respect
Another remarkable feature of Tess’s characteristics is her strong self-respect. Fate impinged upon Tess’s life at every turn. Whenever she was faced with a difficult decision, the choice she selected made her situation much worse. But Tess was a strong woman with great self-respect throughout the novel. She wanted to become knowledgeable and self-sufficient and refused to crumble under pressure. She refusedAlec’s help and said to him: “I will not take anything from you!” “It’s true. I could lead a comfortable life. But I have enough honors not to tell that lie. If I loved you, I might have a very good reason to tell you so. But I don’t”. (Thomas Hardy, 2002:78) Tess chastised herself for her weakness which let herself become a victim. When Angle left her, she refused to ask his family for help because she didn’t want to be looked down upon by his family. This decision madeher life begin to dissolve completely. Under the appearance of her strong self-respect, that is actually her strong sense of inferiority. She didn’t want to be looked down upon by Alec, by Angel and by his family. Therefore she developed her rebellious character.
2.2.3 Her Aggressive Character
In fact, also inside Tess’s character, there is also an aggressive factor. She had a unique view of life, but never parroted. When the priest did not promise her baby to take a baptism, she said to him: “If God does not recognize such moves to not a formal test, it is not paradise for the children, such as whether their paradise, as children, you did not special.” (Thomas Hardy, 2002:103) When Alec came to her struggle, she dared to face and say: “I don’t like’ee at all! I hate and detest you! I’ll go back to mother, I will! ” (Thomas Hardy, 2002:80) While meeting Angle, the sinful feeling made her showing unselfishness when she faced the occasion that three girls were also in love with him. She thought that they were more suitable for him, and tried her best to provide favorable conditions for them to get Angle’s love, although she loved him deeply. When mother asked her not to tell Angle about her past, Tess knew deep down inside that she could not follow the advice. Her conscience was too strong to live with the secret, and she must free herself of the burden so that she can live comfortably and morally. She was so unselfish and kindhearted, but only end up with the consequenceof being abandoned.