A Study Of Biblical Archetypes In Tess Of The D'urbervilles

Tess of the D'Urberville is regarded by the critics as the best of his "Wessex" novels. After its publication in 1801,the world famous novel was analyzed by the critics in different viewpoints from philosophical aspects to the sociological and feminist aspects. Some of the feminists focused on Hardy's views on love and marriage and even the standard of virtue in the Victoria Age.The thesis analyzes Tess of the D'Urverbille from the aspect of biblical archetypes of characters, subjects and structure. In this novel, Hardy used "The Garden of Eden", "Redemption" etc. The story of Tess is the embodiment and procedure of Adam and Eve's loss of the "Garden of Eden". The cause for her loss of the Garden is her original sin, which leads to her murdering of Alec. Afterwards, her redemption and regeneration are the price she must pay for her crime. Through the hard process, Tess acquired the knowledge of Alec, her seducer, and Angel,her husband, and even the knowledge of herself. In other words, this is also the way she acquired her spiritual regeneration.According to the different archetypes in the novel, Hardy created the main characters:Tess, Angel and Alec on the basis of the biblical characters. In this aspect, Tess is compared as Eve and Christ.Compared to Eve, Tess acquired her purity and her innocence and also, she is compared as Christ, because she possessed the same tragic ending as Jesus Christ.The archetype of Angel is God in the Bible, which embodied Hardy's viewpoint on religion. In Hardy's eyes, God has both benevolent and retributive aspects. As for Alec, with the archetype theory, he was created as Satan because of Alec's vicious nature.The circular plot structure of the novel is also obviously related to the Biblical archetype.Through all her life, Tess has inevitably trapped herself in a circle. At the very beginning of the circle, she started with hope, but in the end,she is mysteriously driven back to the original beginning and unfortunately, she found that the state being even worse.In the novel,Hardy used different archetypes and through analyzing these archetypes, it is easy to find that the intension of Hardy's writing of the novel and the condemnation of the traditional morality of the Victoria Age, which, at the same time, made the novel profoundly readable and full of connotations.