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2 Social Factors 4
2.1 Financial Reasons 4
2.1.1 Social-economic Development 4
2.1.2 Family Economic Conditions 5
2.2 Moral Reasons 6
2.3 Political Reasons 7
2.3.1 The Hypocritical Religion 7
2.3.2 The Unjust Law 8
3 Human Factors 10
3.1 Tess’s Own Characters 10
3.2 Two Men’s Effect on Tess 13
3.2.1 The Despicable Alec D’Urbervilles 13
3.2.2 The Sanctimonious Angel Clare 14
4 Conclusion 16
Bibliography 17
1 Introduction
In the 1880s, after British Industrial Revolution, large-scale operationalmode of capitalism gradually gets into the countryside and British rural area which under the patriarchal system rule tends to collapses step by step, creates the bankruptcy of inpidual peasant, and finally become impoverished. Under this specific social background, Thomas Hardy’s outstanding masterpiece, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, was published. This novel takes the countryside as background which the peasant economy has gone bankrupt.It tells a story of the poor peasant woman Tess’s short and tragic life. Thomas Hardy first gives a panoramic description of the impact of industrial civilization on the countryside in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and then takes Tess’s family as a microcosm of the inpidual famers, so as to deeply show the poor in the throes of material difficulties. It is strong attack on the hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society and the capitalist invasion into the country and destruction of English peasantry towards the end of the century. It also strongly criticizes the traditional morality and the hypocrisy of religion. So under the material difficulties and the hypocrisy of the society, Tess’s tragedy is not a coincidence.
1.1 The Writing Background
In the 1880s of Britain, capitalism not only rapidly developed in the urban areas, simultaneously its large scale operational mode also gradually spread in rural areas. The life style in the countryside of the United Kingdom went gradually to collapses. This social transformation led to bankruptcy and poverty of the farmers. This is financial background. As for the traditional ethics at that time, men and women are obviously unequal. The woman has to be loyal to their husband from the body to the soul forever, but the men have more choices. As for religion in the Victorian age, it’s just a strict moral training try to bound people’s thoughts, behavior and restrains people’s spirit. So, living in such a social environment, the lower classes have to endure the oppression from all aspects, from the economic, physical but also from the spirit, the morals and the religion. Tess is a typical case of the lower class, and finally become the tragedy of the female and the society. Hardy, by Tess’s tragedy, truly reflect the situation of the farmer’s poverty and bankruptcy under the oppression and exploitation of the capitalist,angrily indict the devastation of capitalism on a pure woman, and denied the traditional moral and religious ideas of the bourgeoisie.
1.2 A Brief Introduction of Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy is a British novelist and poet, was one of the representatives of English critical realism at the turn of the 19th century. His literary career was mainly on the novel and he inherited and carried forward the tradition of Victorian literature, followed the writing style of British critical realism, and explored the way for the English literature of 20th century.
He was born on June 2, 1840 in Dorset, southwest of England which used to be a Saxon kingdom names Wessex, that here became the main background of the natural environment in Thomas Hardy’s works. His father was a stonemason and local builder. His parents paid much more attention to Thomas Hardy’s education. He went to school at the age of 8. In 1862, he moved to London to learn architecture, but he loved literature and philosophy. In 1867, he returned to Dorset as an architect for several years, and then decided to dedicate himself to literature. He published his first long novel, Desperate Remedies, in 1871. He published his fourth novel and also his masterpiece, Far From the Madding Crowd, in 1874. He published about twenty novelsall his life. Tess of the d’Urbervillesis the most famous among all of hisnovels. He was died on January 11, 1928 in his hometownDorset and his ashes are interred in Westminster abbey.