The Analysis of the Tragic Tess――the Spirit of Revolt(四)
illegitimate children, she has not abandoned him, but bring him up until he died. Tess does not give consideration to the view of the people around, using her own practical action to show common people the purity of a woman losing virginity, which is resistance of her traditional moral concept to the old society too --Whether can't evaluate the woman's purity or not with the woman's chastity. Though the tragedy of Tess is caused by traditional morals of Angel Clare more or less, but Angel Clare reachs to comprehend at the last moment. "Though Tess stain in the past, such as her person, according to her body present thing stored, it is fresh to far surpass other virgins too. "( Thomas Hardy, p.228). It is obvious, Tess with her industrious and simple and sincere and strong traditional moral concept of resistance, and has won the victory. The third, the resistance of the hypocritical religion Britain followed Christianity in the 19th century, the religion was a spiritual tool that was used for liberating the people on the surface, and for good governance government used it as a kind of tool to fetter of people in fact. When people see through its hypocritical side, they will resist it. Tess is also the one who object to it when looks through it. Alec turns respectable for a time with the help of old pastor, and after he meets Tess, evil thought regenerated. Tess sees through the soul of the pastor, pointing out precisely: “ Don’t go on with it!" she cried passionately, as she turned away from him to a stile by the wayside, on which she bent Herself. "I can't believe in such sudden things! I feel indignant with you for talking to me like this, when you know--when you know what harm you've done me! You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow, and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted! Out upon such--I don't believe in you--I hate it!"(Thomas Hardy, p.72). It is obvious that Tess discontented with the thing that hypocritical religion is strong, and Alec utilizes the coat of the religion, making the obscene behavior, scorned by Tess, the severe reaction of Tess: "But I have not defended the weak woman of ability, Alec! I am still grasping the honor of a good person in the hand! --Think carefully --You do not feel ashamed! "(Thomas Hardy, p.76). This is Tess that reprimand to Alec frivolous act, pointing out Alec’s mask of "good person " (w.Hacker,Women’s Role (Boston:Boston Press,1930),p.170). Not merely, she has also beaten back the harassing and wrecking of Alec. This formal resistance and despising of the hypocritical religious believer of Tess. In addition, after illegitimate child of Tess fall ill, Tess forewarns the finishing of this light life, she ignores the restraint of the religious doctrine of the religion, and has done baptism for this child. But now that her moral sorrows were passing away, a fresh one arose on the natural side of her: she knew nothing about social law. When she reached home she learned that the baby had been suddenly ill since the afternoon. Such collapse had been probable, so tender and puny was its frame, but the event came as a shock nevertheless. The girl’s mother forgot the baby’s offence against society in coming into the world. Her soul's desire was to continue that offence by preserving the life of the child. However, it soon grew clear that the hour of emancipation for that little prisoner of the flesh was to arrive earlier than her worst misgiving had conjectured. And when she had discovered this she was plunged into a misery, which transcended that of the child's simple loss. Her baby had not been baptized. “Tess had drifted into a frame of mind which accepted passively the consideration that if she should have to burn for what she had done, burn she must, and there was an end of it. Like all village girls she was well grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and had dutifully studied the histories of Aloha and Aholibah, and knew the inferences to be drawn there from. But when the same question arose with regard to the baby, it had a very different color. Her darling was about to die, and no salvation.”(Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989),p.24). Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the devil was doomed to be of limited brilliancy--luckily perhaps for him, considering his beginnings. In the blue of the morning that fragile soldier and
