Modernistic Themes In Tess Of The D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy was an outstanding critical realist who created his works in a transitional period, when the process of industrialization and urbanization had begun to precede into the countryside, and some scientific discoveries had been acknowledged. But he is not a typical Victorian critical realist, and he is exceptional for the duality in his writing. His criticism of Victorian society, esp. of the rural life has aroused much attention, while the modernism in his works deserves to be shed more light on. The thesis is attempting to examine and analyze the modernistic themes in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, one of his "Novels of Characters and Environment".According to Marxist literary criticism theory, the nature of literature shall be "social referent". The knowledge of the correlative social background is thus of great value to the interpretation of a text. Furthermore, the development of literature at any phase holds strong affinity with the contemporary social context. Therefore,fit's of immense importance to apply the Marxist literary criticism theory to do the research by relating the themes of the novel to the social upheavals and ideological changes in Hardy's Days. With the aid of close reading, three types of modernistic themes in Tess will be probed and sorted out.Firstly, the spiritual isolation and loneliness of the 3 main characters in the novel are apparent, and the lack in mutual understanding and sympathy between each other is universal owning to the conflict of different cultures and the ideological confusion in one's mind. Besides, the title heroine, the incarnation of goodness, tenderness and passion did all she could to fulfill her dreams. She just wanted to live on her own hands and perform her duty to support the family to survive, and win her lover. However, she was impossible to fulfill her dreams with various hostile powers set against her, coercing her into predicaments one after another, tougher and tougher. Furthermore, another theme popular with later modernists, the alienation, is also embodied in the novel. A variety of alienations are to be exhibited, including the alienation of traditional custom, human beings, machinery and nature. Under theoverwhelming influence of those different alienations, individuals were forlorn and met enemies from all sides.All of these themes were to he advocated or depicted and reinforced under later modernism writers, whose outer objective world was likened to Hardy's in a certain degree. In this sense, Thomas Hardy can be regarded as the precursor to modernism thcmalically.