Inextricable Predicament

Tess of the d'Urbervilles (hereafter Tess) is one of the most important works of Thomas Hardy, the outstanding English novelist and poet. It best embodies the spirit of Hardy's"Novels of Character and Environment". Since its publication in 1891,Tess has always been bearing a strong appeal for readers and has been drawing attention from literary critics. It invited different schools of critical theories and has been subjected to a multitude of interpretations. However,none of these have been able to exhaust its sources, which always invite further explorations and new insights. Based on the achievements made by the former Hardy scholars, this thesis attempts to probe into the inevitable factors of Tess's tragedy from the aspects of social background, the weakness in the main characters'personalities and fatalism.Chapter One is intended to analyze the social backgrounds in which Tess lives. The story happens in the late half of the 19th century. It is an age of transition and great social upheavals. With the development of capitalism, the country peasants are inflicted tragically. Tess, the daughter of a haggler, her fate is closely connected with and influenced by the social environment. At the outset, she is forced to claim kin at the cost of her own pride and dignity when their horse is killed in an accident. Again, it is poverty that, when her father dies, forces Tess back to Alec. Tess is a fallen woman in the eyes of the society. Meanwhile, she is forced to see herself in that light. She suffers from an acute sense of her unworthiness. It is poverty and the hypocritical morality that turn Tess from a pure girl into an"impure woman"and force her to suffer unbearable misfortunes, and it is the unjust law of the society that deprives Tess of her life. Eventually, the social injustices work together to make a tragedy for Tess.Chapter Two discusses the weaknesses in the main characters'personalities. The focus is on Tess, Alec, Angel and Tess's parents. As a character, Tess's sense of responsibility, her rebellious spirit and her zest for life deserve our admiration. While the"flaws"in her character together with some good points, result in her tragedy. Alec and Angel are the two most influential men in Tess's life. Alec is a satanic character who is always tempting the innocent Tess. He distorts woman as an erotic object and a prey instead of a human being who holds love and desire for self-dignity. Angel Clare is superficially a gentleman advocating progressive ideas, but the orthodox education he receives has a profound influence on his mind. After Tess's confession about her past, the disillusioned Angel abandons Tess to the abyss of desperation. As for Tess's parents, the father is vain, ignorant and drunk; the mother is shallow, vulgar and snobbish. They send the innocent daughter to claim kin with the fake noble family. Rather than protecting and helping Tess, they shift the family burden onto her.Chapter three endeavors to explore the fatalism in Tess. In this novel, Hardy employs lots of coincidences and omens to make Tess's tragedy unavoidable. By doing so, Hardy indicates that human destiny is determined by a kind of circumstantial force and human beings have no control over their own destiny. Hardy's fatalism is embodied in the description of natural environment as well. In the novel, there is always a continuous space transfer. The changing of spaces indicates and parallels the changing of Tess's fate at different stages of her short life. This mysterious convergence of character and environment evokes a sense of inevitability. Furthermore,the hereditary factor also plays a part in determining Tess's inescapable tragedy. No matter how hard she struggles against her fate, she cannot escape from the heredity environment surrounding her till her death.Tess's life is short and tragic, but her image is impressive and memorable and thus becomes one of the immortal female figures in the world literature. Obviously, Hardy opposes the conventional concept of taking virginity as the absolute criterion of women's purity. Sympathetic to his heroine, Hardy points out the social absurdity in judging Tess's morality by a mere biological fact. In the novel, Hardy defies the convention by offering a new perspective through which he vindicates Tess and declares her to be pure, which shows he is a progressive humanist writer. While owing to his class limitation, he can neither analyze the root of the tragedy on the basis of social system, nor can he find a solution to the social problem of his time. As a result, he turns to fatalism in explaining Tess's tragedy.