Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is one of the outstanding realistic writers at the turn of 19th century in England. The heroine Tess in Hardy’s work “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” has long been the focus of literary criticism. The aim of this paper is to analyze the causes of Tess’s tragedy from three perspectives as follows. First, it presents the social background Tess lived in, then analyses the weaknesses deep inside her characters, finally it elaborates the fate factors throughout the paper. The novel’s subtitle described Tess as “a pure woman” in the eyes of writer. Tess was an innocent person: she had a powerful vitality; she never ended the resistance against unfair destiny. However, plenty of elements (society, families and individual) made this pure girl head to destruction slowly and turned out to be a victim of society eventually. Tess of the d’Urbervilles is more than a story about a woman whose tragedy bathes readers in the beauty through Hardy’s artistic creation and manifests readers the intension of human tragedies of different status.
Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Tomas Hardy and his major works 2
3. Three major causes of the tragedy of Tess 3
3.1 Social environment Tess lived in 3
3.2 Own personalities of Tess 7
3.3 Fate elements throughout the novel 12
4. Significance on study of the causes of Tess' tragedy 15
5. Conclusion 16
Acknowledgements 17
References 18
