Study On The Tragedy Consciousness And Local Colour Of Tess' Of The D'Urbervilles

Hardy was an excellent novelist in the end of 19 century and Tess of the d'Urbervilles was the most representative novel of his . It narrated the short and misfortunate life of a rural woman . Tess' tragedy involved in many factors . At first , it was the tragedy of the society . Tess lived in the Victorian period , when the capitalism began to erode the rural life and spoil the social atmosphere . Despite her intelligence , beauty , diligence and kindness , Tess was destined to suffer all kinds of oppression and insult . If we say the poor family was the economic origin of her tragedy , the traditional social morals and hypocritical religion were the mental origin of her tragedy , and the capitalist class and its law directly caused her tragedy . Secondly , it was the fate tragedy . Her tragedy was made up of a series of coincidence and accidence . She was covered in a shapeless net like a little bird and was pushed towards the edge of tragedy . All these coincidence and accidence was the incarnation of the fate , therefore her tragedy was also caused by the fate .Tess' tragedy embodied Hardy's own tragic consciousness , which ran throughout his Novels of Character and Environment and made these works reveal the sense of human tragedy . The history brought a kind of civilization into the patriarchal society of Wessex , which was not ideal to Hardy and caused the former harmony to disappear . The traditional ethic relationship and value system was trampled by the capitalism civilization and people's reasonable living desire and ideal pursuance was disappeared in the reality . However , this cruel change was the inevitable outcome of the development of the history . Therefore , Hardy fell into the deep misery and bewilderment and expressed this in his Novels of Character and Environment . This was the social tragedy content of these novels.Hardy's novels contained dense fate tragedy consciousness influenced by the fate concept in ancient Greek tragedy . He considered that there was a kind of mysterious force in the universe , which stood above all and controlled our fate .This was the accurate comprehension of the cultural mentality of the people in Wessex , which made the novels more authentic and more touching . Facing the tragic stories of the people living in Wessex , Hardy tried to give philosophic explanation to their predicaments and tragedies . It was this subjective explanation that made his novels reveal dense life tragedy consciousness and bestowed some metaphysic meaning to his works .Tess of the d'Urbervilles was also infiltrated with pronounced local color , which was another important feature of the Novels of Character and Environment. From Far from the Madding Crowd on ,Wessex appeared in his novels , and in the second ten yeas of 20th century , he named his works as Poets and Novels of Wessex and defined this area definitely . The undulating farm and pasture , the rugged seacoast and harbor and the unsophisticated local language were the indispensable part of Hardy's novels.Behind the local color , there was something shapeless , which determined people's fate and the theme of Hardy's novels . This was a kind of attachment to one's hometown and a kind of local spirit . When we looked on Wessex as a objective existence , it was the background of the works and the arena where people lived , acted and stories took place . But it was more important for us to consider it as a spiritual existence and the product of Hardy's mental movement . In another word , Wessex was not only a social , historic and material fact , but also a spiritual symbol . Wessex was the product of the local spirit , which controlled Hardy's writing and formed his distinguish style .