（英语语言文学专业论文）《还乡》悲剧性的赏析.pdf

iii 中 文 摘 要 托马斯哈代被誉为英国文学史上最伟大的小说家之一。作为一名多才的作家， 他特别钟情于悲剧小说。哈代的悲剧小说往往能够激起读者的共鸣，引发读者的思 考，所以他的小说吸引了一大批读者和小说评论家。哈代尤为关注社会发展中的弊 端以及人类的真实感受。在其小说中他细致地刻画了主人公强烈的愿望与周围环境 的冲突，真实地再现了人类所面临的困境。哈代的著作间接地揭示了一个真实的世 界，同时也描写了人类真实的心理和欲望。 还乡这部小说被视为哈代从事悲剧小说创作的转折点。作为一部悲剧小说， 该作品淋漓尽致地刻画了主人公内心强烈的欲望与极具神秘感的爱顿荒原之间的矛 盾冲突。本篇论文将围绕这部小说的悲剧性展开：重点研究本部小说中富有悲剧色 彩的自然环境描写，四位不幸人物的独特性格与悲剧性结局，以及采用悲剧这一文 学形式的效果。 本篇论文由导语，文章主体和结语三部分组成。导语部分旨在阐述该论文的研 究对象，研究目的，研究方法和整篇论文的框架结构。论文主体部分包括四章内容。 作者在第一章中重点回顾前人对小说还乡的文学研究理论与成果。第二章侧重 于分析这部小说中的自然环境描写。在还乡这部小说中，哈代对爱顿荒原的描 写不仅栩栩如生，活灵活现；更重要的是这些自然环境描写为小说人物的活动提供 了一个舞台背景，并且奠定了整篇小说的基调悲剧情调。第三章着重分析四位 不幸的角色。这些人物独特的性格、内心强烈的欲望与他们所处的环境极其地不协 调，一系列的矛盾冲突致使他们的命运充满了悲剧色彩。最后一章谈论采用悲剧这 一文学形式的效果，并且简明扼要地阐述了哈代的哲学观。结语部分概括性地总结 了本篇论文。 关键词：托马斯 哈代；悲剧；性格；环境 i abstract thomas hardy is a very important novelist and exerts a strong influence on the other writers in english literary history. as a talented writer he has a special fondness for tragedy. his tragic novels attract a great many readers and scholars because the grandeur of the tragedy can arouse the readers sympathy and their deep thinking. moreover, thomas hardy pays a close attention to the social evils and the human beings true feeling. the novelist subtly delineates the disharmony between the protagonists aspirations and the inhospitable environment. the human beings terrible predicament is exposed authentically in his works. his writing explores the real world and reveals the human beings true feeling and desire indirectly. the return of the native, which is a tragedy about the figures with the opposite personality, is widely recognized as the most representative of hardys wessex novels. it is a significant novel and can be viewed as the introduction to his tragic writing in the wessex novels. the novel presents the conflict between the characters overwhelming passion and the unfathomable, unmoved egdon heath. the research paper is arranged around the tragedy of this novel. discussions are centered on the tragic scene, unfortunate figures and the effects of the tragedy. the paper consists of three parts which contain the introduction, body and conclusion. the introduction clarifies the subject, the research methods and the outline of the whole paper. the body covers four chapters. chapter one is the literature review. the author looks back on the preceding, literary study of this novel. chapter two concentrates on the lifelike and vivid depiction of rustic scene, which provides a background and sets a tragic tone for the whole story. the emphasis of chapter three is placed on the analysis of four major unfortunate characters. the discord between their peculiar character, strong desire and their surroundings leads to their final destruction. the last one focuses on the power of the tragedy and the novelists ii philosophy. based on the discussions above, the conclusion is following closely behind. key words: thomas hardy；tragedy；character；environment 1 introduction thomas hardy (1840-1928) is regarded as a renowned and irreplaceable writer in english victorian era. his novels of characters and environment are drawn much attention from a great number of readers and scholars. as one of his novels of characters and environment, the return of the native is a significant and important novel because it is really an introduction to his tragic novels. from then on thomas hardy changed his writhing style from melodrama to tragedy. he transferred the tone of his works from the pleasant and idyllic one to tragic one. i choose this novel as the subject of my research paper. the emphasis is put on the analysis of its tragedy, including the tragic setting, unfortunate figures and the power of the tragedy. close reading is employed as my research method. the whole research paper is composed of four chapters. chapter one is concerned with a brief introduction of hardys life and criticisms on hardy at home and abroad. i review the well-known critics comments on the rustic scene, the characters and the tragedy in hardys works. in chapter two i concentrate on the functions of the portrait of rustic scene. hardy depicted egdon heath with elaborate attention. the design is the most significant and valuable in his novels. an entire description of egdon heath during the whole book not only gives the readers deep impression, but certainly has special effects as well. these descriptions of the rustic scene bring a local colored novel before the readers. this part is also planned to tell the place where the story happened and build up a great stage for the characters actions. the peculiar and weird temper of egdon heath puts the whole story in a dark and dull circumstance. the gloomy story begins after a full portrait of egdon heath at the transitional time, twilight. he created a background and set the tragic tone for the whole story. in chapter three the analysis is focused on four major characters in the novel. these four major figures are characterized as the tragic type. they are isolated from the society that surrounds them. though these figures are full of strong personality and vehement aspirations, they are, in effect, weak and vulnerable emotionally from their inmost heart. it is impossible for them to be in harmony with the common world which is beyond the 2 peoples control and comprehension. their hopeless and bitter struggle with the outer world is doomed to failure. in the end they get out of their predicament in different ways. eustacia, wildeve and mrs. yeobright get rid of their desperate plight through death. clym leads a tranquil life in egdon heath by becoming a lecturer on morally unimpeachable subjects. in chapter four discussions are centered on the effects of the tragedy and hardys philosophy of life. the aim of his tragic stories is not to stimulate the readers sympathy and tears. he intends to tell the readers a universal truth and lead them to muse on these inevitable puzzlement and problems in the real life. the business of hardys tragedies is mainly exploring the disharmony between the figures extraordinary character and supernatural environment. once the discrepancy is strengthened and intensified, the people will be the instrument of the fate and the nature will be both hostile to the folk and ignorant of them. hardy is a wise and far-sighted writer who made a sound judgment of life and peoples situation in his tragic novels. even the animals can follow the theory of “the survival of the fittest” and adapt them to their environment naturally; the human being should know how to adjust himself to his surroundings socially and adequately in order to keep alive in the cruel and indifferent reality. a well-proportioned mind is the necessary resolution of the discord. finally, a rough summary follows on from the discussions above. thomas hardy is an outstanding writer in victorian era. he achieved great success in producing literary works. he observed the society with unique angle of view and perceived the human beings inner world with a keen sense. he courageously recorded the social evils and the human beings predicament in real life. it is worthwhile to explore his works, including his tragic novels, poems and other works. 3 chapter one literature review 1.1 a brief introduction of thomas hardy thomas hardy (18401928) is an outstanding and irreplaceable novelists in english literature. as a son of an architect, he was born and brought up in the region of dorset, which he often used as the basis for the countryside of his novels, short stories and poems. at the age of twenty-two, he was trained to be an architect too, but he gave up his career after several years. at the beginning hardy wants to be a poet rather than a novelist, but he found it is unrealistic later. so he took on novel writing that gives him a sense of achievement. as a matter of fact, he really had great talents for literary and achieved enormous success as a novelist. the most well-known novels are his novels of “character and environment”, which hardy named it himself. he produced under the green tree (1872), far from the madding crowd (1874), the return of the native (1878), the mayor of casterbridge (1886), tess of the durbervilles(1891), jude the obscure (1895). in contrast with the earlier novels, the pleasant and idyllic tone has changed into the tragic one. the return of the native can be viewed as a turning point in his novels, from then on the unpleasant tone took into shape in his works. hardy thinks that the tragedy of the human being is caused by the mysterious and supernatural powers, in particularly the conflict between the individual ambitions and the emotionless outside world. peoples struggle with their fate is in vain. he manages to explore and reveal the mysterious forces determining the lives of his characters. he concentrated on the conflict between the individuals inner strong passion and the external environment. hardy is particularly famous for the vivid sense of natural power in his novels, an intangible and changeable mood most effectively embodied by egdon heath in his novel the return of the native. however, hardys works were often influenced by the readers comments, so he made efforts to meet their demands and cater for the popular tastes. the harsh and ruthless criticism always attacked him and endangered his literary reputation. for example, he used the immorality and pessimism as the foundation of his novels and other works. he despised this criticism and stopped writing novels but took on poetry writing again. in fact he had written poems intermittently throughout his career. in 1898 he published his 4 first collection of verse “wessex poems, and other verses”. these poems obtained high praise since these poems is a mixture between the traditional form and the experimental ones. they have special lyric power particularly, though lots of commentators criticized him since the motif of his poems are pessimistic and the structures of the poems are clumsy. thomas hardy not only writes novels and poetry, but also writes several volumes of short stories. like his poems, the stories also care of the harsh living situation of the rural characters. his writing styles and tone are all the time bitterly ironic. “the three strangers” and “the withered arm” can be regarded as the best works in this genre. 1.2 comments on the rustic scene hardy has a special interest in the depiction of scenes of rural life and the rural laborers. the people in his novels move upon a great background that is vital and vivid. the grand and majestic nature circles the pathetic people and controls their life with its magical, incomprehensible and eternal force. the people are the instrument of their fate and destiny. they have to defend themselves from the vast, unexplored nature. “and this is the quality that hardy shares with the great writers, shakespeare or sophocles or tolstoy this setting behind the small action of his protagonists the terrific action of the unfathomed nature; setting a smaller system of morality, the one grasped and formulated by the human conscious within the vast, mysterious and incomprehensible morality of nature of life itself, surpassing human consciousness.”1 egdon heath, located in the south of wessex countryside, often acts as the setting in hardys novels, poems and other works. most of the commentators regard it as the source of the leading characters misfortune. in their opinions, nature is depicted at times merciless and without sympathy by hardy. egdon heath pervades a type of mysterious, majestic and incomprehensible atmosphere, by which the people are covered over. it seems that the wild place owned extraordinary power that could control the peoples fate, especially the rebels who can not find favor in the eyes of fortune. their happiness is swallowed by the great giant, egdon heath. they can not escape from its hands with magical abilities, although they rebel against the external circumstances continually. michael henchard died in egdon heath pitiably after losing his foster-daughter, 1 d.h. lawrence, “a study of thomas hardy”, viking penguin, 1936. pp.398-516 5 elizabeth-janes understanding and love. tesss thing was becoming worse after her fathers death. her family has no money and no home. finally they had to move to the kingsbere churchyard and slept nearby the graves. in the end the gods had no interest with his game with tess and finished it. she was mocked by her destiny and punished because of killing alec durberville. mrs. yeobright lost her life when she was bitten by an adder. eustacia and wildeve drowned in the weir. eustacia and wideve are impulsive, passionate and selfish people, but these qualities may in other circumstances have been turned to have no harm to them. both of them are not satisfied with their routine life and at odds with the environments surrounding them. they are destructed completely in that they rebels against their circumstances. on the contrary, thomasin and venn are steady, simple and courageous. they are subject to, and in harmony with their surroundings. at last the serene content awarded them in that they submitted themselves to circumstance. here comes the theme of his novel after novel: remain quite within the convention or the law of nature, and you are good, safe, and happy in the long run, though you never have the vivid pang of sympathy on your side; or, on the other hand, be passionate, individual, willful, you will find the security of the convention a walled prison, you will escape, and you will die, either of your own lack of strength to bear the isolation and the exposure, or by direct revenge from the community, or from both. the return of the native is the most representative and pessimistic work of hardys early novels. from the first chapter to the end of the story, egdon heath, the dreary and unfertile waste seems to observe the pathetic fate of human beings indifferently. occasionally the reader is likely to look upon the unmovable, barren and apparently motionless heath as human beings kinship; to feel it is like the man did, slighted and enduring. its grand beauty, which hardy tells us, more frequently, is the only kind of beauty that the mankind can any longer appreciate. its grandeur and somber beauty also remind us that man is of no more significance than an insect against its purposelessness, indifference and barrenness. it is acted as the emotionless and unsympathetic scene for the humans action. it never concerns the joys and sorrows of petty humankind. like the forces of nature, it has participated passively in mans slow and unhappy movement through a long train of disillusive centuries, unconcerned with what happens to man. against the somber atmosphere of an indifferent and chance-guided universe, the 6 characters move in accordance with natural law. in many a hardys novels, we could feel the intangible and powerful forces that control the mans destiny. a long train of disillusive centuries have shown the defects of natural laws and the predicament in which their operation has placed on man. eustacia vye has been placed on a plight in such a heartless circumstance that can not be contended against. her beauty and forward mind are a plague rather than a blessing gift. regardless of the natural law the man make one mistake after another. chance, in the shape of accident and coincidence, joins itself with these other unsympathetic powers to assure mans unhappiness. undoubtedly hardy believes that there is nothing actively malign in egdon heath, in natural law, or in the play of circumstance or accident; but the very indifference of these forces to the fate of human beings results in such unhappiness that we are likely to assume that sinister gods control the action. 1.3 comments on the characters in each of hardys books there exists three or four figures who are distinctly designed to draw the readers attentions, such as oak, troy and bathsheba; eustacia, wildeve and venn; henchard, lucetta and farfrae; jude, suebridehead and philotson. although they live in separate places and act individually, they are different from each other; they share many similarities as the member of the same family. it is certain that there is likeness among them. as a woman, bathsheba can be considered as a sister to eustacia, lucetta and sue; as a man, oak is like a brother to henchard, venn and jude. hardy creates such kind of male and female characters who attract his much consideration infinitely. hardy is willing to pay more attention to the female characters than to the male characters because they are the weaker and the fleshlier, they would rather to depend on the others, especially the stronger ones. hardy inclines to make a more distinct and singular species of womanhood become the heroine or the central figure in each of his books. she is dignified and capable, like bathsheba; she is a belated pythoness, like eustacia; she is an innocent adventuress, like mrs. charmond; she is a delicate razor cutting hones, like lucetta. it seems that these ladies are variable externally, but all of them, in effect, belong to the same group internally. all the women are educated highly, but they come to a circumstance which is unfriendly, indifferent and have a little distance 7 from their superior status. they find its hard to succeed in reaching and living in harmony with their surroundings. in contrast to their humbler and less intelligent sisters, quite often they are falling into the predicament and have to suffer from tragic failure. thomas hardy wants to present their beauty, dignify and wisdom with the readers, though they always strug