苔丝的性格分析悲剧成因

To Analyse Tess’s Tradegy in< Tess of The D’Urbervilles > From the Character of Tess

1.Introduction

1.1 Introduction to Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy(1840-1928), was an English novelist and poet, born near Dorchester, and one of the greatest English writers of the 19th century.

The son of a stonemason, he could not afford to pursue a scholarly career as he wished and was apprenticed to John Hicks, a local church architect. He continued, however, to study the Greek and Latin classics.

Despite his employment, Hardy was writing continually during this period of his life.Such early novels as “Desperate Remedies”(1871)and “A Pair of Blue Eyes”(1873) met with small success and may be considered formative works. After the appearance of Far From the Madding Crowd(1874), popular as well as critical acclaim enabled him to devote himself exclusively to writing. His success also made marriage feasible, and in 1874 he married Emma Lavinia Gifford.

Over the next 22 years Hardy wrote many novels, including those he referred to as “romances and fantasies”-most of which were first serialized in popular magazines. His major works are “The Return of the Native” (1878), “The Mayor of Casterbridge”(1886), “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” (1891), and“Jude the Obscure” (1896), the latter two considered masterpieces. Hardy’s novels are all set against the bleak and forbidding Dorset landscape (referred to as Wessex in the novels), whose physical harshness echoes that of an indifferent, if not malevolent,universe. The author’s characters, who are for the most part of the poorer rural classes, are sympathetically and often humorously portrayed. Their lives are ruled not only by nature but also by rigid Victorian social conventions. Hardy’s style is accordingly rough hewn, sometimes awkward, but always commanding and intense.

1.2 Introduction to Tess of the D’Urbervilles

1.2.1 Background of the Novel

This story happened in the late of Britain’s Victorian era, in this time, Capitalist class controlled all of the rights, and the law was serviced for them. Farmers were at the bottom of the society, they had never equal rights as the capitalist class. Tess as a woman in the Victorian era, she cannot avoid the “Hegemony”father right consciousness to “woman” nature understanding and severe social etiquette. And the patriarchal social system made women lost their independent status. By the Capitalist invasion, those Self-reliant farmers who had a small amount of land and the means of production had followed the insolvency. Female beauty not only regarded as the