关于“德伯家的苔丝”—悲剧的分析_毕业论文

河南理工大学本科毕业论文

河南理工大学本科生毕业论文

On Tess of D’Urbervilles —Analysis of the

Tragedy

关于“德伯家的苔丝”—悲剧的分析

院系：河南理工大学外国语系

专业：英语

Contents

Acknowledgements (Ⅰ)

Abstract (Ⅱ)

摘要 (Ⅲ)

1 Introduction (1)

1.1 Introduction to the Author and the Novel (1)

1.2 Previous Study of Tess’s Tragedy and the Problems (2)

2 The Author’s Concept on Fate and the Heroine’s Tragedy (4)

3 Analysis of Tess’s Tragedy (6)

3.1 Analysis of Tess’s Family (6)

3.2 Analysis of the Social Backgroun d (8)

3.3 Analysis of Tess’s Character (12)

3.4 Analysis of the Male Factors in Tess’s Tragedy (14)

4 Conclusion (16)

References (18)

Acknowledgements

The accomplishment of this thesis results from the help of many: Hereby I would like to express recognition and gratitude to those who made this thesis possible.

First of all, I am particularly indebted to my superviso r—Zhou Changjun, whose valuable and constructive suggestion, comments, and encouragements were given to me throughout the duration of writing this thesis. It is a great honor for me to study under his guidance, for not only have I benefited from his profound knowledge, but also from his modest personality and his attitudes towards academic study.

Secondly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to other professors and teachers, who have instructed and helped me a lot in the past four years.

Last my thanks would go to my beloved family for their unconditional love and support all through these years. I also owe my sincere gratitude to my friends and my fellow classmates who encouraged and helped me in the past four years.

It is just because of the contributions of these people, whether mentioned or not, that this thesis is able to be completed. To every one of them, I give my most sincere thanks.

Abstract

Thomas Hardy was once called “Shakespeare in British novel.” He looked at the life in the vision of tragedy; He experienced and described people’s suffering under the fierce impact of two civilizations in a tragic method and unique male way; He described the poor Tess’s short and unfortunate life in an epic way. Tess, a daughter of a poor villager who discovers that he is the descendent of an ancient family D’Urbervilles is persuaded by her parents to claim kindred with a more prosperous D’Urbervilles and is seduced by the master, Alec. And then she has to return home in disgrace. After giving birth to a child who dies in infancy, she meets Angel Clare, son of a clergyman, and she fails in love with him and marries him. On their wedding night Tess and Angel tell each other about their past. Angel who gets the hypocritical morality deserts her because of her seduction by Alec; then poverty makes her come back to Alec again and tragedy happens. The tragedy of Tess is both the social tragedy and simultaneously also the disposition tragedy. Her tragedy’s origin is not only objective, moreover is also subjective. This paper tells us that Tess is the victim of the bourgeois society and capitalist invasion into the English peasantry. By analyzing the family’s poverty, the social background, her own character, injustice and hypocrisy, the male chauvinism factors, the author’s concept on fate, etc, this paper presents the main causes of Tess’s tragedy.

Key words: Tess; tragedy; social background; character; victim; law; morality

关于“德伯家的苔丝”—悲剧的分析

摘要

托马斯·哈代曾一度被评论家誉为“英国小说中的莎士比亚”。他擅长于以悲剧的眼光审视人生，以悲剧性感悟方式和独特的男性话语去体验和刻画两种文明的激烈撞击给人们带来的现实苦难。他用史诗般的文字描写了贫穷的农家女子苔丝短促而不幸的一生。苔丝是一个贫穷农民的女儿, 他的父亲获悉自己本是骑士世家德伯家的嫡系子孙, 于是便派苔丝去附近一个富户德伯家认本家，从而遭遇到亚力克的引诱而失身，苔丝回家以后生下一个孩子，不久后夭折。在农场做工的时候，他遇到了安琪儿—一个牧师的儿子，两个人很快坠入爱河并且订了婚，新婚之夜，苔丝向安琪儿坦白了自己的遭遇，可是安琪儿却未能原谅他，反而离开了他。后来，贫穷再一次迫使苔丝回到了亚力克身边，于是悲剧发生了。苔丝的悲剧不仅是社会的悲剧同时也是性格的悲剧。他的悲剧不仅是客观的更是主观的。这篇论文告诉我们苔丝是资产阶级社会和资本主义入侵农村的受害者。导致主人公苔丝悲惨命运的原因是多方面的，如家庭、社会、宗教、不公平的法律、传统的伦理道德及自身的弱点等。这篇论文通过分析19世纪的英国社会背景，苔丝的家庭背景，男权主义，苔丝自身的性格以及作者哈代的宿命观来挖掘造成苔丝悲惨命运的主要原因。

关键词：苔丝；悲剧；社会背景；性格；受害者；法律；道德

1 Introduction

1.1 Introduction to the Author and the Novel:

Thomas Hardy is an outstanding reality writer in Victorian era. He has superior intelligence and traditional feelings, but his view is gloomy and melancholy. He is convinced that the conflict between human nature which is internal, external and subjective and nature or the social environment which is objective is inevitable. Son of a mason, Thomas Hardy was born near Dorchester, the area that later became the famous “Wessex” in many of his novels. At 16, he was apprenticed to a local architect, but architecture was never his desired profession. So he changed to write poetry. When that failed, he began to write novels. Most of his novels are set in Wessex which is fictional primitive and crude rural region. They are known in an agricultural setting menaced by the forces of invading capitalism.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A pure woman, published in 1891, is one of the best and most popular works by Hardy. It tells a love tragedy of a seduced rural girl. Tess, a poor peasant girl brought up with the traditional idea of womanly virtues, persuaded by her mother, she goes to claim kindred with a more prosperous branch of the D’Urbervilles family. And there she is seduced by the young master of the house, Alec, and then has to return home in disgrace. After giving birth to a child who dies in infancy, she meets Angel Clare, son of a clergyman, and she fails in love with him and marries him. On their wedding night Tess and Angel tell each other about their past. After hearing Tess’s confession, Angel leaves her abruptly for Brazil. Poverty forces Tess to work at a farm Flintcomb Ash where she is insulted and ill-treated by master. Then her father’s death and the expulsion of her family from their cottage drive her to seek for assistance from Alec, and the later now a preacher, soon resumes his former illicit relations with her. Angel Clare returns repentant and ready to be reconciled to Tess, but the girl finds that her living with Alec hinders her from returning to Ange1. She kills Alec and is speedily arrested, tried and hanged. With Tess’s death the tragedy ends (Chen, 2000: 69).

Through the molding of Tess, Hardy shows the female’s tragic fate under the rule of male and exposes the hypocrisy of moral and religious in British society of 19th century, also shows strong humanitarian spirit and strong sense of pessimism.

From a close study of the novel, we can find: Tess is beautiful, pure, honest, kind-hearted, hard-working, brave, self-sacrifice and self-resistance. Therefore she is a typical victim of that society, its poverty of her family forces Tess to claim kindred with Alec and finally be seduced. Angel who gets the hypocritical morality deserts her because of her seduction by Alec; those two men: one robed her virginity and purity, and the other abducted her Love in the wedding night and abandoned her, while obviously they are rivals, but together they promote her to the final destruction.

Then poverty makes her come back to Alec again and tragedy happens. The family’s poverty, social cruelty, injustice and hypocrisy make her tragic fate. The tragedy of Tess is both the social tragedy and simultaneously also the disposition tragedy. Her tragedy’s origin is not only objective, moreover is also subjective. Tess is a brand-new woman model which Hardy molds. She has the dual dispositions. On the one hand she dares to revolt against the traditional virtues and the false religion; On the other hand she cannot get rid of the traditional virtues thoroughly to own fetters.

Through the anal ysis of Tess’s tragic fate, this paper gives readers a deeper understanding of Hardy’s tragedy critical realism works.

1.2 Previous S tudy of Tess’s Tragedy and the Problems

In many years, the image of heroine Tess enjoys popular support and is impressive. The author Hardy also became the outstanding reality writer for this masterpiece in 19th-century England and had far-reaching impact on future generations.

On the analysis of Tess’s tragic fate, there are many related articles at home and abroad, for example, in He Hongwei and Huang Mujian’s paper (2007: 46), they think that in Tess’s tragedy, Angel’s ruthless; Tess’s view of love and male chauvinism in Victorian era caused her tragic fate. However, they didn’t mention the social background and the poverty of Tess’s family, for that are also very important in

Tess’s tragedy. In The Tragedy of the Social Origins and S ocial Mirror of Tess’s Tragedy, Yu Dongmei wrote that the heroine’s tragedy is the result of complicated conflict between the character and environment. This principle is also not comprehensive. Yu Yanhua of Daqing Normal University (2007: 38) considered that the root cause of Tess’s tragedy is social factor s.

However, the benevolent see benevolence and the wise see wisdom—different people have different views. But I think that all of their views are not comprehensive, because any formation of a tragedy is impossible to have one or two factors. In the novel of Tess of D’Urbervilles, the heroine’s tragedy have many factors, not only objective factors, such as the social background and the concept of male supremacy, more subjective factors, such as, the greed of Tess’s parents and Tess’s own character, besides, the author Thomas Hardy’s tragic fate concept is also indispensable.

2 The Author’s Concept on Fate and the H eroine’s Tragedy

Fatalism is “that view of life which says all actions is controlled by the nature of thing or by fate which is a great impersonal, primitive force existing through all eternity absolutely independent of human will and superior to any good created by man.”(Lorrain,1996:12). Since Hardy spends a great part of his life in the countryside, he sees the decline of the patriarchal mode of life in rural English after the invasion of the industrial capitalism, but he does not understand the root causes of this decline and rules of social developm ent. He attributes the peasants’tragedy to blind chance or mysterious fate.

Hardy’s thought of destiny are expounded from three aspects. First, the source of his thoughts of destiny came from the great influence of his mother and grandmother in his childhood and the child memories greatly affected his future writing. Secondly, ancient Greed tragedies played a key role in the literary education he had got. The characters in his novel are quite different from those in ancient Greek tragedies, but they both have strong tragic flavor, no escape from destiny and strong sense of fatalism. The readers can taste strong bitterness, pain, helplessness and unreasonable fate. Finally, the social causes of the thoughts of tragic destiny in Hardy’s novels are explored as followed: the dark society, the gap between the poor and the rich and the invasion of capitalism into countryside driving many poor peasants into bankruptcy and plights. So the unchangeable social reality and the social vicious power forced him into believing in fate and made him a tragic fatalist (Yang, 2007: 6).

Hardy wrote novels in the 1980s and 1990s era. Because the British Empire started to decline in the latter part of Victoria era, monopoly capital displacing free competition dragged the English into the crisis. As a realist, Hardy can make a copy of a vivid reality drawing, but as a thinker, Hardy does not understand the laws of social development. He believes that the crisis of the reality and insurmountable contradictions is universe’s will which is mysterious and unpredictable. Before the

strong power of the universe, he considered that human is very small. Between the conflict of human and environment, human beings are weak and suffer from the fate of its dominance. This led to Hardy’s ideology of pessimism and fatalism. This kind o f fatalism is revealed in Hardy’s many works especially in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.“Hardy gave to the interpretation of the story in accordance with his pessimist and determinist view of the world.” In a sen se, Tess is the victim of Hardy’s fatalism, and her tragedy is the tragedy of the time when Hardy lives.

In Hardy’s novels, often the heroes are suddenly dominated by fate or the universe will, the unfortunate coincidence come when they are close to happiness. In this novel, Tess’s life is full of dramatics, as if in each period of her life, accidental factors come, troubles follow and which push her into the life tragedy step by step.

The tragedy of Tess is not only because of social factors, but also has close relations wi th her character and the author’s fatalism and pessimism. However, all these factors are related directly to the capitalist society of that time. Through the narration of the tragic fate of the heroine Tess, the author strongly criticized the bourgeois and decadent and reactionary, exposed how the evil forces of religious destructed human beings and also the hypocrisy of the bourgeois moral. At the same time he sent a deep sympathy to the bottom poor people who have purity qualities, just as Tess. This kind of tragedy which joints destiny, social, personality is the result of Hardy’s experience and thinking, and it is also the crystallization in his exploring of the tragedy.

Hardy’s philosophy of life and tragic world view are reflected in his works, his philosophy is moving and the tragedy is solemn. Hardy is warrior holding a sword; he released his own emotional, spiritual to everyone. From each of his novels, we feel his love to village and his p essimism is born of love. Hardy’s pessimism is not negative, but positive. Therefore he cannot change the hero’s life of his works, only the y obey the arrangements of fate (Chandra, 1985: 23).

3 Analysis of Tess’s Tragedy

3.1 Analysis of Tess’s Family

Tess is the daughter of a very poor villager. Her parents are very benighted. When her father finds he is the descendent of an ancient aristocratic family, D’Urbervilles, he is immensely proud of himself although there is nothing valuable left in his hand. He even goes to hotel and drinks very much until Tess and her mother come to look for him. When Tess and her mother support his arms to go back home, there is such description:

On reaching the fresh air he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row if three at one moment as if they were marching to London and at another as if they were marching to Bath—with produced a comical effect, frequent enough in families on nocturnal home goings; and, like most comical effects, not quite so comic after al1. The two women valiantly disguised there forced excursions and countermarches as well as they could from themselves ; and so they approached by degrees their own door the head of the family bursting suddenly into his former refrain as he drew near; as if to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness of his present residence:(Liu, 2007: 103)

“I’ve go t a family vault at Kingsbeer!” (chapter4, 23)

“Hus h—don’t be so silly, Jacky,” Said his wife. “Yours is not the only family that was of count in wold days. Look at the Anktells, and Horseys, and the Thringhams themselves gone to seed almost as much as yo u—though you was bigger folks than they, that’s true. Thank God, I was never of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed of in that way!”

“Don’t you be so sure of that. From your father’tis my belief you’ve disgraced yourselves more than any o’us, and were kings and queens outright at one time.”

Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her own mind at the moment than thoughts of her ancestr y—

“I’m afraid father won’t be able to take the journey with the beehives tomorrow

so early.”

“I? I shall be all right in an hour or two,” said Durbeyfield (chapter4, 24).

From their conversation and the description of Durbeyfield’s drunkenness, we can see the fo olishness of Tess’s parents, and of course, which is mainly caused by poverty. The author Hardy takes some very humorous words to describe their bitterness caused by poverty:

All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield shi p—entirely dependent on the judgment of the Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures，their mecessities, their health, their existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield’s household chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death, thither were these half dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail with them—six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield (Chapter3, 18).

Under the great poverty, Tess’s parents become more an d more apathetic and vulgar. When they have a more prosperous relative, what they have in mind is to ask Tess to claim kindred with Alec .Tess isn’t wiling to go, but she has no idea about her family’s poverty. On the day when she is going to visit Alec there’s such a conversation in her family:

Her mother expostulated, “You will never set out to; see your folks without dressing up more the dand tha n that?” (chapter7, 44)

“But, I am going to work!” said Tess.

“Well, yes,” said Mrs. Durbeyfield, and in a private tone, “at first there mid be a little pretence, but l think it will be wiser of’ee to put your best side outward,” She added.

“Very well; I suppose you know best,” replied Tess with calm abandonment.

And to please her parents the girl put her self quite in Joan hands, saying serenely “Do what you like with me, mother.” (chapter7, 44)

Along these lines, we can see a very apathetic father and a vulgar mother, and also a pure girl who is weak and incompetent. Why Tess’s family is so poor? From

the novel we find out that the great poverty is not only in Tess’s family, but also in many families, especially peasants.

3.2 Analysis of the Social Background

Tess lives in the late 19th century, in which the cruel capitalist exploitation has ruined the English countryside severely; Wessx is not immured from the destruction. Capitalism brings a great harm to this old, rural and agricultural life of the place. The self-supporting peasants are displaced and impoverished. People are extremely poor and live a very miserable life. They are involved in an unemployed, tragically situation of poverty.

In the novel Hardy described the industrial civilization of the village at that time the impact of a panoramic painted. Tess and her family as a microcosm of individual farmers, who show deep in the material plight of, people who suffering in the struggle. Society tragedy is a human tragedy of the conflict with the social environment. Tess lived in the Victorian era and at that time British capitalist invaded the rural area. As a worker, a poor agricultural worker, she would be the various capitalist society of oppression and humiliation, oppression and humiliation of these are economic, power, physical, spiritual, religious, moral, and also the traditional concept. She is the tragedy of the times; her tragic fate is bound feet (Miao, 2007: 58).

At the beginning of the novel, there are some emphasizes on social changes. Durbeyfield’s discovery of his family history doesn’t mean a happy opening of displaying of a strange person. It only means a sharp difference between D’Urbervilles’past and presence. When the author describes Tess and her mother, there is a sentence like this: When they were together, the Jacobean and the Victorian ages were juxtaposed (Chapter3, 15). In the sentence, the history progress is reflected completely.

In Tess’s period, there is a very obvious social change. It is the disintegration of peasantry which is caused by capitalist invasion.

But as the long holdings fell they were seldom again let to similar tenants, and were mostly pulled down, if not absolutely required by the farmer for his hands. Cottagers who were not directly employed on the land flare fade of the other, who

was thus obliged to follow. These families who had formed the backbone of the village life in the past, who were the depositaries of the village traditions, had to seek refuge in the large centers; the process, humorously designated by statisticians as “t he tendency of the rural population towards the large towns, being really the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery.” (Chapter5, 37)

At that time the peasants lead a very miserable life, some of them are even destitute and homeless. They lose their land and are completed to find a work with low salary in capitalist factory or farm where the working condition is the worst and the hardest. Tess, as others, has to go out to look for a work after being deserted by Angle. She arrives at a new capitalist farm at Flinetomb Ash and the striking scene of capitalist exploitation and oppression on the farm is one of the highlight in the nove1. For example:

They worked on hour after hour, unconscious of the forlorn aspect they bore in the landscape, not thinking of the justice or injustice of their lot. Even in such a position as theirs it was possible to exist in a dream. In the afternoon the train came on again, and Marian said that they need not work any more. But if they did not work they would not be paid; so they worked on. It was so high a situation, this field, that the rain had no occasion to fall but raced along horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them like glass splinters, till now they flare wet through. Tess had not known till what was really meant by that. There are degrees of dampness, and a very little is called being wet through in common talk. But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of rainwater, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then at back, front, and yet to work on till the leaden light diminishes and marks that the sun is down, demands, a distinct modicum of stoicism, even of velour (Chapter43, 287).

From here, we can witness a vivid picture of how women laborers were especially heavily exploited with their lower wages but not lighter work and in the chapter describing their work in weat—barn, how they were insulted as well as maltreated with harsh words and orders, how they had to work under the most terrible conditions of weather and long hours indicates how much a poor peasant girl of a

small free—holder family, had to suffer in that age.

Tess is the typical victim of the capitalist invasion into countryside. From the nove1, we can see it is the expulsion of her family from their cottage that makes Tess loses her last dignity. Necessary supports for her family drive Tess to go back and seek for assistance from Alec again. When Angel Clare has returned, however, somewhat repentant of his harsh treatment of Tess and returns from Brazil to be reconciled to her, the tragedy is inevitable.

Another aspect of socia1 background is the hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society at that time. We can see it from the talking of Angel’s two brothers: “Ah, too poor Angel! I never see that nice girl without more and more regretting his precipitancy in throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever she may be. It is a queer business, apparently. Whether she has joined him yet or not, don’t know, but she had not done so some months ago, when, I hea rd from him.”

“I cannot say. He ever tells me anything nowadays, his ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinion.” (Chapter 44, 300)

From the day when she is seduced, Tess’s life becomes a hopeless struggle against all kinds of pressure for defending her own dignity. She meets Angel and marries him. But she still can’t escape her miserable fate. After she tells her whole story about Alec honestly Angel is too much of a hypocrite and a snob and thinks too much of his reputation and his honor to forgive her. He even treats Tess with idealism.

“My position is this,” he said abruptly. “I thought—any man would have thought —that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should secure rustic innocence, as surely as I should secure pink cheeks.” (Chapter36, 240)

When finds Tess is not the idea1, he can not but despise Tess.

“Don’t, Tess; don’t argue. Different societies, different manners. You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who has never been initiated into the proportions of social things. You don’t know what you say.”(Chapter35, 234)

Tess do refutes him but very weakly.

“Lots of families are as bad as mine in that. Retty’s family was once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett’s, and the Debbyhouse who now are carters were once the Debayeux family. You find such as I everywhere; it is a feature of our country, and I can’t help it.”(Chapter35, 234)

After the powerless opposition, Tess pleads for his forgiveness and gives her absolute obedience to Angel.

“I shan’t ask yo u to let me live with you, Angel, because I have no right to. I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we are married. As I said I would do. And I shan’t finish the good-hussif I cut out and meant to make while we were in lodgings.”(chapter35, 231)

“Shall you?”

“No, I shan’t do anything, unless you order me to. And if you go away from me, I shall not follow you; and if you never speak to me any more I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may.”

“A nd if I do o rder you to do anything?”

“I will obey you, like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die.” (Chapter35, 232)

Her lack of confidence and respect only rouse much more contempt in Angel’s heart.

“You are very good but it strikes me that there is a want of harmony between your present moods of self-preservation.” (chapter35, 232)

The other aspect of this point is the unfair legal system.

In capitalist society, the legal system is to protect the interests of the exploiting class and to recognize the exploiting class oppression the working class, and moreover to maintain their reactionary rule services.

Alec is a wealth y businessman’s son, and then he bought the family name of D’Urberv illes. The first time he saw Tess, evil idea on the mind exposed. Therefore, he set a trap and seduced Tess. Therefore he destroyed the girl’s virginity and the happiness of life. Alec dominated in the countryside, but is protected by law.

However, Tess had been sentenced to death. This is a description of the reactionary bourgeois legal system which shows the lower class at that time is impossible to get a fair treatment.

The reason that Alec dares to do evil things, do whatever he likes, not only because of his richness and powerfulness, but also because his evil behavior is protected by the capitalist law and rules. In the eyes of Victorian people, the young upstart squire is noble, while Tess is considered to lur e Alec in order to acquire Alec’s money. Tess bears all that injustice silently all along, however, when she defends herself for the first time, “Justice was done, and President of the immoral, in Aeschylean phase, had ended his s port with Tess.”(Hardy, 1993: 125). Social and legal persecution b oth thought that Tess’s insult is legitimate, and the Tess’s persecution is guilty obviously, she is the victim of the unjust, hypocritical law.

3.3 Analysis of Tess’s Character

Tess’s tragedy not only results from the external causes, but also the internal ones. And only through the internal causes, can the external causes become operative. The tragedy that results from the conflict between man and himself is the tragedy of character. Tes s’s tragedy is the tragedy of character. On the one hand, Tess struggles bravely against her destiny and the conventional morality. She desires for happiness and true love. On the other hand, she can not completely get rid of social conventions and moral standards of the day, which makes her believe that she has to pay for what she has sinned. She yields to the arrangement of the fate (Ackerman, 1996: 49). The latter is the weakness in her character.

When Tess falls in love with Angel Clare, she still cannot get rid of her sense of guilt. “Her love for him acts to blot out the memories of the past in her, but she is always aware that her forgetfulness is only temporary, that the doubts, fears, and shame were only waiting like wolves just outside the light. One night, when the two of them were sitting indoors, she suddenly exclaims that she is not worthy of him.”(Hardy, 1993: 189). After their wedding ceremony, Tess is sad by the time they come back to the farm. She is tortured by guilt. She asks herself, if she has any right to be Mrs. Angel Clare. Tess’s deep sense of guilt makes her submit to Angel’s

maltreatment without resistance, thinking she deserves it. Undoubtedly, this kind of character helps to make external causes operative (Xu, 2007: 80).

This is the first point about her character. The second is her purity which can be reflected in two aspects.

First, there is not any trace of vanity in her behavior. Although her parents are benighted and her family is poor, Tess still keeps the working people’s virtue. She detests her parents’commonplace words and deeds, despises noble origin and considers herself the daughter of a villager. She says:

“Pooh—I have much of mother as father in! All my prettiness comes and I was only a dairymaid.”(Chapterl6, 103)

Th e second aspect is Tess’s honesty. Although she is seduced by Alec, she is not willing to become his plaything and leaves him resolutely. When Alec lures her with money, Tess is describes like that:

Her lips lifted slightly, though there was little scorn as a rule in her large and impulsive nature. “I have said I will not take anything more from you, and I will not—I can not! I should be your creature to go on doing that; and I won’t!” (chapter12, 77)

“I have said so often. It is true. I have never really and truly loved you, and I think I never can.” She added mournfully: “Perhaps all things a lie on this thing would do the most good to; but I have honor enough left, little as its, not to tell that lie. If I did love you I may have the best causes for letting you know it. But I don’t.” (Chapter12, 78)

Although in the bourgeois society, the moral standard for man and woman is very different; Tess’s faithful love to Angel and her honesty still make her confess her relation with Alec to Angel:

“Tess, say it is not true? No, it is not true!”

“It’s true.”

“Every word?”

“Every word.” (chapter36, 239)

In the novel, Tess is portrayed as a brave girl, har d—working and swee t—natured and innocent, yet she is free from the influence of social conventions and moral standards of the day. Her purity obviously is not welcomed by the bourgeois society.

3.4 Analysis of the Male Factors in Tess’s Tragedy

In this section, it mainly refers to Alec and Angel.

Alec is an upstart on behalf of the bourgeoisie, a typical playboy. His image is a symbol of Western civilization hiding under the cloak of barbaric cruelty of sex desire. He also believes that the beauty of Te ss is negative, because a woman’s beauty is the bait to lure men’s desire. From his view of male point, this seems to imply that since his possession of Tess is due to the temptation of her beauty. The first time that Tess went to claim kindred is very reluctant to Tess. With the feelings of shyness and shame, Tess went to D’Urbervilles and starts her acquaintance with Alec. Later Alec threatened to Tess in every possible way, but Tess would prefer to remain in the poor cave, to endure the cruel exploitation and oppressed, to bear the heavy manual work overload, is not willing to yield to Alec, and accepts his help. However , her father dies, her mother is ill, her brothers and sisters are out of school, their house lease is expired, the family have no place to shelter. For the whole family’s life, Tess had to refer to Alec, becomes his mistress and accepts his help (Jiang, 2007: 96). Since then, she completely ruined her happiness of life. The whole life of Tess is the victim of Alec’s power and violence.

As to Angel, he is the incarnation of traditional ethical concepts. Angel and Alec are completely different. He is an intellectual and has liberal thinking; He despises class prejudice and hierarchy; He dislikes bustling city life and is longing to the countryside farming; He is not afraid of hardships, but longing for a more natural, simple, clean life; He is not willing to marry the rich Miss, but a poor farm girl. All of this shows that Angel is progressive ideologically. On the issue of women and love, he and Alec is also widely divergent. He treats young women gently, and loves seriously. It is precisely because of these virtues on Angel and his perseverance pursuit, Tess changes its mind and agrees to his proposal, feverishly falls in love with

him (Xiong, 2004: 137).

Because of his “noble virtue”, Tess opens her mind to him and tells him all her past story with Alec on their wedding night, thinking that Angel would forgive her as she does for him. But he disappoints her. His intellectual refinement drops away. He thought he was fooled very cruelly. Suddenly, his life and his universe changed. This kind of love from the concept of rational, not only stifled the true feelings of his mind, also ruined Tess’s happiness of life.The weakness and flaws of his personality are exposed here completely. He cannot acce pt Tess. He considers her as a “fallen women”. He still judges “purity” with the conventional value and moral standard that are implanted in him when he is a boy. He is the slave to the custom and conventionality. Obviously, what he loves is not Tess, but another in her shape. “When Tess, needing love more than herself, has completely given herself over to him, he abruptly withdraws and crushes her. This makes her in despair and fights the love in the hearts of her renewed hope and the injury he inflicts on her is therefore much more severe than anything Alec could have done.”

Alec D’Urbervilles destroys Tess physically, while Angel Clare makes a fatal blow to Tess’s mental. The loss of chastity does not kill all Tess’s desire for love and hope, but Angel’s desertion and her hopelessness of love for Angel make her lose courage to live. Because of her innocence and helplessness, she is seduced. But because of Clare’s moral callousness, she is forced to comeback to Alec for the second time. Clare’s moral callousness completely comes from the cruel social conventions and moral standards of that time.

4 Conclusion