In the fierce conflict between man and environment, Tess's fate is doomed to be tragic. Tess lived in the Victorian era when British capitalism invaded the countryside and poisoned the social atmosphere. Although she is hardworking, kind, smart and beautiful; However, as a laborer, a laborer with no power or money and low social status will naturally be oppressed and humiliated by capitalist society. With the invasion of capitalism, farmers with little land and means of production have to go bankrupt. Tess's old horse was killed by a mail truck, which changed her family's economic life. Desperate Tess had to entrust herself to Alec. It can be seen that Tess's tragic fate is closely related to her economic poverty. This is one of them. Secondly, the unjust legal system is also a factor leading to Tess's tragedy. In capitalist society, the legal system is based on safeguarding the interests of the exploiting class and recognizing the power of the exploiting class to oppress the people, and serves to safeguard its reactionary rule. Alec dominated the countryside and did many evils, but he was protected by law, while Tess was sentenced to death. This just shows the reactionary nature of the bourgeois political system and shows that it is impossible for small people in the lower classes to get fair treatment in society. Thirdly, the destruction of Tess is also closely related to hypocritical religion. Alec, a hypocritical figure, exposed hypocritical religion. He is a bourgeois and nouveau riche who got rich by doing business, and he is also a ... Carnivore? . He set a trap to lure Tess, but used biblical allusions to blame Tess. Later, he actually became a priest who advised people to do good. It can be seen that in capitalist society, religion is only a tool for the reactionary ruling class to anesthetize, deceive and fool the working people. Marx once pointed out: Christianity is branded with hypocrisy. ? Religion provides a theoretical basis for the bourgeoisie to abuse and defile women. Fourthly, Tess is also a victim of bourgeois hypocrisy. In his works, An Ji is the embodiment of bourgeois hypocrisy. Although he is an open-minded intellectual, there are deep-rooted traditional moral concepts in his mind. He had his own debauchery and was forgiven by Tess, but he refused to forgive innocent Tess. The imprint of this class is still deeply branded in his soul: think? Different identities, different moral concepts. ? She also used the traditional concept of chastity to look at women's purity, without any sympathy for Tess, which made Tess fall into pain and despair and forced her to return to Alec. The hypocritical bourgeois morality embodied in Angie pushed Tess to the abyss of tragedy. Ironically, Alec, who directly brought misfortune to Tess, is not only a rude and vulgar image of a country villain, but also a representative of hypocritical religion and bourgeois state machinery. When Tess met Alec again, Alec had become a priest, preaching the Bible to farmers. By depicting Alec's image, the author mercilessly exposed the darkness of English society and the hypocrisy of religion.
It can be seen that Tess's tragedy is the product of the society at that time, so Tess's tragedy is also a social tragedy.
Personality factors of Tess's female tragedy
Aristotle once defined women without discrimination: Women are women because their bodies lack certain attributes and suffer from these natural defects. ? For women, in a society dominated by male interests, it is difficult to maintain their personality even if they make unbearable sacrifices with amazing perseverance. They either become pleasure tools for men, or they are laughed at, left out in the cold and hurt.
Tess is a brand-new typical woman created by Hardy. She has a dual personality. On the one hand, she dares to resist traditional morality and hypocritical religion; On the other hand, we can't get rid of the fetters of traditional morality. Especially the latter is directly related to her tragic fate.
First of all, the personality factor that causes Tess's tragedy is the simplicity endowed by nature. This instinctive simplicity makes it impossible for her to get along with Alec, a man with a cruel face, and also makes it impossible for her to hide her own from the person she loves? A stain? Because she is not contaminated with many civilizations, she lacks utilitarian strategies. Her simple instinct transcends everyone's innate self-help instinct, which inevitably leads to her tragedy. Tess's ancestors used to be prominent and wealthy aristocrats, but by the late19th century, the family had declined, and by her father's generation, her family had become poor. After learning about her family background by chance, Tess's father was proud of her aristocratic background, and the simple-minded Mrs. Durbeyfield was also proud of her husband's background. On the contrary, Tess hates her parents' vulgarity, despises this noble birth, and insists that she is the daughter of her parents' family and makes a living by her own labor first. I was raised by my parents, and my beauty was given by my mother. She's just a milkmaid? ; At the same time, Tess insists on the mediocre d 'Urberville surname instead of the noble d 'Urberville surname; When Claire suggested that Tess change her surname to D 'Urberville to improve her physical status, Tess flatly refused, which fully showed Tess's simplicity, innocence, contempt for family status and noble character of being proud of her works. Tess is hardworking, brave in sacrifice and selfless. She comes from a poor family and is the eldest in the family, so she helps her mother with housework very early and works hard. She would rather sacrifice herself for her family. When the family lived in the middle of nowhere and was dying, she resolutely chose to live with Alec again, but at this time she was not corroded by the rich material life, and only Claire was in her heart from beginning to end. Tess is faithful to love, and what she wants from Claire is not to ask him for less. For him, she cut off her eyebrows, wrapped her face and disguised herself as an ugly woman. All these show Tess's loyalty to Claire; She worships Claire very much, thinking that he is a perfect man, the embodiment of wisdom, and regards him as a god. Tess despises religion and is suspicious of it. When she lost her virginity, she changed her view of religion. She baptized her illegitimate child in disregard of the canon. When the priest denied that this baptism was not allowed to bury a dead baby according to the doctrine, she said, then I don't like you. I will never go to your church. ? From then on, I broke off contact with religion. In the late19th century, when Tess lived, a man was forbidden by law to marry his late wife's sister, but she despised the law and thought that this canon had nothing to do with her, so she hoped that her husband and sister could live together in the future.
On the other hand, because Tess was born in a peasant family, some old moral values and fatalistic views left over from the peasants made her weak resistance to traditional morality. While being persecuted by secular public opinion and traditional morality, she examines herself with this moral standard and thinks she is guilty. ? She thinks she is the embodiment of evil? , ? She always feels that people all over the world are paying attention to her situation and are afraid to look up at others? She can't forget her shame more than others. This is how Tess binds herself with the moral net she weaves. In fact, her self-restraint consciousness has its profound historical foundation and is the concrete expression of the whole social consciousness. As an individual in a specific historical period, Tess is bound to form social consciousness and moral concepts in a specific historical period, and her thoughts and behaviors are bound to be restricted by the times and social consciousness.
Tess believes that after losing her virginity, she has become a sinner, and she is not qualified and unworthy to be Claire's wife. Tess thinks losing virginity is a sin, so? Losing your virginity? This evil tormented the knife for a long time and suppressed her. She thinks Alec is her real husband physically, that is, in name, she is Angie? Mrs Clare, but it's actually Alec? Mrs. D 'Urberville, all these fully reflect Tess's moral conservatism. Although the character of a character is becoming more and more important in controlling tragedy, the decisive force leading to the tragic ending is often not the character itself, but the fate of the original form or the change of form. On the premise of losing herself, Tess idolizes Claire and is extremely loyal. Earlier, Tess mentioned something in "Faithfulness to Love", in which she said: I must obey you like a poor slave, even if you let me die, I will not disobey you. What you think is what I think. I don't know anything about one thing, but I think the same as you. ? It is this thought and conservatism that aggravate the tragedy of Tess's fate.
The inevitability of Tess's tragic fate
Tess's tragedy is inevitable, not caused by accidental and unknowable fate. By setting up many accidental coincidences in Hardy's works, people feel that Tess's life seems to be caused by fate, which pushes her to the tragic end step by step. Actually, it is not, because contingency and inevitability are closely linked. Chance is the intersection of many social inevitability and natural inevitability, and it is the reflection of inevitability. Tess was born in a capitalist society, and her tragic fate is an inevitable reflection of social laws. Hardy used it in his works? An unfathomable gap? It implies that Tess's tragedy was caused by the society at that time. By describing that Tess was sentenced to death by law, he moved the real cause of the hero's destruction from the mysterious fate to the real world. Lunacharski once pointed out that fate is summoned by various social situations, diseases and disasters, and it is also a psychological phenomenon of human beings. It can be seen that it is not blind fate that leads to Tess's tragedy, but the power of environment and society, which is also inevitable.
It's not a real tragedy if pain befalls a cowardly person and he accepts it. Only when he shows his determination and struggle can there be a real tragedy. How can he be afraid of showing only temporary omissions, passion and inspiration, but that he has surpassed himself? Tragedy is resistance to disaster. When misfortune and suffering came, Tess still fought to the death, surpassing them at the cost of her own life, showing extraordinary spiritual strength, amazing desire for survival and fighting spirit, and raising the essence of human existence, free will and vitality to a transcendent height. Although fate plunged pure Tess into the abyss of bourgeois hypocrisy ethics, she still did not give in. It's more tragic.
By reading Tess, a tragic female image, we have a deeper understanding of the contemporary women's liberation movement and the new female image. Throughout the history of the women's liberation movement, we can find that the initial stage of the women's liberation movement in the 1960s was strongly political? Feminist stage? . Women are eager to win a place for themselves in the linear time of history and demand equal opportunities and rights with men in the symbolic order, such as voting rights, equal pay for equal work and professional recognition. A new generation of feminists in the mid-term is no longer limited to fighting for the above rights. Pay attention to women and men instead of equality in the early days? Gender differences? And use this difference to deny the symbolic order of men. It is argued that women's experiences should be written by women themselves. After entering the 1980s, emphasis appeared? Woman? Characterized by neo-feminism. No longer fixed on the opposition between men and women and the monism of women. But put forward pluralism. Emphasize the complementary relationship between male and female cultural discourse; Pay attention to the unity of women's rights, women and women. Woolf said: If a person is a pure man or woman, it will be a great misfortune. No matter who you are, be a feminine man or a manly woman. ? Then, develop androgyny, form androgynous personality, and establish? Unified dual gender roles? When it becomes the ultimate goal of civilization progress and women's liberation movement.
Hardy showed us the tragic image of Tess, a woman oppressed by society, with full sympathy and lofty conscience. Wherever he draws sympathy, he shows us the living conditions of women in a patriarchal society. Tess, a sad and unforgettable female image he created, is not so much a regional interpretation as a reflection on women's living conditions, but also an inspiration, which has a great impetus to the contemporary women's liberation movement.