The Real Cause of Tess’s Tragedy

As the industrial movement swept England in the 19th century, many farmers and agriculture workers found themselves in devastation. People lost their homes, their jobs, and the simple lifestyles they cherished. The movement had an even greater affect on the English landscape when lush fertile valleys were transformed into railways and urban centers. Thomas Hardy was very concerned with the loss of beautiful rural land during the industrial development. His main belief system was founded upon the ideal that nature is the core of all existence .Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the Thomas Hardy’s most famous novel. Under Hardy’s pen, the heroine Tess is created as an attractive and warm-hearted pure woman, who has the quality of endurance and self-sacrifice. Tess has long been regarded as the most exceptional woman character in English literary history. However, the life of this pure woman is tragic. First,She is seduced,.then abandoned and finally driven to murder for which she is hanged. What is responsible for her tragic fate? What is the reason for a pure woman to become a murderer? I couldn’t help thinking over these questions again and again. From the tragic story of Tess’ short life, I can see in a deeper sense that it is the evil capitalism that has ruined her. Living in a society overwhelmed by capitalist Law, and religion, Tess, a poor peasant, inevitably leads a tragic life and finally goes to her collapse.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles is about the tragedy of a peasant girl, who was born in a poor family. When their horse is killed by accident, they lose the only means to make a living .So she is persuaded by her mother to visit the D'Urbervilles atTrantridge and claim kin. Tess works there and is seduced by Alec D'Urberville, the young master of the family. Then Tess gives birth to a child who dies very soon. Upon the child's death, Tess works at the dairy-farm at Talbothays, where she meets and loves Angel Clare, the son of a clergyman. But on their wedding night, Clare disappoints Tess and does not forgive her when she tells him her past story with Alec. Clare leaves her for Brazil. With the great poverty of her family, Tess has to work under the hardest condition at Flintcomb-Ash. Then her father dies and the family is expelled from their cottage. To support her family, Tess is driven to go back to Alec D'Urberville. Then Angel Clare returns from Brazil, being chastened and repented of his cruel treatment of Tess, but Tess's relationship with Alec stops her from living with Angel happily. She hates Alec and kills him. After a short happy life with Angel, Tess is arrested by the police.

Who kills Tess? The present paper aims at discussing the real causes of Tess's tragedy.

Tess lives in the late 19th century, in which the cruel capitalist exploitation has ruined the English countryside severely, Wessx is not immuned from the destruction. Capitalism brings a great harm to this old, rural and agricultural life of the place. The self-supporting peasants are displaced and impoverished. They are extremely poor and live a very miserable life.The family of Tess is no exception. Their life is so hard that Tess has to work under capitalist exploitation and oppression for many times. It is under the capitalist exploitation that Tess is seduced and ruined badly in her body. The death of the horse destroys the family's livelihood and finishes the family's hauling business. Tess thinks that she has dragged her parents into this quagmire. So she agrees to see their cousin and works there as an employee of Alec. Later, she is seduced by him. Furthermore, after sending twenty pounds to her family to repair the roof, she finds herself facing the long winter with only a small sum in her pocket. She has to search out for work. But there is almost nothing to be found. She has to go on to Flintcom-Ash which is a "starv-arce place" and the work of "awede-hacking" is so hard that few cares to do. Alec comes to her again when she is absolutely exhausted physically and mentally. To make matters worse, after her father' death, the family are evicted and have no place to live in. To support the family, Tess has no other means to choose, only to accept Alec's "help" for the second time. It is at the cost of Tess's happiness that her family can have house to live in and food to eat. The poor life pushes Tess into the trap of the wicked man, and the capitalist exploitation brings about their poor life.

The representative of the wickedness is Alec.Alec is the son of a rich merchant who adds the name of D'Uberville to his own name, Stoke, because it has historical association and the D'Urbervills are supposed to be extinct. Alec is a fraud as well as a morally corrupt person. His viciousness is revealed completely when she sees Tess for the first time. Tess is innocent and has no experience, and her living environment is so dark that no one comes to help and protect her. So Alec takes advantages of Tess's helplessness and sets a trap to seduce her. No law protects her. What she can do is to bury her miseries and insults in her heart silently. Later, under the help of Clare, Alec puts himself into the service of religion for some time, and he even intends to sell the house and go off to Africa as a missionary. But his wickedness comes to life at once when she sees Tess again, which shows that he is still "mighty insensitive" with the clerical dress. Alec deceives her that her husband will not come back forever. He even pesters and threatens her, "Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife you are mine!"(Thamas Hardy, 1993). Finally, to support her family, she has to bear the insult and be Alec's mistress, which later prevents her from living a happy life with Clare.

Alec, the representative of capitalist power and violence dares to do what he desires, not only because he has money and power, but also because his evil behavior is protected by the capitalist law and rules. In the eyes of Victorian people, the young upstart squire is noble, while Tess is considered to lure Alec in order to acquire Alec's money. Tess bears all that injustice silently all along, however, when she defends herself for the first time, "Justice was done, and President of the Immorals, in Aeschylean phase, had ended his sport with Tess."(Thamas Hardy, 1993). Obviously, she is the victim of the unjust, hypocritical law.

Angel Clare, the youngest son of a poor parson, is the direct opposite of Alec. He is the "educated, reserved, subtle, sad, differing". He looks down upon the material distinction of rank and wealth. Angel goes to the countryside and to study the agricultural skills. He loves Tess and treats Tess "equally" which makes Tess trust him and fall in love with him. Because of his "noble virtue", Tess opens her mind to him and tells him all her past story with Alec on their wedding night, thinking that Angel would forgive her as she does for him. But he disappoints her. His intellectual refinement drops away. The weakness and flaws of his personality are exposed here completely. He cannot accept Tess. He considers her as a "fallen women". He still judges "purity" with the conventional value and moral standard that are implanted in him when he is a boy. He is the slave to the custom and conventionality. Obviously, what he loves is not Tess, but another in her shape. "When Tess, needing love more than herself, has completely given herself over to him, he abruptly withdraws and crushes her. The injury he inflicts on her is therefore much more severe than anything Alec could have done."(Robert Ackerman, 1996).

Alec d'Urberville destroys Tess physically, while Angel Clare makes a fatal blow to Tess's mental. The loss of chastity does not kill all Tess's desire for love and hope, but Angel's desertion and her hopelessness of love for Angel make her lose courage to live. Because of her innocence and helplessness, she is seduced. But because of Clare's moral callousness, she is forced to comeback to Alec for the second time. Clare's moral callousness completely comes from the cruel social conventions and moral standards of that time.

Tess's tragedy not only results from the external causes, but also the internal ones. And only through the internal causes, can the external causes become operative. The tragedy that results from the conflict between man and himself is the tragedy of character. Tess's tragedy is the tragedy of character. On the one hand, Tess struggles bravely against her destiny and the conventional morality. She desires for happiness and true love. On the other hand, she can not completely get rid of social conventions and moral standards of the day, which makes her believe that she has to pay for what she has sinned. She yields to the arrangement of the fate. The latter is the weakpoint in her character.

When Tess falls in love with Angel Clare, she still cannot get rid of her sense of guilt. "Her love for him acts to blot out the memories of the past in her, but she is always aware that her forgetfulness is only temporary, that the doubts, fears, and shame were only waiting like wolves just outside the light. One night, when the two of them were sitting indoors, she suddenly exclaims that she is not worthy of him."(Thamas Hardy, 1993). After their wedding ceremony, Tess is sad by the time they come back to the farm. She is tortured by guilt. She asks herself, if she has any right to be Mrs. Angel Clare. Tess's deep sense of guilt makes her submit to Angel's maltreatment without resistance, thinking she deserves it. Undoubtedly, this kind of character helps to make external causes operative.

Fatalism is "that view of life which says all actions is controlled by the nature of thing or by fate which is a great impersonal, primitive force existing through all eternity absolutely independent of human will and superior to any good created by man. "(Force,Lorrain.M.1996). Since Hardy spends a great part of his life in the countryside, he sees the decline of the patriarchal mode of life in rural English after the invasion of the industrial capitalism, but he does not understand the root causes of this decline and rules of social development. He attributes the peasants' tragedy to blind chance or mysterious fate. This kind of fatalism is revealed in Hardy's many works especially in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. "Hardy gave to the interpretation of the story in accordance with his pessimist and determinist view of the world."( In a sense, Tess is the victim of Hardy's fatalism, and her tragedy is the tragedy of the time when Hardy lives.

Throughout the whole story, Tess is constantly involved in the mysterious fate which leads to the tragedy step by step. Her misfortune starts from the sudden death of the only horse. Just at that time, Tess's father learns of a rich family—Alec D'Urbervilles which is his lineage. So Tess is forced to claim kin and not long after she is seduced. After the great frustration, desiring to live a tranquil life, Tes s meets Angel Clare and falls in love with him. Not wanting to deceive Angel, Tess writes a letter to confess her "wrong doings", but the letter is misplaced and escapes the notice of Angel. When Tess goes for the help of Clare's parents, it is unfortunate that she comes upon the sons instead of the father. It is bitterly ironic that while Tess does not get to see Angel's father, the one person who would certainly have sympathized with Tess and helped her, she does get to see one of his converts---Alec D'Urberville, the one person she wishes not to encounter alone in the whole world. Just then, her father's death and her family's homelessness make Tess find no way out. Angel is late just for a few days, although he should have reunited with Tess a few days earlier. These series of chance happening seems to decide Tess's tragedy, and each of them puts Tess further into the mysterious entrapment until her.

In a word, through the above analysis, it is obvious that the poverty, Alec's wickedness, Angel's conventional ideas, Tess's character as well as Hardy's fatalism are the direct causes of Tess's tragedy. But these direct causes are deeply rooted in the cruel social environment: the impoverished peasant, the unjust law and cruel convention. So we can draw a conclusion that the social environment is the real and root cause of Tess's tragedy.By studying Tess’s tragedy, I can better understand Tess comprehensively and objectively, which embodies the progressive significance of Hardy’s novel.

                                    References

Force, Lorrain.M. Cliffs Notes on Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.Washington

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Jone Alcon.The Nature Novel from Hardy to Laurence[M]. N.Y.Columbia Univ.

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Robert Ackerman.Thamas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles[M]. FLP. Simon &

Schuster International Publishing Hause,1996.
Thamas Hatdy.Tess of the D'Urbervilles[M]. Foreign Language Press ,1993.

Thomas Hardy.Tess of the D’urbervilles.New York:Bantam Books Press,1971.p12