the Causes of Tess’ Tragedy.doc

The Causes of Tess TragedyI. Introduction A. Background of the novel Son of a mason, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born in Dorsetshire, southwest of England, the area that later became the famous Wessex in many of his novels. From his parents, Hardy gained all interests that would appear in his novels and his own life: his love for architecture and music, his interest in life styles of the country folk, and his passion for all sorts of literature. He completed his general education by attending classes reading widely: language, literature, history, philosophy and art. Moreover he interested himself in fiction and poetry. In his youth, Thomas Hardy had been greatly influenced by some liberal thinkers such as Darwin and John Stuart Mill. In his novels, Hardy incorporated many of these themes like language, literature, history and so on in order to portray a real world. Darwins challenge led Hardy to lose faith in Christianity, and this lack of faith gave his novels their tragic, bleak element.Tess of the DUrbervilles was the twelfth novel published by Thomas Hardy. He began the novel in 1889 and encountered roadblocks when attempting to find an editor and publisher for Tess of the DUrbervilles. It was originally serialized in the Graphic after being rejected by several periodicals from July to December in 1891. It finally published as a novel in December of 1891. When at last the reception of the novel was favorable and drew great public attention, certain critics ruthlessly attacked it. They attacked Tess morality and blasted Hardys suggestion in the novel that God is malicious. The outcry discouraged the author to such an extent that he ceased writing novels altogether. At the age of sixty, Hardy turned entirely to poetry. On January 11,1928, Hardy, the last important novelist and poet of the nineteenth century died, who was buried with impressive ceremonies in the Poets Corner in Westminster abbey. Tess of the DUrbervilles, like the other major works by Thomas Hardy, although technically nineteenth century work, anticipates the twentieth century in regard to the nature and the treatment of its subject matter. The novel questions the societys sexual mores by compassionately portraying a heroine who is seduced by the son of her employer and who thus is not considered a pure and chaste woman by the society. Upon its publication, although having encountered brutally hostile reviews, Tess of the DUrbervilles is now considered a major works of fiction. The critical realism of the novel puts it among the best works of the late Victorian period. The theme of tragedy is another eye-catching subject in Tess of the DUrbervilles. Tesss fate, on one hand, is an individual one, because she happens to be so beautiful, so pure, so innocent, so obedient and so poor, and because she happens to get involved with the two men who, though apparent rivals, actually join their forces together in bringing about her destruction. On the other hand, her fate represents that of the society. In such a society with such religious and moral concepts, with such social estate, anyone, pure and poor like Tess would possess the same fate. It can be the fate of all the peasants who are driven out of their land and home and forced to seek somewhere else for life.B. Introduction of the novelTess Durbeyfield is a 16-year-old simple country girl, the eldest daughter of John and Joan Durbeyfield. In a chance meeting with Parson Tringham along the road one night, John Durbeyfield discovers that he is the descendent of the DUrbervilles, an ancient, monied family who had land holdings as far back as William the Conqueror in 1066. Upon this discovery, the financially strapped Durbeyfield family learns of a nearby “relative”, and John and his wife Joan send Tess to “claim kin” in order to alleviate their impoverished condition. While visiting the DUrbervilles at The Slopes, Tess meets Alec DUrberville, who finds himself attracted to Tess. Alec arranges for Tess to become the caretaker for his blind mothers poultry, and Tess moves to the Slopes to take up the position. While in residence at the dUrbervilles, Alec seduces and rapes Tess.Tess returns home, gives birth to a son, Sorrow, the product of the rape, and works as a field worker on nearby farms. Sorrow becomes ill and dies in infancy, leaving Tess devastated at her loss. Tess makes another journey away from home to nearby Talbothays Dairy to become a milkmaid to a good-natured dairyman, Mr. Crick. There she meets and falls in love with a travelling farmers apprentice, Angel Clare. She tries to resist Angels pleas for her hand in marriage but eventually marries Angel. He does not know Tess past, although she has tried on several occasions to tell him. After the wedding, Tess and Angel confess their pasts to each other. Tess forgives Angel for his past indiscretions, but Angel cannot forgive Tess for having a child with another man.Angel suggests that the two split up, with Angel going to Brazil for a year and Tess going back home. Tess agrees and returns to her parents house. Tess eventually leaves home again for work in another town at Flintcomb-Ash farm, where the working conditions are very harsh. Tess is reunited with some of her friends from Talbothays, and they all settle in at Flintcomb to the hard work routine. Tess is determined to see Angels family in nearby Emminster but loses her nerve at the last minute. On her return to Flintcomb, Tess sees Alec again, now a practicing evangelical minister, preaching to the folks in the countryside. When Alec sees Tess, he is struck dumb and leaves his position to pursue her. Alec follows her to Flintcomb, asking her to marry him. Tess refuses in the strongest terms, but Alec is persistent.Tess returns home to find her mother recovering from her illness, but her father, John, dies suddenly from an unknown ailment. The burden of her familys welfare falls on Tess shoulders. Destitute now and homeless (they have been evicted from their cottage), the Durbeyfields have nowhere to go. Tess knows that she cannot resist Alecs money and the comforts her family can use. Furthermore, Alec insists that Angel will never return and has abandoned heran idea that Tess has already come to believe herself.In the meantime, Angel returns from Brazil to look for Tess and to begin his own farm in England. When Angel finds Tess family, Joan informs him that Tess has gone to Sandbourne, a fashionable seaside resort in the south of England. Angel finds Tess there, living as an upper-class lady with Alec DUrberville. In the meeting with Angel, Tess asks him to leave and not return for her. Angel does leave, resigned that he had judged Tess too harshly and returned too late.After her meeting with Angel, Tess confronts Alec and accuses him of lying to her about Angel. In a fit of anger and fury, Tess stabs Alec through the heart with a carving knife, killing him. Tess finds Angel to tell him of the deed. Angel has trouble believing Tess story but welcomes her back.The two travel the countryside via back roads to avoid detection. Their plan is to make for a port and leave the country as soon as possible. They spend a week in a vacant house, reunited in bliss for a short time. They are discovered, however, and the trail ends at Stonehenge, the ancient pagan monument, when the police arrest Tess and take her away.Before she is executed for her crime, Tess has Angel promise to marry her sister Liza Lu once she is gone. Angel agrees and he, along with Liza Lu, witnesses a black flag raised in the city of Wintoncester, signifying that Tess death sentence has been carried out. The two, Angel and Liza Lu, leave together, and the tragic tale of Tess ends. Elements of Tess TragedyAExternal Elements1Tesss ignorant father and motherTess lived in a poor family. Her home is a small house crowded with six children. Tess is the oldest one in her family. Therefore, she has to work hard to help her parents support the whole family. Tess is so pure and kind that she is prepared to sacrifice for her family. Again and again she turned to Alec for poverty of the family despite her own unwillingness. Her kindness gave Alec the opportunity to wrong her. Tesss father was a lazy peddler in Marlott. He hated to work hard When he was stunned to know that his family was descendent of an ancient noble family, he tried to get some profits from the connection. When the person said “Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly”(Thomas 35), he became excited and walked in a profound reverie. He began to make his noble dream: “tell them to send a horse and carriage to me immediately, to carry me home” (Thomas 37). Even more, Durbeyfield put his hand in his pocket, and produced a shilling, one of the chronically few that he possessed. He sent it to the lad with the lavish expression. As if a pedigree can change his poverty, he became complacent and full of the unlimited dream. The unrealistic illusion changed Tesss fate.Tesss mother, whose ambitions were much simpler. She wanted her daughter to rise in the world by making a successful marriage. Tess returned to home after having been raped by Alec, and she told her mother what had happened in the forest with Alec. Her mother tells her “you ought to be more careful if you did not mean to get him to make you his wife”(Hardy 45). Tess answered, “Oh mother, my mother! How could I be expected to know? I was a child when I left this house for months ago. Why did not tell me there was danger in man folk”(Hardy 60)? Tess did not have the knowledge about men, because of her different education. Tesss mother was frustrated with the reasons why Tess did not marry Alec. Her mother believed that if Tess married Alec, her familys situation would be changed greatly. If a woman had backing of a rich and powerful man, she would change her life. Although Alec is a rich man, Tess knows that she does not love him. The attitudes of her parents determined Tesss tragic end in a large property. If Tess was not born in this poor family or her family was also a noble one then, if she was not so responsible for her duty and she was not so kind, maybe her life would not end up in this way.2. Victorian hypocritical moral valueIn Mid-Victorian society beliefs about the role of women were firmly fixed. A woman was considered to be much inferior to the male and was looked upon as his property. The husband was the head of the household and had the final word.In a middle-class household the wife was seen as a child-keeper and was allowed to have no career. She spent her day in genteel pursuits, for example, embroidery and knitting - household chores would be done by servants. Furthermore she had hardly any legal rights. Any property or money she had owned when single, automatically became the possession of her husband on marriage. In law the children of the family were also the property of the husband. Middle-class girls received a basic education, usually given at home by a “governess”. The governess was lower education teacher who taught the RWA (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic) with some History and a foreign language. Being a governess was one of the few “jobs” to which a middle-class girl could aspire. And life in a working-class family was desperately hard for the wife. She was expected to bear children, bring them up and go out to work. Seven or eight children were commonplace in a family. The working-class wife also has to endure the same lack of rights as her middle-class counterpart. The working-class female would be most likely to enter domestic service, work as a factory-operative, or be an agricultural laborer.“Women were unable to enter the professions (for example, medicine or law) at this time and they were excluded from public life and voting in any form of election. The role of the Victorian women was clearly summed up by the Saturday Review which claimed that married life is a womans profession”(White 46). Finally, from the above words, we can come to the conclusion that: it takes a considerable leap of the imagination for a woman of the 21st century to realize what her life would have been like had she been born 150 years ago. We take for granted nowadays that almost any woman can have a career if she applies herself. We take for granted that women can choose whether or not to marry, and whether or not to have children. Women of the mid-19th century had no such choices. Most lived in a state little better than slavery. They had to obey men, because in most cases men held all the resources and women had no independent means of subsistence. A wealthy widow or spinster was a lucky exception. A woman who remained single would attract social disapproval and pity. She could not have children or cohabit with a man. The Victorians, who tackled many big problems successfully, made a fearful hash of the problem of woman. Their moral dualism, their weakness of dreaming of one thing and doing another, might be amusing in architecture or painting, but it involved endless cruelty towards flesh and blood. Woman in the abstract was as radiant as an Angel Clare, as dainty as a fairy-she was a picture on the wall, a statue in a temple, a being whose physical processes were an inscrutable mystery. She was wrapped by the Victorians in folds on folds, and layers on layers of clothes, as though she were a misery idol. She was hidden in the mysteries of petticoats; her natural lines were hidden behind a barricade of hoops and stays; her dress throughout the century emphasized her divorce from reality. She was a daughter of the gods divinely fair and most divinely tall; she was queen rose of the rose-bud garden of girls; she was Helen, Beatrice, the Blessed Damozel, the Lady of Shalott. A romanticism as feverish as that could only bring unhappiness to its objects. From reading Victorian novels and watching television costume dramas it is easy to forget that the vast majority of women belonged to working class. Born without a penny, they began work between the ages of about 8 to 12 and continued until marriage. A womans fate thereafter depended on her husband. If he earned enough to support her she would usually cease work, otherwise she worked all her life, taking short breaks to give birth. Anything she earned belonged to him.3. Tesss ruining by the unfair law and moralityTess Durbeyfield, a poor girl, a pure woman, is ruined by the bourgeois society. She is the victim of that time. The story of Tess of the DUrbervilles is set in the changing society at the turning point from feudalism to capitalism in the nineteenth century. At the era, England always impresses people by the rapid development of the economy. All over the country, people were pleased by the prosperity. On the other hand, with the development of the modern agriculture, the old traditional farming collapsed. Thousands of decayed peasants are suffering from the bankrupt. Tess hometown is in the unfortunate. They are very poor. So poverty of the family is one of the basic social causes of Tess Tragedy.The unjust legal system is also another cause of the tragedy of Tess. In the capitalist society, legal system always protects the interests of the exploiting class, and provides different reasonable excuses for them to oppress the laboring people. Capitalist legal system serves the capitalist reactionary ruling. Alec DUrbervilles, as a new capitalist, commit a crime in the countryside, even ruins the innocence of Tess. But he is protected by the law. On the contrary, Tess, in order to gain her happiness, is sentenced to death. How unfair the law is！In that period, it is impossible for the laboring people to gain the fair treatment.The ruining of Tess is also closely connected with the hypocritical morality of capitalism.“After stirring the embers he roses to his feet; all the force of her disclosure had imparted itself now, his face had withered. In the strenuousness of his concentration he tread fitfully on the floor. He could not by any contrivance think closely enough; that was the meaning of his vague movement”(Thomas 106). “He paused, contemplating this definition, then suddenly broke into horrible laughteras unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell”(Thomas 203). From these words, the hypocritical morality of Angle is exposed completely. He says he loves Tess, but when his love conflicts with the traditional morality, he chose the latter without hesitates. The traditional morality makes Angle rather cold-blooded. He doesnt think Tess is pure. Then he leaves her, which makes Tess feeling desperate and going to ruin. So the hypocritical morality of capitalism ruins Tess.The conservative party said: “ English is a country with two nations , when the bothie is dangerous, the palace is not safe too”( The World News 4), on the contrary, the English man which was proud of their policy system, justice system, parliament system and etc, but all of them is not corresponding with their country, because of the industry revolution, the great prompt economy and the social construction great change was gradually becoming not accord with the age, it has become a unacquainted scenery.B. The Economic Elements1.Tess poor familyTess grows in a poor family. Her parents are of a social class “ranking distinctly above” the agricultural laborer. But it was clear that they are vain and simple minded. They are aware of Tess beauty, viewing her as an opportunity for future wealth. They believe that Tess can cope with the unfortunate circumstance of Prince death. So, they persuade Tess to visit the stole-DUrbervilles, a wealthy family, to claim kinship with them. They hope that Tess would make a good marriage with one of the sons in that wealthy fam