The Tragic Conflicts In Tess Of The D'Urbervilles

Tess of the d'Urbervilles is one of the most famous novels written by Thomas Hardy, a critical realistic novelist living in an age of turmoil at the end of the 19th century in Britain. It has attracted and is still attracting numerous readers with its moving plot, unique writing style and artistic technique and therefore it has become one of the most important canons that continue to interest a great number of critics. The theme of the novel is the irresolvable contradictions between the corrupted social circumstances and the respectful individual characters and spirits.Combined with age characteristics and their influences on Thomas Hardy, this thesis discusses the social roots of the conflicts between Tess and the cruel social circumstances dominant in the Victorian society in the following three dimensions:Firstly, this these explores the class conflict between Tess and the capitalists from the perspective of Marxist economy and class classification. This conflict is discussed in the following two different aspects: Tess, as a traditional peasant, had to struggle for existence against the capitalists who gradually destroyed the traditional agriculture with their modern machines; Tess, as a descendant of a decrepit noble family, had to struggle against the rising capitalists for dignity at the same time.Secondly, this thesis analyzes the ideological conflict between Tess, who is characterized as pure and innocent, and the hypocritical social morality, especially the traditional social attitude towards"Chastity"from the perspective of psychological analysis.Thirdly, this thesis turns to explain the conflict between female and male from the perspective of Feminism and the traditional patriarchal bias. This conflict is resulted from the clash between the traditional patriarchal bias towards women's nature and the developing Feminism and therefore it is embodied in the following two aspects: Tess's struggle against Alec d'Urberville and Tess's struggle against Angle Clare.By means of analyzing all the above conflicts, this thesis gradually portrays the result of Tess's life-long hopeless struggles—her total desperation towards her life and her future. This tragic result can, to different degrees, be dissected in the following three aspects: Tess confused about her social status and behaved contradictorily, and therefore, put herself in a despairing situation; Tess finally deserted her body as it was spoiled, allowing it to drift in a direction dissociated from its living will; Tess was disillusioned again and again and became more and more pessimistic as she found that her struggles against the cruel environments was totally futile.Therefore, this thesis eventually digs out the essence of Tess's tragedy. Tess's tragedy lies in her total loss of hope—her total desperation towards her life and her future, which is caused by her life-long suffering from personal clashes with the cruel environments dominant in the transitional Victorian age.All in all, the tragedy portrayed in Tess of the d'Urbervilles is really a social tragedy and this very tragedy has fully revealed a profoundly pessimistic sense of human subjection to fate and circumstance—Hardy's fatalism.