An Analysis of the Tragedy in Tess of the D’Urbervilles

An Analysis of the Tragedy in Tess of the D’Urbervilles
1. Introduction (2)
2. Author’s control of the work (3)
2. 1 The Social Circumstances of Thomas Hardy (3)
2. 1. 1 The social morality of the Victorian Age (3)
2. 1. 2 Life of the author (5)
2. 2 Thomas Hardy’s fatalism (6)
2. 2. 1 The definition of fatalism (6)
2. 2. 2 Hardy’s fatalism and its presentation in the work (6)
3. Locating the causes in the work (9)
3.1 social status (10)
3.1 .1 Social status of different families (10)
3. 1. 1. 1 Tess’s family (10)
3. 1. 1. 2 Angel’s family (11)
3. 1. 1. 3 Alec’s family (12)
3. 1. 2 Unequal statuses of men and women (13)
3. 2 Individual characteristics of the characters (14)
3. 2. 1 Tess (14)
3. 2. 2 Alec (15)
3. 2. 2 Angel (17)
3. 2. 4 Tess’s parents (18)
4. Conclusion (20)
References (21)
1. Introduction
In the Victorian Age,Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles caused a great disturbance. His moral concept that purity came from soul could not be accepted by the people of that age, and was even strongly criticized. With the century went far away from us gradually, people started to recognize the work in a new way. Since twenty century, there emerged a large numbers of reviews on the novel of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. In these reviews, what most people paid close attention to is the causes of Tess’s tragedy. Professor Webster attributed the main reasons to the controlling forces in human life, which were the “heredity” of beauty and character, the sexual attraction between the opposite sex and the operation of chance, while Arnold Kettle considered that Tess’s tragedy represented the disintegration of the English peasantry, and proposed that it was Tess’s low social status that made her unable to get rid of the tragic fate; in addition, Van Ghent analyzed the causes from the point of view of nature in front of which man is feeble and insignificantly small or lowly; and Yu Kun analyzed the causes from economy, showing that the essence of the modern mechanization was ruthless and it was the speedy development of urban economy and those stagnation of rural economy that led to the severe polarization between the rich and the poor (Net. 1). The predecessors’ achi evements were authentic, however, we should pay more attention to the thought of the author, for it was him that created
the heroine’s tragedy and it was the influence of the social environment on him, his conception and intentional arrangement of the work that finally made an end of a tragedy. Thomas Hardy was the realistic writer in the nineteenth century. He gave a firm critical standpoint to the development of the capitalistic civilization, and therefore was named “pessimist”. As a humanist writer, Hardy thought that people’s life was miserable, the fate of the poor was also a tragedy, and the heroine’s fate was an epitome of human destiny. Hardy’s pessimism made his novels full of pessimistic shades and fatalism thinking, which was represented deeply in Tess in the work. Moreover, there are also other reasons, such as the social morality (virginity notion), the family social status and the character of figures in the work that cause the tragedy of Tess. Therefore, this paper will discuss the causes of Tess's tragic fate from the aspects of both the author himself and the work.
2. Author’s control of the work
2. 1 The Social Circumstances of Thomas Hardy
2. 1. 1 The social morality of the Victorian Age
There is no doubt that everyone is in the society in which ideology affects most people and their thought, and it is just these people and their thoughts that directly or indirectly lead to the tragic fate of Tess. The author, Thomas Hardy, is the person who created the tragedy. The reason
why he made this tragedy has something to do with the social environment in that age.
Hardy’s tragic novels have the realistic ground. The social environment and his life experience in that world played an important part in the creation of the tragic novels. The age in which Hardy wrote was the late Victorian Age. According to Han Ting, who is a famous historian, at the time of Victoria, the social structure of England was undergoing an enormous and deep change, which represented obviously in London, as a result, various conflicts and critical crisis produced. Besides, people’s values had also been changed(Net. 2). These changes had a great effect on Hardy, and so most of his works mirrored these fierce class contradictions. As we mentioned above, in the Victoria age, the prosperity remained in the surface, most of the English were not aware of these great changes and kept the blind optimistic life attitude. They sought quick success and instant benefits, being satisfied with the present condition. Until the late Victorian age, enormous change had taken place in people’s values. Instead of being positive, they turned to be negative and doubtful of the society. Malthusian Theory of Population, Benthan’s Utilitarianism and the Liberal Trade Principles of Manchester were struck strongly by the new trend of thought and science such as the theory of evolution of Darwin, Author Schopenhauer’s Will Theory of Life. Hardy read a large number of their works and influenced by their theories and
life attitude to a high extent. Eventually, he became a full fatalist, so when he could not find other ways to vent his grief and indignation, what he only could do was showing them through the form of novels. Therefore, his novels were always full of the tones of tragedy.
2. 1. 2 Life of the author
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorset, a small town in the southwestern England. Young Hardy could not accept good education, but he read all of the books he could read at his home. At the age of sixteen, Hardy left school, and turned to be an apprentice of architect. Despite his regular learning was broken off, he did not stop his study by himself. In 1862, he gave up the work of an architect in Dorset and came to London. Compared with London, Dorset was an agricultural region which was isolated completely from the outside world. Therefore, when he came to London, his horizon was widen greatly, which influenced his literary creation later on. In 1868, he completed his first novel The Poor and the Lady. Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obsure were his two representative works, which were full of the pessimistic color and criticized the social morality at that time. These works led to great disturbances in the England society. Hardy received severe censures or even personal attacks for them. Consequently, he left off his writing of novels and went back to his poetry. In the year of 1928, when his last poem was published, he died.
2. 2 Thomas Hardy’s fatalism
2. 2. 1 The definition of fatalism
The definition of fatalism in the Advanced Lea rner’s English-Chinese Dictionary is that the belief that events are decided by fate and that you can not control them or the fact of accepting that you can not prevent something from happening(2004: 626). In other words, fatalism is a life attitude that fate is caused by the accidental factors which can not be predicted and which is doomed and can not be changed by any manpower or will.
2. 2. 2 Hard y’s fatalism and its presentation in the work In Hardy’s novels, there was full of some driving force that controls the Universal, which was called “the Universal Will”(Net. 5) by him. He considered that the will of man was not free completely, and was also not free incompletely. When he was controlled by the Universal Will (usually he was bound to be a part of the Universal Will), he would be the person who lost his freedom. And what Hardy indicated about the Universal Will was the inevitability, whose power embodied in Hardy’s work was “God’s will” of “fate”(Net. 5). The abiding “Stonehenge”(Hardy, 1996: 502), which was mentioned in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, was just the symbolization of it. In front of this power, personal will was feeble. Therefore, Hardy’s work revealed strong fatalism. He thought
that “fatalism was not only regarded as an effective external force, but also appeared as an effective power obtained by heart”(中载, 1998: 102). People helped the mandate of heaven with their actions, which struck them not from the outside world, but from the inside world through their own desire and uneasy emotion by turning into the social conditions and disease. Consequently, when the personal will of man could not gain freedom, it promoted the outcome of fatalism.
Hardy’s novels were full of fatalism, which was represented particularly in the book of Tess of the D’Urbervills. This composition reflected the author’s spiritua l life by the behaviors of the heroine he described in the novel. Hence it showed that Hardy could not understand the phenomenon of the enormous change of social economy and the big change of people’s life, he attributed them to the arrangement of fatalism, and represented it by the heroine Tess.
The tragedy of Tess originated from an accidental event: poor Durbeyfield knew the fact that he was the lineal representative of the ancient and knig htly family of the D’Urberville, so he wanted to send his daughter Tess to claim kin. While at the same time, their old horse, which was the vital economic source for them, died. Consequently, as the eldest daughter of the family, Tess had to take the burden of his family, promising to claim their “kin” out by Tra ntridge. Beginning with an accidental occurrence, Tess went forward her miserable journey. The novel
revealed the ominous atmosphere at the beginning of the story. The sentence “But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she don’t get green malt in floor”(Hardy, 1996: 28) presages that Tess would lose her virginity. After she married Angel, the misfortune of her marriage id indicated by the omens of the story of the big horse-drawn carriage, the afternoon crow of the cock, and “those horried women” (Hardy, 1996: 273) in the residence of the D’Urbervilles. All of the constant omens appearing at the plots betoken the tragic fate of Tess.
Hardy used a series of coincidence and suggestion in Tess of the D’Urbervilles showing that the tragic fate of Tess was arranged beforehand and was inevitable.The following omens just embodied such fatalism of Hardy’s. The death of the old horse seemed to be coincident al, but implied an inevitable result. In order to save the economic crisis of her family, Tess had to do what she did not want to, go to Alec and work in his family, which brought about the tragedy of her whole life. It also showed that Hardy could not find a bright future for the people who lived in the poor condition, but ascribed their misfortune to the result of coincidence. For the purpose of lightening the guilt, she confessed everything about her in the past to Angel, while got the result of abandonment. After that, Tess went to work alone again. And the only time when she went to Angel’s home asking for help,her shoes were taken by Angel’s brother. Because she could not find a suitable job, could not
get the help of her husband and his family, and had to support her family, she had to turn to Alec who made the tragedy of her life. The hardship of her life deepened the tragedy, which seemed to be predestinated previously. The ending showed that things would not move into good way, but would go to a further inevitable tragedy. Finally, Tess killed Alec and ran away with Angel, ending her life by the accusation of murder ultimately. Hardy considered this as a punishment for Tess. After she was seduced by Alec, Hardy wrote that, “One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess D’Urberville’s mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same wrong even more ruthlessly upon peasant girls of their time”(1996: 86). He thought the suffering of Tess was a retribution for the sin which was made by her ancestors, and Tess was doomed to accept it.
3. Locating the causes in the work
Tess’s fate was miserable. As we mentioned above, the fatalism of the author was the basic reason of it. When we analyze the causes from the work, we can find that the different social statuses of different families and men and women, the character of figures in the work were also the direct or main reasons to produce the tragedy.
3.1 social status
3.1 .1 Social status of different families
3. 1. 1. 1 Tess’s family
The family of Tess belonged to a special rural group--a small dealer which worked together with farmers but the status was slightly higher than that of the traditional farmers. They were “a set of people who owed a certain stability of aim and conduct to the fact of their being lifeholders like Tess’s father, of copy holders, or occasionally, small freeholders” (Hardy, 1996: 449). They had rich experience, and were primary the mainstay of the rural life, so they were relatively independent. However, they never did the physical labors, so the peasantry did not like them, because “cottagers who were not directly employed on the land were looked upon with disfavor as a rule” (Hardy, 1996: 449).
With many children in this family, Tess’s parents should have taken the burden of fostering them, but on the contrary, as the eldest child in this family,although still not old enough, Tess shouldered the burden of the family. While the parents of this miserable family did not work hard to raise the social status of this family, instead, they depended on the direct trivial achievement. Her father often drank, and “a certain way she (Mrs. D’urbervilles) had of making her labors in the house seem heavier than they were by prolonging them indefinitely” (Hardy, 1996:
53). They believed that there would be good luck in their life. “We must take the ups wi’ the downs, Tess” (Hardy, 1996: 37), her mother said, “You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some help in our trouble” (Hardy, 1996: 38). They never try to solve the problem, consequently, the family got very poor.
The poverty of the family was the very beginning and was also the most direct element which led to the tragic fate of Tess. If not because of the poverty, Tess would not have to “take the journey with the beehives”(Hardy, 1996: 29), would not be forced to claim the kin, would not receive the humiliation before the coming of Clare, and would not turn to Alec for help at last. Therefore, it was just the inferior social status of this family that drove Tess to meet her doom.
3. 1. 1. 2 Angel’s family
Angel lived in a family whose father was one of the last of the strict devout, old-fashioned clergymen of the Evangelical school and whose mother was also a faithful religious believer. Although they were kind and simple, and often gave financial help to the poor people, they were also the guards of the social morality. When Mrs. Clare knew that her son wanted to marry Tess, she asked,“Is she of a family such as you would care to marry into -- a lady, in short?” (Hardy, 1996: 205) and “and that she is pure and virtuous goes without question?”(Hardy, 1996: 332).
It shows that though they were not hypocritical as other people in upper class, the social status of themselves decided them to keep the social morality to maintain their interest.
The religious family had a great effect on Angel. Though he was out of the religion of his family, he did not find a real belief that could save himself in a new way. Therefore, when he knew the secret of Tess on the night they married, he couldn’t forgive her in any way, which in fact was the presentation of having not got rid of the imprisonment of the morality that was instilled by his parents. At last, he chose leaving, which was the direct reason that made Tess go to the condition of despair.
3. 1. 1. 3 Alec’s family
Alec’s fa ther was a rich businessman coming from the north of England. Thinking that “D’Urbervilles” was a surname of an aristocratic family which had quite died out of knowledge and could hardly be said to be known at all, he added it behind their original surname, Stoke, to raise their social status. If not the surname of “D’Urbervilles” and the richness of the family, Tess would not have come to their house, would not have been seduced by Alec, and the tragedy would not have happened.
3. 1. 2 Unequal statuses of men and women
In the Victorian age, the equality of men and women was impossible. Why? People thought that “women should be hard-working, faithful, loyal, and virtuous and the most important thing is that she must be a maiden”(Net. 5). If she lost her virginity before she married, she would not get the forgiveness of her husband, and would gain a very bad reputation. People would go far away from her. Tess was just the example of them.
However, in that age, people did not care whether a man was an experienced man or not, nor did they care about his character. They thought “man equals power and power equals rights” (2002: 159). When the “im moral thing” was done, women always r eceived the most injury not only from the body but also from the spirit, while men went on their peaceful life without the guilt of themselves and the condemnation of people.
Tess lost her innocence, however, it was not what she wanted, but only that she had no power to defend herself. She should have been shown sympathy for this suffering; nevertheless, she was derided, humiliated, and spurned by people around her. Even her husband, after knowing the truth, abandoned her. As for Alec, the man who hurt her, turned to be a clergyman who saved people’s souls in a village of Evershead. Besides, Angel also did the wrong thing and it was possibly even more serious than Tess’s crime, but he was not blamed for it. Therefore, due to the inequality of men and women, Tess could not get out of the miserable fate, and eventually
went to the extreme.
3. 2 Individual characteristics of the characters
3. 2. 1 Tess
In the novels of Hardy, the character of figures always closely connected with fate. In this novel, Hardy said that Tess was a pure woman. And it was just because of her pure, kindhearted and credulous characters that formed her inevitable depravity, which made her fail to meet happiness by a narrow chance.
Her sense of responsibility sent her to deliver the honey, while the old horse died in the crash because of the carelessness. Therefore, she had to go to claim the kin for the sense of guilt and responsibility. Though she had realized the evil attempt of Alec at the beginning, she did not guard against him carefully. She was even grateful of Alec’s teaching her how to whistle and made her out of the insulting from people on the night when she lost her virginity. Without the vigilance, she jumped into the carriage of Alec’s and even slept leaning against his back. When she found his deception, she did not leave, meanwhile produced a guilty conscience for the presents which Alec gave to her families. Therefore, her carelessness and purity sunk her into the great crisis and offered an opportunity that could be exploited to Alec’s advantage. Such a credible girl definitely would lose good reputation and her husband. However, if not the purity and innocence, she would not have loved Angel
so much, would have guessed the denouement of her love, would not have had the guilty conscience, would not have told her secret to Angel, and so the tragedy would not have happened.
Another prominent character of Tess was her bravery of resisting the society. “She sought happiness in the whole of her life, dared to love or hate, and resisted the old religious doctrines boldly”(董桂茹, 2005). She despised and defied religion. When the fetter of religion conflicted with the natural instincts, she queried the religion without reluctance, throwing an egg against the rock with her slim strength. She lingered around the rim of morality all the times. During her firm resistance to the society, we saw the mournful beauty of which nice thing was torn by the strong and irresistible power. However, although she tried her best to make a stand against the fate, she still could not free herself from the miserable end as other ordinary women at that time.
3. 2. 2 Alec
Alec was an incarnation of devil, who was rich, handsome, frivolous and libidinous -- a killer of the arena of love. He was also a deceiver, a scum of morality. Hardy racked his brains to make a comparison between his sham noble mind and Tess’ genuine lofty soul. Tess was a daughter of nature who possessed pure love and soul, yet Alec was a devil who specially came to destroy her. Alec made use of the purity of Tess, made
a trap, trampled on and stained her, destroying the happiness of her whole life. At the first sight of Tess, his dissolute nature unmasked without remains. Lacking of experience, innocent Tess was cheated and hurt by him. Although he once turned good after the help of clergyman Clare, his evil practice had not been uprooted.
With the violent nature, he was also spoiled by the modern civilization. His fervor and vigor were too much to find a “normal” vent; therefore, he became an unscrupulous and dissolute person. And it was also this vigor that made him become a “fire and brimstone” evangelist. However, when he saw Tess once again, his beastliness raised again with all the previous efforts of several years nullifying. After that, Alec pestered and intimidated Tess, threatening that, “remember, my lady, I was once your master. I will be your master again. If you are any man’s wife, you are mine” (Hardy, 1996: 422). He took advantage of Tess’s difficult position, had her and meanwhile dug a grave for himself.
Being a prisoner of individualism, Alec could not make out any difference between love and carnal desire. He thought too much of himself, and so could not sacrifice himself to the love. Therefore, he could not cope with a truly good and morally whole person like Tess whose quality went far beyond the attraction of sex which was a threat to him and that indicated his limitation. Consequently, when he could do nothing to her, he destroyed her.
3. 2. 2 Angel
Angel was the husband of Tess, whose personal character was quiet different from Alec’s, but there was similarities between them which was more important than that. That was both of them pushed Tess to the abyss that could not be rescued. In this novel, Hardy presented the conflicting character of Angel. He also had his dissolute behaviors, which was forgiven by Tess, while he did not forgive the sinless Tess; he resisted the traditional notion and the class prejudice, but in fact did not get rid of the brand of classes in his deep heart; he despised the blue blood, looked down upon the nobles, while still had an idea that different statuse had different morality.
He only treated a woman’s purity from the traditional chastity notion. Clare had no sympathy for Tess, even could not forgive her. When his illusion was broken, he used the snobbish words which his two brothers might use to insult Tess, “d on’t, Tess, don’t argue. Differrent societies, different manners. You seem like an unappreciative peasant woman, who has never been initiated into the proportions of things”(Hardy, 1996: 293). Besides, he said, “I wish half the women in England were as respectable as you. It isn’t a question of respectability, but one of principle”(Hardy, 1996: 305). Such moral callousness was not even Alec might have been capable o f. He was blind to Tess’s deep love to him, abandoned her with cruel coldness, and trapped Tess into despair. If it
was Alec that hurt the body of Tess, then what Angel brought to her was the strike of spirit. The loss of chastity brought Tess great misery; however, it had not wiped out her desire of survival, while the abandonment of lover and the frustration of love destroyed her spiritual stay, which made her lose the courage of living.
If it was because of the ignorance for being young of age and poor condition of Tess that made Tess cheated and insulted by Alec at the beginning, then it was the conflicting character of Clare which was mixed with gentleness and ruthlessness that forced her to go back to Alec’s side for the second time, which deepened the misfortune of Tess.
3. 2. 4 Tess’s parents
Tess’s parents were the indirect killers of Tess. If it was not because of their weakness and self-centeredness, Tess needn’t have goone to claim the kin, and the tragedy would not have happened.
Tess’s parents should had been industrious and taken the burden of bringing up their children, but they shirked their duty and kept the hope that Tess would marry that rich fop. When they knew they were the descendants of the blue blood, and there was a rich relative beside the village, they sent Tess to visit them and thought of the benefits they would probably get, while did not consider the danger which Tess might meet. When they found they could not get anything from that family, they
felt it was a disgrace. Instead of comforting and helping the hurt daughter, the mother just blamed and said, “And yet th’st not got him to marry ‘ee! Any woman would have done it but you”(Hardy, 1996: 98). Besides, she even impute d the fault to Tess’s ignorance, “You ought to have been more careful if you didn’t mean to get him to make you his wife!”(Hardy, 1996: 99), while forgot to raise the family was her responsibility. If she had told her daughter the danger in menfolk, and if she had warned Tess before she went, Tess definitely would have kept the vigilance to that devil. Her father even felt more shameful about the scandal, refusing the clergyman to come to their house to reform the rite for her child. Such cruel coldness could not be done by any parents who truly love their children.
Furthermore, the other characteristic of Tess’s parents was vain. When Tess was forsaken by Angel and bore her suffering, they did not go into the truth of this matter, but flaunted their d aughter’s happy marriage to the people in their village. They thought that they were highbred and their daughter married a rich man, so they did not need to work any more. For this vanity, Tess had to take half of her money to satisfy her parents’ greed, p retending they were extremely rich and happy. Ignor ing their daughter’s misery and seeking their vanity, they eventually sent their daughter to a road to ruin.
4. Conclusion
To sum up, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a masterpiece of Tomas Hardy which criticizes realism in the nineteen century. Tess is one of the tragic females in Victorian age. After more than one hundred years, the image of the heroine Tess has been set in the gallery of literature, which shows that it is not only the traditional morality has been surpassed, but the enormous allure in the deep soul of the heroine in the work made her the image of the most appealing woman. Hardy shows deep sympathy for Tess, considering that only the seduced Tess is the pure woman. The tragedy of Tess ha s something to do with the author’s life attitude. Due to the influence of the age and his experience, the fatalism is formed by Hardy. He can not give vent to his anger to the world, but express his thought in his work. Therefore, the tragic fate of Tess is a presentation of Hardy’s fatalism. What is more, the tragedy also connects closely with the social status of different families and the character of figures in the work. Hardy molded a moving character Tess, who makes various mistakes owing to subjective or objective reasons, which makes a result of her tragic fate. However, such tragedy is not occasional, but is a mirror of women’s fate in that age. Therefore, we should think deeply of the age of Victoria from this tragedy, and free women from the old notion and the traditional morality.
References
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Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2004.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D' Urbervilles. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1996.。