Analysis of Tess’s Miserable Fate.doc

analysis of tesss miserable fatecontentsabstract.1key words.1.introduction.1. outer aspects.3 2.1 thomas hardys effect32.1.1 thomas hardys living background.32.1.2 thomas hardys writings style.42.1.3 thomas hardys value and faith62.2 plot arrangement and symbols use.7 2.2.1 plot arrangement.7 2.2.2 symbols use.10 prince.10 durbervilles vault.10 killing of birds.11 stories of the book of genesis122.3 the other characters effect.132.3.1 angel clare.13 2.3.2 alec durberville. 14 2.3.3 the durberfields.15 2.4 plot background.15 2.5 social morale principle16. inner aspect.16 3.1 tesss own character and her symbolism.16iv. conclusion.17references.17摘要：托马斯哈代一直以来就是英国文学史上举足轻重的一个人物。他的小说从整体上来说都笼罩着一种悲剧气氛。德伯家的苔丝是哈代小说中很具影响的代表作，也是哈代悲剧小说的典型代表，她不仅体现了哈代的世界观和人生观，也体现了哈代小说的威塞克斯的特点。苔丝是哈代塑造的最成功的女性人物。但由于各种原因，她也同样逃脱不了悲惨的命运。本文通过对哈代本人的生活背景、写作风格、世界观、人生观，以及小说的情节安排、象征的运用，和小说中其它人物、故事背景、当时道德观这些外部因素的影响，还有苔丝本人自身内部因素影响的分析，来阐述苔丝悲剧的形成。本文比较全面地分析了苔丝悲剧的形成。关键词：托马斯哈代; 苔丝; 悲惨的命运; 外因; 内因abstract: thomas hardy has been an important writer in britain literature. his novels are tragedies in whole. tess of the durbervilles which also expresses hardys world value, life value and the wessex character of hardys works is the most important representative of thomas hardys novels and his tragic works, durberfield tess is the most successful female that hardy makes. but at the same time, she cannot escape her miserable fate at last, because of all kinds of aspects. the author will analyze tesss miserable fate from outer and inner aspects. the outer aspects are hardys living background, writing style, world value and life value, plot arrangement and symbol use, other characters effect, plot background and moral principles. the inner aspect is tesss own character. in this assay the author will analyze tesss miserable fate from every side.key words: thomas hardy；tess；miserable fate；outer aspect；inner aspecti. introductionliterature has been being an unfading topic in peoples life, not only in teaching and studying area, but also in peoples daily ideological life. it plays an important role in human development. literature can reflect the spirit and the ideology of one period. nowadays, literature does not only affect on those respects, but also on peoples life, work, even morality. with the development of technology, its role becomes more and more significant. knowledge is the originality of technology. while literature is the angle of cultivation, it brings the cultivation from ancient days to nowadays, from one corner to another one in the world. it makes human cultivation exist forever, so the development of literature affects on the development of human in some degrees.britain is the country, which has a long history in the world and was once the first-big country for several centuries. its industrial revolution played a great important role in britain, changed the life of britain and affected the whole world. in this environment, many famous writers were born and appeared some very famous literature works, such as thomas hardy and his works.thomas hardy is a great writer in britain literature. he was born on june 2, 1840, in higher bockhampton in dorset, a rural region of southwestern england that was to become the focus of his fiction. as a child of a builder, hardy became a builder later on. his builder-career gave him a clear idea in his fictions. he closed his eyes forever in 1982 in his hometown. his father was an owner of builder. his mother made him interested in literature. when he was sixteen, he was a student of a builder. the life of a builder made a lot of influences on his works. he began to write poetry in 1866, which could not help make his life good. he went back to his hometown to be a builder again, writing novels at the same time. his marriage life began in 1874. he also began his professional writing-career from this time. his major works were the famous representation of victorian period, his works reflects the conventions of serialization. hardy cannot solely be labeled a victorian novelist. nor can he categorized simply as a modernist, in the tradition of writers like virginia woolf or d.h. lawrence, who were determined to explode the conventions of nineteenth-century literature and build a new kind of novel in its place. in many respects, hardy was trapped in the middle group between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between victorian sensibilities and more modern ones, and between tradition and innovation.(brian philips 2003: 4)hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social change, when england transited from old agricultural society to modern industrial society. merchants and entrepreneurs, or “new money” became upper class, while those who were born in noble families faded into obscurity. tesss family illustrated this change evidently. her parents, the durberfields lost themselves when they knew they were an ancient and aristocratic family, the durberrilles. hardy strongly suggested that such a family history was no meaning at all in his novels.tess of the durbervilles told a story about a young girl named tess durberfild. tess durberfild was a pretty girl. because she was the eldest child in her family, she had strong responsibility for her family. when the durberfilds knew that they belonged to a noble family and they had a relative who lived in trantridge, they decided to send tess there, hoping that tess would become the daughter-in-law of the relative. in fact, the relatives name was not durbervilles at all. after prince that was the only financial resource of tesss family died, tess worked for her relative. during her work period, she was seduced by alec, son of her relative. then tess went back home and gave birth to a boy, sorrow, who died soon after he was born. she spent a miserable year at home before deciding to seek work elsewhere. she finally accepted a job as a milkmaid at talbthays dairy, where she met three good girl friends-izz, retty and marie, who were milkmaids as her. meanwhile she met a young man named angle clare, who turned out to the man from the may day at the beginning of the novel. they felled in love with each other. and tess accepted angles proposal to get married. but at the first night they got married, tess told angle her miserable story and was eager to get his forgiveness. to her deep disappointment, angle did not forgive her, though he himself also made such mistake before. he deserted tess, leaving for brazil, which made tess stay at a poor state. unfortunately, again tess met alec, who wanted to seduce her at the second time. at first, tess refused him. but her poor family could not stand any more. there was only one way to solve her familys problem-to accept his help and live with him together. at the same time, angle met some troubles in brazil, and he wanted to beg tesss pardon for his desertion. so he came back to look for tess. tess was moved by him and killed alec, escaping with angle. during their escape trip, tess was arrested, sent to jail, and executed at last.in tess of the durbervilles, hardy demonstrated his sympathy for england lower-classes, particularly to rural women, such as tess. hardy also demonstrated his deep sense against the sexual hypocrisy of english society. tess was the most famous female hardy made. she was also the sacrifice of this sense. the results of tesss tragedy were not only the outer effect, but also the inner effect.ii. outer aspects2.1 thomas hardys effect2.1.1 thomas hardys living backgroundthomas hardy died at the age of eighty-eighty. he went through a long period that britain changed a lot. during that age, the country began to collapse. at the same time, britain industry underwent from small to big, then from flourishing to declining. farmers and workers were oppressed and exploited; meanwhile, they began to have the sense of fighting against oppressing and exploiting. although thomas hardy saw the victory of industrial capitalism, he spent most of his life in countryside. he loved his life there, while capitalism intruded into there and destroyed the peace and harmony there. farmers lives became worse; they struggled for living, but the bourgeoisies just oppressed and extracted the farmers and workers, indulging themselves in playing daily and night. lower-classs sadness was not worthy considering in their eyes. thus, it was no doubt that farmers fates were miserable. tess could not escape from this miserable trap.at the same time, charter movement played a significant influence on hardys life and his works. after charter movement, britain appeared the its most prosperous period. bourgeoisie literature considered that the moral principles and social rules were not changed at all. the government also preached that people were happy in victorian period. so many writers praised the bourgeoisie and their life styles. in contrast, hardy criticized that fake optimism heavily. although hardy did not demonstrate the idea of charter movement, he saw that industrial capitalism assaulted the countryside by himself and had a strong feeling about that. in tess of the durbervilles, hardy described a scene that after tess was deserted by angle, she seeked livelihood at a small pasture by herself, and she did the labor job she could not do at all and was blamed by the owner, which gave an obvious contraction with her working scene before. from tesss hard living, hardy showed readers that poor farmers, shepherds and small pasture owners lived hard under the capitalism attacking. in hardys later life, he had a very clear idea that the capitalism culture would fade, and the capitalism economy and capitalism morality would also break down. so he demonstrated that idea clearly in his works. tess was just a little sacrifice in capitalism crisis. in this way, tess was doomed to have a pity fate.2.1.2 hardys writing stylein hardys whole life, he wrote fourteen novels in total. his major works were tess of the durbervilles, jude the obscure, far from the madding crowd, the return of the native and major of casterbridge. all of those novels were named as the novel of character and environment. except for far from the madding crowd, the rest of his major works all were tragedies-the hero or the heroine died at the end of the novel. process of the tragedies was process of contradiction and conflict among character, human and environment and society. the results of the tragedies were mainly based on protagonists characters or environment or the cause of those two aspects mixing. the leading characters of those novels all were ordinary persons who were born in remote countryside, and all of them were small potatoes who were persecuted by their societies and living environments. hardy, humanitarian, demonstrated his deep sympathy to the characters he created, just as his feeling to tess. but he mainly stressed on the characters own weaknesses and made them be fighting sacrifices of unfair society.some scholars thought that hardys novels of characters and environment were dual fictions. first, hardys novels environment contained two aspects: natural environment and social environment. the natural environment was living environment the characters lived. however, wessex did not only stand for a simple geographical environment, but also shaped the characters natural personalities of hardys tragic protagonists. so wessex combined a special man with nature. the social environment was the relationship between human and human, human and society, which also meant the trand of value. second, characters personalities had dual peculiarity-each tragic protagonist had particular natural and social personality. new marxism thought that it did not exist simple causality in human society, because human society was an entirety of dialectics and history. person was also a whole. as a main part of society, the existing of human being should have their essential energy that was human totality. in literature works, humanity outstandingly reflected the complex relationship between human and himself, between human and human, between human and nature, and human and society. among of these, the relationships between human and the later three also were ones between human and environment. hardys explanation of character and environment formed tragedies of hardys works. in his works, all of the protagonists were suffered relentless calamity by cold environment and sealed misfortune. in his opinion, human power was insignificant and frail. so weak and kind tess did not succeed in fighting against fate and environment around her only by herself.writers could describe humanity and human feeling through a particular place in novels, which did not prevented writers expressing the deep meanings of the novels. so did hardy. in his novels, he could set the stories to happen in other places, but he did not. through tesss life in wessex, readers could know the farmers lives there. in hardys opinion, personality was fate, which was frequently annotated in his novels. it was unknown that the effect of social control dominated peoples fates, while society should be controlled by human beings.tess was the best female image hardy created, who also was one of the most perfect females in britain literature. in peoples common opinions, kind man should have good rewards and should not be suffered disasters. so when they had misfortunate fates, they got deep sympathy, and whats more, many people would resent ones which made kind men encounter disasters. tesss misfortune was resulted by her temporary social economy, politics and social class. hardy clashed capitalism society in the way that he showed the relationship between human and society through perfect characters image, which was one of cause of tesss miserable fate. hardy always thought peoples misfortunes were linked to their personalities. so in his works, his protagonists were not powerful to fight against their fates. in this way, most of his protagonists had bad results, such as tess.2.1.3 hardys value and faithhardys value also played a role on tesss miserable fate. harduy was a pessimist. he believed that humanity could not beat the god and human beings were just only creatures of the god. he once said, “happiness is just one occasional thing in peoples life.” tess was just the representor of this idea. in his idea, there was an immanent will everywhere in the universe, and humane fighting and hard work were useless; human beings were just the sacrifices of the universe. in another way, his idea reflected that the capitalism faded step by step, and would disappear at last.in tess of the durbervilles, hardy described the economical structure was changed by the capitalism industry hundred years ago. it appeared the fight between “nature” and “culture”, the paradox between “nature law” and “social law”. tess was the sacrifice under those fight and paradox. in hardys this book, readers knew that the country the parents controlled was ruined, lower-level class became more and moor poorer, and farmers became homeless, while the rich who seduced the pure girl were not punished by the law. ironically, the girl was punished, forced to live in an unfortunate way and at last hung.in hardys works, he pointed directly to the victorian periods value that hided behind wessex. social material decided how the social consciousness developed, and human nature continually dissimilated through the development of bourgeoisie. in victorian period when hardy lived, capitalism appeared “masculine gender”, also meant “male sex”. so in this times, the development of britain was mainly led by male sex. tess could not control her own fate by herself in the society where mans rights was priority to womans, and her marriage was just only one part of her husband-she was just one part of human competitive ways, who could not change the ruth and cruel of natural competitive nature. so tesss tragedy was predicated.because of this, hardy was also a realist and he wrote in a realistic way. his works offended his contemporary social conscious trend, and he was criticized. although hardys contemporaries did not see clearly that people were suffered merciless tortures from society, he did. so he determined to create tragedies to move people to recall peoples sense, even to change the society. but some scholars thought that hardy only could use this approach to change social conditions, because he could not have other ways. he did not agree with the optimism opinion of the first period of criticism. hardy believed that the world could not arrive at a high level that was the most perfect. because of his disappointment to society and world, he became a pessimist. he only could write in a pessimistic way to demonstrate his deep sympathy to his protagonists and lower-class people. he used his protagonists tragedies to reflect the tragedies of capitalism society and culture. tesss miserable fate was a need for hardy to annotate his value.for a long time, hardy was interested in christian and believed it, because of his mothers effect. but later on, he criticized it and abandoned it at last. he also demonstrated his such idea in his works and did not escape from bei