Long Hua
School of Foreign Languages and International Trade in Wuhan Polytechnic PC 430074
Abstract: In this essay on Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urberviles, the main causes of Tess’s tragedy are involved. The main causes of Tess’s tragedy can be classified into two aspects, the indirect causes and direct causes. The indirect causes refer to the condition of Tess’s family and the deep social root- the hypocrisy of moral and religious standards of bourgeois society. The essay is mainly discussed the direct causes, that is, her tragedy is in connection with two men, Alec D’urbervilles and Angel Clare. Their roles in Tess’s tragedy are very important factors.
Key words: direct causes, Tess’s tragedy, Alec and Angel Clare
Thomas Hardy is a well-known English poet and writer of critical realism in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He has written many good novels and poems during his life time. However, his fiction is more distinguished than is poetry. Hardy himself classified his novels into three groups, Romans and Fantasies Novels of Ingenuity, Novels of Character and Environment. Among them, Tess of D’urbervilles is the typical works of his “environmental Novels,” and it reflects its author’s concern about several of the most pressing problems of his time (the age in which Hardy wrote, sometimes called the late Victorian period).
Tess of the D’urbervilles is the product of Hardy’s fascination with women of beauty. In this novel, Hardy intends to “find the beauty in ugliness”(Casagrande 12) in forms of cruelty, deceit, fatal violence and betrayal. As a country girl, Tess is physically attractive, and “she was a fine and handsome girl- not handsomer than some others, possibly- but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape” (51), which she inherited from her mother. Nevertheless, different from her mother, Tess is instinctively identical with natural world, and is really a field-woman pure and simple. She is also warm-hearted, hard-working, persevering and resistant. All in one word: she is “a pure woman” (1). The life stage for Tess that Hardy established is temporary. From the time when she appears at Club-walking on May Day Dance to the black flag’s rising that indicates her death, only six years pass, and she is only twenty-three. Tess’s fate is tragic, “her tragedy is more than these classic portraits of sexual ruin coexisted with equally popular dramatizations on the Victorian painting the fallen woman” (Casagrande 9). When readers finish the reading, a common idea will come to their minds: “What kind of cruel power pushes such a pure girl to gallows?”
However, Tess’s tragedy can be seen from two angels: indirect causes and direct causes. The indirect ones are from her family and social background. To a certain degree, Tess’s tragedy is intently connected with the large events that drive her through her life: the decline of her family from wealth and power to poverty, ignorance and inconsequence. Besides, Tess’s tragedy has its deep social root, that is, the hypocrisy of moral and religious standards of bourgeois society.
The direct causes for Tess’s tragedy are chiefly in conjunction with two men, Alec and Angel. Namely, one is so called “Satan, and the other is “Angel”. Both of them cause Tess’s ruin in her life directly.
Alec D’urbervilles calls himself Satan: He turns up smiling, pitchfork in hand, from the smoke and flame around the planting fires, “I am the old other one [Satan] come to tempt you [Tess] in the disguise of an inferior animal” (431). These words indicate his nature. He is the son of a rich merchant from the north of England who adds the name of D’urbervilles to be own name, Stoke, because it has historical associations and the D’urbervilles are supposed to be extinct. He is a false noble, and a typical dandy “whose reputations as a reckless gallant and heart-breaker was beginning to spread beyond the immediate boundaries of Trantridge” (132). He has improper relations with the Queen of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades. While Tess visits him, her luxuriance of aspect and fullness growth immediately draw his attention, whom seduces Tess in the Chase later. Hardy takes pains to contrast his false nobility with the true moral superiority of Tess. Obviously, Alec is not a whole man, he is just the personification of a certain kind of male sexuality, a complete lady-killer. Before he knows Tess clearly, all women including Tess are only sexual objects, to be exploited for the pleasure they can afford. For this reason, he is sure to destroy Tess, not to marry her. Tess’s feeling for Alec is complicated, she does not love him. She never thinks of marrying Alec, though she is no longer a virgin, which indicates the beginning of her tragedy. Very soon Tess becomes a “fallen woman”, and is oppressed by moral spirit.
When Tess meets Alec for the second time in Emminster, he has been an evangelist. However, “The inferior man[Alec] was quiet in him now; but it was surely not extracted, not even entirely subdued” (388). That is, Alec could not suppress his natural sensuality when he looked at Tess again. His dandyism is exposed at once, although he “mortified with himself for his weakness” (403), and has been saved through the action of Reverend James Clare, his religion is not deeply planted in him. For “Reason had had nothing to do with his whimsical convention, which was perhaps the mere freak of a careless man in search of a new sensation, and temporarily impressed by his mother’s death” (403). Tess knows him clearly, she scolds him, “you and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!” (387) For such reasons, Tess is unwilling to promise his improper demand. Nevertheless, because of Alec’s ability to provide for the family, she is submitted to Alec and renewed her former relationship with him after her father’s death, let her body “drift like a corpse upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its loving will” (467). Tess’s tragedy is continuous once again.
When Angel returns from Brazil, he knows repentance to Tess, and ask for her tolerance, Tess knows clearly that she is deceived by Alec for the second time, for Alec always tells her that Angel has died of disease in Brazil and will never come back. Tess is extremely depressed, for the cruel reality does not allow her to recover the relation with Angel. She cries: “I have lost him now for ever.. and he will not love me the littlest bit ever any more”(469). When Alec mocks at her, she is aware that her happiness and for the sake of both Angel and herself. Tess kills Alec because of her hatred and for the sake of both Angel and herself. At the end of the story, Tess is hanged to death as a murderer, which is her final tragedy. But this time, she is at cost of life.
While the most ironic thing is that among the powers that force Tess towards Satan’s control, there is so called “Angel’s” power that causes Tess’s ruin, that is Angel Clare. The original meaning of Angel is “ Angel”. In Western Legend, angel is the immoral who performs the harp in the bank of cloud. On the evening of that typical summer in June, Tess is wandering alone in the weedy garden when she hears the sound of Angel playing a harp. In this scene Tess is again captivated by her surroundings and fall into a semiconscious trance. “As she listened Tess, like a fascinated bird, …she undulated upon the thin notes of the second-hand harp, and their harmonies passed like breezes through her, bringing tears into her eyes”(178-179). For Tess, Angel Clare is the real angel. When he appears at Club-walking, Tess falls in love with him for the first sight.
Angel Clare, the youngest son of a clergyman, is faithful to his thought. In order to gain the spiritual freedom, he avoids serving for religion. On the contrary, he makes up his mind to take up hard farming, acquiring a practical skill in the various processes of farming. He can lower his middle-class status to get on well with the wage-laborers at the dairy farm, understanding them as he does to his friends.
Angel Clare loves Tess, which is different from Alec’s. For him, Tess is the combination of material and spiritual beauty in Angel’s eyes. When Angel proposes to her, she can not resist his attempt and accepts his proposal. Just as Tess is trying to marry Angel and create a new life for herself, she is suddenly defeated by Angel’s rigid idealism. Because of her purity and innocence, she tells Angel all her past on the wedding night. Although Angel has “plunged into eight-and-forty hours dissipation with a stranger” (292), he refuses to accept Tess’s loss of virginity. We can see clearly later that it is Angel’s refusal tat accelerates Tess’s tragedy. Tess falls into the poor situation for the second time, suffering from spiritual torment, social prejudice and poverty in life, at last she “sells herself to Alec for financial support for her family.
Tess ever explained to Angel: “I was a child- a child when it happened! I knew nothing of men.”(302) and even implored: “I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die… Having begun to love you, I love you for ever…Then how can you, O my husband, stop loving me?”(289-300) However, Angel does not take notice of them, he still holds his side to reject Tess. What are the reasons?
Firstly, Angel’s love for Tess is rather ideal and fanciful with idyllic meanings. He thinks Tess is the most perfect girl in his mind. When he hears that she is no longer a virgin, the illusion in his mind of Tess’s perfect image is suddenly destructed. Certainly, he considers he is deceived by Tess’s appearance, and do not understand Tess is a real pure woman. Secondly, Angel is more complex than Alec. He is an example of a person who is governed by his intellect. The fact of his refusal to accept Tess proves that he has split his feelings from his intellect, and his mind mistrusts his emotions. Because of this separation, he can make cruel decision to leave her. His abruptly withdraws crushed Tess. The injury he inflicts on her is therefore much more severe than anything Alec could have done. Thirdly, Hardy say,
Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of mental in soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to traverse it. It had block his acceptance of the church; it blocked his acceptance of Tess.(311)
When Angel tries his best to understand everything and can accept Tess after and a half years. Tess murdered Alec and continues her love for Angel. After several days of happy life with Angel, she is hanged to death. Hardy says in terrifying words, “‘Justice’ was done, and the president of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his spot with Tess” (489). To our surprise, the main instrument of the president of the Immortals in his spot is Angel Clare.
Actually, in both Angel and Alec one aspect of their personalities has become overgrown and dominant, and they are distorted beings. One is idealistic egoism, the other is sensual egoism. One is “Angel”, the other is “Satan”. They destruct Tess physically and ideologically.
Bibliography
1.Casagrande, Peter J. Tess of the D’urbervills Unorthodox Beauty. New York: Twayne Publisher, 1991.
2.Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’urbervilles. Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Studying Press, 1996.
3.Kramer, Dale. “Tragedy”. Tess of the D’urbervilles. By Thomas Hardy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
4.Sun Fali. Trans. Tess of the D’urbervilles. By Thomas Hardy. Nanjing: Yi Lin Press,1998.
作者简介:龙华（1976-），女，（汉族），湖北武汉人，学士，副教授，研究方向为英语应用
文学、英语教育。