| The Victorian Age (1837-1901), with various literature schools co-existing and its remarkable progress in ideology, has made a profound influence upon the history of British literature. During the age, enormous changes happened to people's ideology: on the one hand, the decline of the traditional value system caused prevailing disappointment and loss among people, on the other hand, the modern "Intellect", which replaced people's previous ideological concept, entrapped people into a new plight of desperation and helplessness. This spiritual plight revealed people's unconscious progress and desire in ideology, thus greatly promoting people's probe and understanding of the meaning of "reality"—a motif attracting wide academic concerns and studies constantly. At this time, people's understanding of "reality" transcended the traditional view as "exterior" and "objective". Instead, they came to consider the "interior" reality as the "pure" and "absolute" reality. And people's real human nature, namely, human beings' original spiritual state before the influence from the society, as a main component of the study of "what's reality", even invited more concerns and pursuits. This pursuit of primitive nature came from people's disappointment toward the contemporary prevailing degradation and alienation in human nature, thereby reflecting modern people's admiration for the most primitive and instinctive existing state. Through the persistent pursuit and probe, people attempted to transcend the social crisis as well as the psychological distortion and bondage from social civilization, so as to regain their long-lost and inherent passion.Revolving around the theme of pursuing human beings' primitive nature, by focusing on the two Victorian novels as Vanity Fair and Tess of the D'Urbervilles as well as their respective authors, this thesis has made a systematic analysis and presentation of the two opposite schools of the trend. Besides, by means of a comparison between the protagonists in the two novels, the thesis has further researched into the quality, social source, and the influence upon literature of the tendency. Therefore, in Chapter I and Chapter II, through an analysis of the life and thoughts of the two authors as W.M. Thackeray and Thomas Hardy, the creation of their protagonists' characters and life experiences, and some writing strategy, the thesis attempts to analyze the two opposite schools in novel writing during the Victorian period: either making their protagonists extremely degraded and distorted in character, thereby exposing the deterioration brought by social civilization to human nature, or injecting all their imagination for primitive human nature into their protagonists, thus conveying their admiration for it. In either way, people achieve their pursuit for the primitive human nature.In Chapter III, the thesis makes a further comparison and a further analysis of the two protagonists' several binary oppositions and the sole similarity. To be specific, they have binary oppositions in origin, pursuit, lifestyle and ultimate fate, but both end in tragedy. Through a profound research and analysis into the binary oppositions and mere similarity between them, the thesis has explored the nature of the seeming oppositions, and the social conditions that help to form the two different schools. It further claims that the tragic fate of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair and Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles results from the conflicts between Nature and the society, as well as the authors' own limitations in ideology.
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