苔丝的性格分析 英文版

Analysis of Characters of Tess

Abstract: Tess is shaped and praised by Hardy in his novel Tess of d’Urbervilles; she is a rebel image in English literary history. By the description of her tragic, Hardy shows his resistance and struggle against feudalism and bourgeois morality, religion and social oppression. Hardy‟s defiance against the status quo of Victorian England is both fierce and unrelenting and that is why both the last novels met with terrific accusations from the bourgeois authorities and their henchmen the critics.

Key Words:sweet-natured, kind-hearted, pure, rebel

Ⅰ.Introduction

Tess, the heroine of Hardy‟s Tess of d’Urbervilles, is a peasant girl. And when Hardy gives the novel a subtitle, “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented”, we can see him defying the Victorian moral standard by calling Tess a pure woman. The character of Tess is extremely well drawn. A victim of the society, Tess is portrayed as a sweet-natured, kind-hearted, pure and rebel girl, and yet she is not free from the influence of social conventions and moral standards of the day. These characters make the image of Tess alive, moving and become an immortal artistic image. This paper attempts to detailed analysis and exposition of the characters of Tess.

Ⅱ. Characters of Tess

2.1 Sweet- natured character of Tess

“A fresh and virginal daughter of Nature” is what first Tess seems to Angel Clare. Tess always maintains the essence of herself as the daughter of a peasant; she loves life, loves nature and gives off the fragrance of the nature without decoration. Tess is the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the d‟Urbervilles. In the late 19th century Britain was completely ruled by capitalism, these aristocratic families of mighty powers have been gradually declined. D‟Urbervilles family inherited to Tess' father only reduced to a village haggler; the only way to proof the association with his ancestors was “a wold sliver spoon and a wold graven seal”. Tess' father happened to know that he was the descendant of the d‟Urbervilles from the pastor; he feels so rafted after his uplifting by the news and says to villagers“I‟ve-got a gr‟t-family-vault-at-Kingsbere and knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!”He is proud of his noble origin and stains with secular and vanity. Mrs. Durbeyfield− a hardworking and plain woman−fells complacent because of her husband‟s noble origin. But Tess, who lives in the family with vulgar atmosphere, always maintains

the virtues of working people; she has an aversion to the vulgarity of her parents and despises the noble origin. She always believes that she is a peasant‟s daughter and lives on her own labor. “…I have as much of mother as father in me! All my prettiness comes from her, and she was only a dairymaid‟, she said.”Every word shows that Tess‟ love and pride of the working class. Tess would rather adhere to the surname “D urbeyfield” than use the surname of aristocratic family “d‟Urbervilles” in order to raise her status. Angel called Tess Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because she did not understand them. “…Call me Tess‟, she said to Angel.”It forms a distinct compare with Alec, who picks the surname “d‟Urbervilles” from the British Museum, posing the character of aristocratic people. This show that Tess is a sweet- natured girl, who despises noble origin, hates vanity but takes pride of working class.

2.2 Kind-hearted character of Tess

Tess‟kind-hearted character shows the love of life, hard-working and brave enough to face all difficulties with a selfless self-sacrifice. Tess is the eldest child in her family. When she was sixteen years old, she shouldered her family burden without complaint. “There came to her a chill self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors.”She helps her father to sell hives, but on the way to market the horse called Prince was killed by shaft of the cart, which destroyed the major income of her family. “Tis all my doing-all mine!”So Tess is persuaded by her mother to visit the prosperous d‟Urbervilles and to claim kin, though actually the latter is a family of capitalists who have recently acquired wealth and bought their way into the gentry. She works there and is seduced by the young master Alec d‟Urbervilles, and has to return home in disgrace. She gives birth to a child who dies in fancy, and she is considered a sinful woman. How great sacrifice she did for her family! When Angel leaves her for Brazil and she goes home. Again the great poverty at her home forces her come out look for work. When she leaves home she took twenty-five of the fifty pounds Clare had given her, and handed the sum over to her mother, saying that it was a slight return for the trouble and humiliation she had brought upon them in years past. Tess‟work as wage-laborer at the Flintcomb-Ash farm shows farming was then run on the capitalist basis, with the employment of badly exploited and oppressed wage-earners who had to work on the hardest working conditions. What Tess received at the hand of her master the farmer at the Flintcomb-Ash farm-both tyranny and insult- sufficiently indicates how much a poor peasant girl, of a small free-holder family, had to suffer not that of an individual or a family, but is symbolic of the destruction of the English peasantry toward the end of the 19th century. Then the news of her father‟s death comes to her, and with it the expulsion of her family from their cottage, and because