Analyzing the Writing Background of Tess of D’Urbervilles

hongyan Su

Abstract: One of the most famous novels of Hardys is “Tess of DUrbervilles”.In this novel Hardy created a beautiful country girl with emotion vividly. It tells us the tragic life story of Tess. This thesis is aimed at analyzing the writing background and the main idea.。

Key Words:：Tess's tragedy; Hardy

1．Introduction

1.1 An introduction to Hardy

Thomas Hardy, last and one of the greatest of Victorian novelists, is one of the representative of English critical realism at the turn of the 19th century. He was born in Dorset, a southern country of England, which he called Wessex in his books. His father, a builder himself, wanted him to become a builder. From an early age he was bound apprentive to an architect. At the age of 22,Hardy went to London, where he studied architecture for five years but at the same time also became interested in literature and philosophy. On his return to his native countryside in 1867,Hardy worked as an architect for several years. His first attempt at literature proved successful. So he gave up architecture and made literature his profession.

Hardy wrote prodigiously. His principal works are the Wessex Novels, i.e.; the novels describing the characters and environment of his native countryside. They include “Under the Greenwood Tree”(1872),”Far from the Madding Crowd”(1874),”The Return of the Native”(1878),”The Mayor of Casterbridge”(1886),”Tess of the DUrbervilles”(1891) and “Jude the Obscure”(1896).These novels have for their setting the agricultural region of the southern countries of England. He truthfully depicts the impoverishment and decay of small farmers who became hired field hands and roamed the country in search of seasonal jobs. These laborers were mercilessly exploited by the rich landowners. The author was pained to see the deterioration of the patriarchal mode of life in rural England. This was one of the reasons accounting for the growing pessimistic vein, which runs throughout his novels. According to his pessimistic philosophy, mankind is subjected to the rule of some hostile mysterious fate, which brings misfortune into human life. Cramped by his petty-bourgeois outlook, Hardy could not understand that it was not fate, but the unfavorable conditions of capitalism which were responsible for the tragic lives of the people whom he described in his books. Strong elements of naturalism, combined with a tendency towards symbolism are the defects that spoil at times the realistic effect of his art.

Among his famous novels, “Tess of the DUrbervilles” and “Jude the Obscure” could be regarded as the summit of his realism. Both novels were given a hostile reception by the bourgeois public. The malicious criticism which they incurred discouraged?the author to such an extent that he ceased writing novels altogether. At the end of the nineties, almost at the age of sixty, Hardy turned entirely to poetry. He achieved great mastership in the field of phylisophicallyrics, which, in the main,treat of the same problems as those presented in his novels.(刘炳善,458-459)

1.2 An introduction to the works

“Tess of the DUrbervilles, a Pure Woman Faithfully Portrayed”, Hardys most famous book, tells the tragic life story of a beautiful country girl, Tess Durbeyfield. Tess is the daughter of a poor villager. In her youth, she is seduced by Alec DUrbervilles, the son of a rich merchant who has bought his title into the class of gentry. Tess gives birth to an illegitimate child, thus scandalizing the narrow-minded people around her. So she leaves home and works at a distant farm as a dairymaid. There she meets Angel Clare, a clergymans son, who has broken with the traditions of his family to seek the ideal in a quiet rural life. The young people fall in love and are engaged to each other. On the weeding night, Tess confesses to Angel the affair of Alec. Angel, himself a sinner who has had some affair with a bad woman, casts her off. Soon he leaves for Brazil. Misfortune and hardship come upon poor Tess and her family. Her father dies and the?whole family are threatened with starvation. Now Alec DUrbervilles has become a preacher, still rich and still influential. Tess has made some pathetic appeals to her husband abroad but in vain, and Alec presses his attentions upon her. She is driven to accept his protection and lives with him. Clare, returning from Brazil and repentant of his harshness to Tess, finds her in such a situation. Maddened by Alec, she murders him in a fit of despair. After hiding with Clare in a forest for a short time, Tess falls in the claws of law. She is arrested, tried and hanged .At the end of the story, the author writes sarcastically:” Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Awschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.”(吴伟仁,312-313)

The whole story is filled with a feeling of dismal foreboding and doom. Fateful circumstances and tragic coincidences abound in the book.

作者简介

苏红艳（1982—），女，四川新津人，学历：学士，职称：助教，研究方向英语教育。