THE ANALYSIS OF TESS’S CHARACTERS IN TESS
OF THE D’URBERVILLES
Academic Writing 学号: [1**********] 姓名: 柳雨青 2012.12.10
THE ANALYSIS OF TESS’S CHARACTERS IN TESS
OF THE D’URBERVILLES
Abstract
Tess of the D’urbervilles is a masterpiece of Thamos Hardy.
Tess’s natural instincts —pure, innocent and faithful and loyal to love.
Analysis character of Tess abstract from two aspects we can see analysis character of Tess. First, she has all the innocence and purity that the nature has endowed with. We can see this point from her kind, selfless to her parents and her friends, and her loyalty to love. The second, after her unfortunate encounter, she becomes a complicated woman; she no longer endures all things silently. She struggles against Alec and unjust treatment, contempt and criticizes hypocritical religion. It seems that Tess is unyielding to evils. At last, the conclusion is that the real cause of Tess’s tragedy lies in the wicked nature and hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society. And her tragedy deserves us to sympathize with.
Key Words: Tess, natural, unyielding, tragedy, character
摘 要
《德伯家的苔丝》是托马斯.哈代的代表作。
小说中女主人公苔丝的本性—纯洁、天真、守信，忠贞于爱青。
关于苔丝的性格，我们可以通过以下两点分析出：首先，她具有着与生俱来的纯洁与善良，从她对她的家人及其朋友的热心、无私及她对爱情的忠诚上可以看出这一点。其次，在遭遇了不幸之后，她渐渐变得性格复杂起来。她不再默默地忍受一切，开始反抗亚历克，与不公平的对待、蔑视作斗争，批判宗教的伪善。看起来苔丝是不会像邪恶势力屈服的。最后得出结论：造成苔丝悲剧的真正原因在于被扭曲的本性和封建社会道德的伪善。与此同时，她的悲剧也颇值得我们同情。
关键词：苔丝；本性的；不屈服的；悲剧；性格
Introduction
Tess of the D’urbervilles is a masterpiece of Thamos Hardy. Tess is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine.
Tess who had a poor family, and in order to well support her whole family she went to be a feeder in the D’Urbervilles. There Ale d’Urbervilles tried his best to get close to Tess and he had affection towards Tess .Eventually, Tess lost her Chastity and was pregnant. In order to get rid of Alec, Tess again returned home and lived a harder life. Once again, in order to earn a living, she went to a Taub Access dairy farm. There she fell in love with Clare who was fond of farming very much. She finally deserted by him. And in the course of Tess’s lifelong time she fought against these problems. Meanwhile, we can see clearly her apparent honorable personalities.
Analysis character of Tess abstract from two aspects we can see analysis character of Tess. First, she has all the innocence and purity that the nature has endowed with. We can see this point from her kind, selfless to her parents and her friends, and her loyalty to love. The second, after her unfortunate encounter, she becomes a complicated woman; she no longer endures all things silently. She struggles against Alec and unjust treatment, contempt and criticizes hypocritical religion. It seems that Tess is unyielding to evils. At last, the conclusion
is that the real cause of Tess’s tragedy lies in the wicked nature and hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society. And her tragedy deserves us to sympathize with.
Tess is the archetypal anti-heroine. That is, she does not win major battles or influence political decisions; instead, she inhabits her own small world and tries to cope with the fate that life has dealt her. By the end of the novel, she is a complete, whole character, but the scale of her influence in her own world, Wessex, is small indeed. Nonetheless, Tess has heroic qualities that make her worthy of our admiration. These qualities are most evident in the following scenes: when she baptizes her infant son, Sorrow; when she endures the tortures of Alec's violation and Angel's abandonment; and when she finally and irrevocably rids herself of Alec's influence. Thus, Tess is a heroine, but on an everyday, ordinary scale.
Tess is a simple country girl/woman who had a basic education growing up, but had little exposure to the wiles of the world outside Marlott. She has curiosity that goes beyond her basic education, as demonstrated when she debates religious and moral issues with both Angel and Alec. Her weakness is her innocence; she is unschooled "in the ways of the world" and therefore unable to protect herself. Tess chides her mother for not telling her full truth about a less-than-kind world: "Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk?"
Throughout the novel, Hardy develops Tess as a character and describes her simple beauty. She is attractive to all men, and even her attempts to change her appearance are not enough to hide her natural beauty. Further in the story, Tess is depicted as a person of near divine qualities when she baptizes Sorrow before he dies. Hardy calls the effect on her siblings as a "transfiguring effect" and that she looked "with a touch of dignity which was almost regal." Tess' beauty is balanced by her earthy elegance, and this is especially evident
when she is being courted by Angel at Talbothays:
Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too, upon Tess' eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like seed pearls. When the day grew quite strong and commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess then lost her strange and ethereal beauty; her teeth, lips, and eyes scintillated in the sunbeams and she was again the dazzlingly fair dairymaid only, who had to hold her own against the other women of the world.
However, behind that beauty Hardy paints a picture of a tortured mind. Tess could not be described as an exuberant person, she seems to border between marginal happiness to deep depression. And her personality is hidden, like an enigma, even from those close to her. Joan, her mother, says in response to a question Angel asks, " . . . I have never really known her." Early in the novel, we see that this statement is foreshadowed when John remarks about Tess, "Tess is queer."
Fate plays a predominate role in what happens to Tess. The acknowledgement of the role of fate is summed up by the locals in the small town as "It was to be." Even Tess realizes that she and her family are in a tough spot when Prince, the family horse, is killed and she must go to the Stoke-d'Urbervilles for financial recovery. Joan, Tess' mother, realizing that her daughter has suffered several devastating blows by Alec says, "Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose." Tess is resigned to accept Alec's proposal near the end of the novel when she tells Angel, "I don't care what he [Alec] did wi' me!" Her own safety and happiness are of no consequence to her. Even when she must atone for murdering Alec, she accepts the inevitable as she is arrested for Alec's death — "It is as it should be." That is, she knows her attempt to avoid prosecution and ultimate death are futile, and she must accept her fate. She does so
willingly.
Tess is able to bear great burdens placed upon her at a young age. She is between the ages of 16 and 23 when we read her tale. This ability to undergo so much at such a young age builds her character so that we see her as a powerful force in the novel. She accepts blame for Prince's death; the death of her infant son, Sorrow; the loss of Angel and the destruction of her marriage; as well as her killing Alec with her own hands and leaving home three times in her life to "test the waters of the world" outside her village.
She is unselfish in her actions towards others, as when she suggests to the other milkmaids at Talbothays and Angel, that Izz, Retty, and Marian are all more acceptable for marriage to Angel than she is. The other milkmaids at Talbothays cannot harbor any ill feelings toward Tess, as she is the one bound to marry Angel. Thus, she becomes a character with no discernable negative qualities.
Also, Tess is passionate in her love for Angel and her hatred of Alec. She strays from her marriage only when it appears that Angel may not return to her from South America and when there is no other way to help her destitute family. When she discovers Alec's duplicity, she makes her mind up that this will be his final deception of her.
The martyr-like passion of Tess engenders the readers' sympathy. She makes several attempts to rectify her "mistakes": the vow to Angel to end their marriage; her offer to kill herself to free Angel from their marriage; and, her refusal to ask Angel's parents for any additional money during Angel's sojourn to Brazil. She is determined to be self-sufficient and willing to sacrifice her well being for the good of others. This makes her selfless and on a morally higher ground than other characters in the novel.
Tess' greatest weakness is for her family, particularly her brothers and sisters, and it is this weakness that Alec exploits to great effect. Her journey to The Slopes, at the beginning of the novel, and her subsequent return to Alec near the novel's end, are all predicated on her willingness to undergo great pains to make her family's life better. Alec promises financial aid to the Durbeyfield family several times, to which Tess cannot object. He has ulterior motives, however: to subdue Tess and make her his own. In the end, Alec fails. Thus, Hardy paints a grand portrait of a well-rounded character in Teresa Durbeyfield.
Conclusion
Tess’s tragedy deservers us to sympathize with. The real causes of her tragedy lie in the wicked nature and the hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society.
References
[1] Hardy.Thomas. Tess of the D’Urberbilles .Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press ,1992
[2] Williams.Merryn.哈代导读. 北京：北京大学出版社
[3](英)哈代 （Hardy,T.）著，雷芳译。苔丝[M].上海外语教育出版社，2004，p400
[4] 刁纯志 外国文学名著导读 [M]成都 四川人民出版社，2001
[5] 刘茂生 近20年国内哈代小说研究述评[J] 外国文学研究，2004
THE ANALYSIS OF TESS’S CHARACTERS IN TESS
OF THE D’URBERVILLES
Academic Writing 学号: [1**********] 姓名: 柳雨青 2012.12.10
THE ANALYSIS OF TESS’S CHARACTERS IN TESS
OF THE D’URBERVILLES
Abstract
Tess of the D’urbervilles is a masterpiece of Thamos Hardy.
Tess’s natural instincts —pure, innocent and faithful and loyal to love.
Analysis character of Tess abstract from two aspects we can see analysis character of Tess. First, she has all the innocence and purity that the nature has endowed with. We can see this point from her kind, selfless to her parents and her friends, and her loyalty to love. The second, after her unfortunate encounter, she becomes a complicated woman; she no longer endures all things silently. She struggles against Alec and unjust treatment, contempt and criticizes hypocritical religion. It seems that Tess is unyielding to evils. At last, the conclusion is that the real cause of Tess’s tragedy lies in the wicked nature and hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society. And her tragedy deserves us to sympathize with.
Key Words: Tess, natural, unyielding, tragedy, character
摘 要
《德伯家的苔丝》是托马斯.哈代的代表作。
小说中女主人公苔丝的本性—纯洁、天真、守信，忠贞于爱青。
关于苔丝的性格，我们可以通过以下两点分析出：首先，她具有着与生俱来的纯洁与善良，从她对她的家人及其朋友的热心、无私及她对爱情的忠诚上可以看出这一点。其次，在遭遇了不幸之后，她渐渐变得性格复杂起来。她不再默默地忍受一切，开始反抗亚历克，与不公平的对待、蔑视作斗争，批判宗教的伪善。看起来苔丝是不会像邪恶势力屈服的。最后得出结论：造成苔丝悲剧的真正原因在于被扭曲的本性和封建社会道德的伪善。与此同时，她的悲剧也颇值得我们同情。
关键词：苔丝；本性的；不屈服的；悲剧；性格
Introduction
Tess of the D’urbervilles is a masterpiece of Thamos Hardy. Tess is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine.
Tess who had a poor family, and in order to well support her whole family she went to be a feeder in the D’Urbervilles. There Ale d’Urbervilles tried his best to get close to Tess and he had affection towards Tess .Eventually, Tess lost her Chastity and was pregnant. In order to get rid of Alec, Tess again returned home and lived a harder life. Once again, in order to earn a living, she went to a Taub Access dairy farm. There she fell in love with Clare who was fond of farming very much. She finally deserted by him. And in the course of Tess’s lifelong time she fought against these problems. Meanwhile, we can see clearly her apparent honorable personalities.
Analysis character of Tess abstract from two aspects we can see analysis character of Tess. First, she has all the innocence and purity that the nature has endowed with. We can see this point from her kind, selfless to her parents and her friends, and her loyalty to love. The second, after her unfortunate encounter, she becomes a complicated woman; she no longer endures all things silently. She struggles against Alec and unjust treatment, contempt and criticizes hypocritical religion. It seems that Tess is unyielding to evils. At last, the conclusion
is that the real cause of Tess’s tragedy lies in the wicked nature and hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society. And her tragedy deserves us to sympathize with.
Tess is the archetypal anti-heroine. That is, she does not win major battles or influence political decisions; instead, she inhabits her own small world and tries to cope with the fate that life has dealt her. By the end of the novel, she is a complete, whole character, but the scale of her influence in her own world, Wessex, is small indeed. Nonetheless, Tess has heroic qualities that make her worthy of our admiration. These qualities are most evident in the following scenes: when she baptizes her infant son, Sorrow; when she endures the tortures of Alec's violation and Angel's abandonment; and when she finally and irrevocably rids herself of Alec's influence. Thus, Tess is a heroine, but on an everyday, ordinary scale.
Tess is a simple country girl/woman who had a basic education growing up, but had little exposure to the wiles of the world outside Marlott. She has curiosity that goes beyond her basic education, as demonstrated when she debates religious and moral issues with both Angel and Alec. Her weakness is her innocence; she is unschooled "in the ways of the world" and therefore unable to protect herself. Tess chides her mother for not telling her full truth about a less-than-kind world: "Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk?"
Throughout the novel, Hardy develops Tess as a character and describes her simple beauty. She is attractive to all men, and even her attempts to change her appearance are not enough to hide her natural beauty. Further in the story, Tess is depicted as a person of near divine qualities when she baptizes Sorrow before he dies. Hardy calls the effect on her siblings as a "transfiguring effect" and that she looked "with a touch of dignity which was almost regal." Tess' beauty is balanced by her earthy elegance, and this is especially evident
when she is being courted by Angel at Talbothays:
Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too, upon Tess' eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like seed pearls. When the day grew quite strong and commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess then lost her strange and ethereal beauty; her teeth, lips, and eyes scintillated in the sunbeams and she was again the dazzlingly fair dairymaid only, who had to hold her own against the other women of the world.
However, behind that beauty Hardy paints a picture of a tortured mind. Tess could not be described as an exuberant person, she seems to border between marginal happiness to deep depression. And her personality is hidden, like an enigma, even from those close to her. Joan, her mother, says in response to a question Angel asks, " . . . I have never really known her." Early in the novel, we see that this statement is foreshadowed when John remarks about Tess, "Tess is queer."
Fate plays a predominate role in what happens to Tess. The acknowledgement of the role of fate is summed up by the locals in the small town as "It was to be." Even Tess realizes that she and her family are in a tough spot when Prince, the family horse, is killed and she must go to the Stoke-d'Urbervilles for financial recovery. Joan, Tess' mother, realizing that her daughter has suffered several devastating blows by Alec says, "Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose." Tess is resigned to accept Alec's proposal near the end of the novel when she tells Angel, "I don't care what he [Alec] did wi' me!" Her own safety and happiness are of no consequence to her. Even when she must atone for murdering Alec, she accepts the inevitable as she is arrested for Alec's death — "It is as it should be." That is, she knows her attempt to avoid prosecution and ultimate death are futile, and she must accept her fate. She does so
willingly.
Tess is able to bear great burdens placed upon her at a young age. She is between the ages of 16 and 23 when we read her tale. This ability to undergo so much at such a young age builds her character so that we see her as a powerful force in the novel. She accepts blame for Prince's death; the death of her infant son, Sorrow; the loss of Angel and the destruction of her marriage; as well as her killing Alec with her own hands and leaving home three times in her life to "test the waters of the world" outside her village.
She is unselfish in her actions towards others, as when she suggests to the other milkmaids at Talbothays and Angel, that Izz, Retty, and Marian are all more acceptable for marriage to Angel than she is. The other milkmaids at Talbothays cannot harbor any ill feelings toward Tess, as she is the one bound to marry Angel. Thus, she becomes a character with no discernable negative qualities.
Also, Tess is passionate in her love for Angel and her hatred of Alec. She strays from her marriage only when it appears that Angel may not return to her from South America and when there is no other way to help her destitute family. When she discovers Alec's duplicity, she makes her mind up that this will be his final deception of her.
The martyr-like passion of Tess engenders the readers' sympathy. She makes several attempts to rectify her "mistakes": the vow to Angel to end their marriage; her offer to kill herself to free Angel from their marriage; and, her refusal to ask Angel's parents for any additional money during Angel's sojourn to Brazil. She is determined to be self-sufficient and willing to sacrifice her well being for the good of others. This makes her selfless and on a morally higher ground than other characters in the novel.
Tess' greatest weakness is for her family, particularly her brothers and sisters, and it is this weakness that Alec exploits to great effect. Her journey to The Slopes, at the beginning of the novel, and her subsequent return to Alec near the novel's end, are all predicated on her willingness to undergo great pains to make her family's life better. Alec promises financial aid to the Durbeyfield family several times, to which Tess cannot object. He has ulterior motives, however: to subdue Tess and make her his own. In the end, Alec fails. Thus, Hardy paints a grand portrait of a well-rounded character in Teresa Durbeyfield.
Conclusion
Tess’s tragedy deservers us to sympathize with. The real causes of her tragedy lie in the wicked nature and the hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society.
References
[1] Hardy.Thomas. Tess of the D’Urberbilles .Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press ,1992
[2] Williams.Merryn.哈代导读. 北京：北京大学出版社
[3](英)哈代 （Hardy,T.）著，雷芳译。苔丝[M].上海外语教育出版社，2004，p400
[4] 刁纯志 外国文学名著导读 [M]成都 四川人民出版社，2001
[5] 刘茂生 近20年国内哈代小说研究述评[J] 外国文学研究，2004