Gender And Tess' Tragedy

In male-dominated society, women are alienated, marginalized, and strongly biased. Itis hard for them to find a suitable place in society and there remain a lot of problems facingthem. Thomas Hardy portrayed for us a classic figure—Tess who was widely lovedthroughout the world. She epitomized the unfortunate women in society. There was acontroversial debate about this woman protagonist. Many people discussed the variouscauses of her tragedy from different perspective.Here we deal with the reasons of Tess from mainly the perspective of gender.Because of the overall unfavorable position of women in society, women lack someimportant rights, such as economic right, education right, and right of personal freedom.Without that, it is hard for women to live a happy life. Being always in an awkwardeconomic predicament, Tess was forced to step further and further closer to the eventualtragedy. To work for Alec caused her to lose virginity. The evil convention forms collectiveunconscious which envelopes everyone and also, it finds its way into human mind throughthe influence of social and family environment during the process of their growing-up.Therefore, she fell into the inescapable net of nightmare thereafter. Her lover discarded herin wedding night. The physical and spiritual destructive force conspired to her tragedy. Nomatter good man or bad man she met, she could not escape the unfortunate end.The essay tries to explore by employing the theory of unconscious in psychologicalanalysis and the approach of New Criticism the intricate causes of Tess'reason. The unjustconventional idea deposited in human mind and shaped their imprints that are so difficultto erase. It holds different opinion from some popular idea which believed that Angel washypocritical. Because Angel lived in that particular transitional age full of unprecedentedlyradical changes so that the fierce conflicts between old and new ideas unavoidablyinfluenced his mind. The collective and personal unconscious determined his action and hispain in the terrible struggle between his reason and heart. In a sense, he was also a victimjust like Tess.