| Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is one of the greatest rustic novelists as well as a great poet in English literary history. Some critics even think that Hardy's standing as a novelist, has grown to eclipse everyone in the nineteenth century except Dickens. He is very good at the depiction of female characters. Many heroines in his novel have a strong personality and an outstanding character, and at the same time they have thrilling power of tragedies. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is one of Hardy's most famous novels, describes a girl that is seduced by one man and deserted by the other.Hardy wrote the novel during what turned out to be nearly the last years of amassive but complex shift of a nation's economic forces. Agriculture was especially hard hit. On one side, with the invasion of industry and modern civilization, Unemployment and poverty marked every village in the rural areas. These years witnessed the disintegration and destruction of the English peasantry. Tess's family was poverty-stricken without exception. Her family depends, to a large degree, on Tess to support its members. So in her short life, Tess is impelled by the economic pressure from her family to seek job here and there; and it is her family that makes Tess return to Alec in the end. On the other side, Victorian morality imposed rigid norm on woman, which demanded women to be pure. The loss of virginity is a fatal blow to Tess as she is turned against and crushed by the social convention, and consequently, suffers endlessly till she becomes the victim eventually. And therefore the bankruptcy of agriculture and the destruction of the peasants are the very root of the tragedy around Tess and her family.Thomas Hardy reflected on the historical process during which the traditional agricultural civilization was confronted by modern industrial civilization and was on decline in his works. And the sense of the mood of elegy can be felt in the work. He felt nostalgic for the declining agriculture world and showed deep sympathy for the poor country folks.This thesis intends to explore the tragic style and tragic consciousness that the author tries to show in Tess of the d'Urbervilles from the perspective of the contentsof the work and the writing technique employed in the work. The thesis is divided into the following parts: introduction body of the thesis ( from Chapter I to Chapter III) and conclusion. Introduction is about Thomas Hardy's literary career ; Chapter I explores the background against which Tess of the d'Urbervilles is written, including the historical time, the author's philosophy , the author's family life and personal experience. Chapter II explores the tragic consciousness that the author shows in the work thematically from four aspects: the development of the tragic consciousness presented in the author's novels of Character and Environment, the heroin's tragedy; victim of Victorian double sexual mores; family: an inseparable factor of Tess's tragedy; Chapter III investigates the author's technically unfolded tragic consciousness . Thomas Hardy employs a lot of foreshadowing and symbolisms. They are used to show his tragic consciousness and make,the reader sense and share his own tragic consciousness throughout the book. He also achieves the tragic consciousness through the structure of the work. This technique exaggerates the atmosphere of tragedy, profoundly portrays the personality of the characters and their inner world, intensifies the writer's tragic consciousness and sharply criticizes the hypocrisy of the morality and religion in the capitalist society. His tragic consciousness is also successfully achieved through structure. Through these analyses I will conclude: Hardy's tragic consciousness pervades the whole book both thematically and technically.
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