apa格式英文论文范文
apa格式英文论文范文
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apa格式英文论文范文篇一
The Analysis of Angel Clare’s Tragedy in Tess of The D’urbervilles
中文摘要：文学作品是现实生活的一面镜子，反映了生活的方方面面。越来越多的学者开始从文学的角度研究一个国家的经济，政治和文化根源。悲剧是小说创作的手法之一。西方早在古希腊时期就有了悲剧创作。悲剧不是简单的艺术形式或艺术技巧，而是对现实社会的特征的再现，它可以通过尖锐、激烈的事件展示令人怜悯、悲痛、同情、哭泣等的情节。英国著名作家托马斯•哈代是维多利亚时期著名的小说家之一。他塑造了许多悲剧人物，展现出各种人物魅力。小说除了给人以命运悲剧庄严凝重以外，还蕴涵了作者深厚的理性主义，蕴涵了对人类历史逻辑矛盾深邃反思的社会悲剧。哈代的悲剧小说《德伯家的苔丝》真实地反映了其当时的社会现实。小说成功地塑造了女主人苔丝的形象，无情地揭露了资产阶级社会虚伪的伦理道德。本文试从男主人公安琪儿•克莱尔的社会背景和人物心理两个方面，探讨导致其悲剧的成因。
关键词：托马斯•哈代 悲剧 安琪尔•克莱尔
Abstract: Literature is a mirror of real life which can reflect all aspects of people’s lives. More and more scholars have begun to study a country from the roots of economy, politics and culture. As early as ancient Greece, there were some creations of tragedy. Tragedy is a kind of literary creation, which is not a simple artistic form or technique but the repeat of real society. It can depict the piteous, sad, distressing and sentimental plots by describing some tortuous or complicated events. The British famous writer Thomas Hardy was one of the excellent novelists of the Victorian age. He delineated a lot of characters of tragedies, showing various persons’ enchantment. Besides providing the dignity of life tragedy to the readers, the novels contains the profound rationalism of the writer and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles reflected his real society. Hardy succeeded in portraying the image of heroine Tess and revealing the hypocritical ethics and morals of bourgeois society. This paper will d
iscuss the causes of Clare’s tragedy from the hero –Angel Clare’s social background and psychology.
Key words: Thomas Hardy, tragedy, Angel Clare
Chapter1 Introduction
Literature is not only an art but also a mirror of real life. When studying a literary work, scholars actually study history. Nowadays an increasing number of scholars have begun to study the history of a country’s economic, political and cultural forms from the perspective of literature because through different kinds of literary works, we can see all sorts of feelings such as joy, anger, sorrow and various truths. The manifestation of literature is manifold, one of which is tragedy. The writers often want to show the piteous, sad, distressing and sentimental plots by describing some tortuous or complicated events. In the tragedy, it is inevitable that the heroes or heroines should suffer a setback or disadvantage, cover themselves in dishonor, experience tribulation or even fail or die though they have reasonable motivation, wishes, ideal, or passion which may indicate a victory or success. But finally they will either die or get mad. With a bad ending, tragedy often contains a certain philosophy of life
. There are lots of tragedies in western literature such as Oedipus, Prometheus Bound, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Faust, etc. And the famous tragedians are also legion like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, etc –Thomas Hardy for one. He was a prolific and excellent writer, publishing fourteen novels and four volumes of short stories. His works were noted for the intense tragic spirit and sense of fortune, from which we can feel the atmosphere of tragedy brought by fortune deeply.
“Tess of the D’urbervilles” is one of the Hardy’s tragedies, a masterpiece which brought him into a number of literary critics notice. It reflected the writer’s real society and its social system and morals; therefore studying this novel can help us to know about the history of his age. But many papers showed that most of critics used to research the writing background from the tragedy of Tess. Many scholars have always put emphasis on the tragedy of Tess for a long time. Only a few scholars made researches for the tragedy of its hero Angel Clare. He was a contradictory unity –he was bold in struggling with the traditional view but in the meantime he could not break the shackles of feudal ideas. This paper will see the society from this perspective –Angel Clare, the hero’s tragedy and discuss the causes of Clare’s tragedy from his social background and psychology.
Chapter2 A brief account of Tess of The D’urbervilles
It seems that the fictional works do not concern with the real world. But we know that before the writers begin to create their works, it can be said that their social experience may be their primary material for creation. Some writers created the roles and environments in order to revolt against the worldly prejudice of their ages. These kinds of words are expected to tell people the truth of a society. In many cases, the social background of the novel is the writer’s background. Before analyzing the roots of Clare’s tragedy, this paper will discuss two aspects of this novel, namely “the writing background” and “the writer and his works” from which we can see the background of this novel.
2.1 The writing background
Thomas Hardy was the last important novelist of the Victoria ages. The Victorian age was an age of realism rather than of romanticism –a realism which strives to tell the whole truth showing moral and physical diseases as they are. Victorian literature, in general, truthfully represented the reality and spirit of this age which was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. Hardy, who also shown the truth of this age had a high place in Western literature which came from the agitation of life and fatalism of human being. His tragedies in the history of Western literature were no an accident for the tragedy consciousness. Hardy’s tragic novels has sprung from and developed this tragic idea in form and connotation. The tragedy consciousness in Hardy’s novels originated from Western traditional tragic spirit which was full of rationalism and profound reflection on the contradictions of human society. And it also revealed an ineluctable and inevitable cond
itionality of fate. That is to say, the heroes or heroines would slip into the tragic path of life in the end in Western literature no matter whether they liked or not, or where they hided. Tragedy was their final arrangement.
Thomas Hardy studied Greek tragedies and Shakespearean tragedies all his life. And he was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer’s tragedy consciousness. Schopenhauer was a famous philosopher who believed that life was a tragedy –life was filled with desire. If a person had a desire but could not gain his desires, he would feel painful; however, when he could gain his desires, he would become insipid. This was another torment. Schopenhauer grouped tragedy into three types: the tragedy caused by those who committed heinous crimes, the tragedy led by the irony of fate and the tragedy caused by misunderstanding and distrust between persons in everyday life. In his opinion, the last tragedy was the most terrible one which we can see in Hardy’s works. Hardy began to creating the novels in the early 1870s. In the late 1890s, he turned to write poetry. The Britain in this period was undergoing a transition period from laisser-faire capitalism to imperialism. The capitalism thought that the social system of this period
could not be changed. But Hardy’s works exactly clashed with it, which reflected the tremendous changes of society due to the invasion of industrial capital to the village. With one remark he had ripped away the mask of British society.
2.2 The writer Thomas Hardy and his work
Literature is reflection of life. Almost all writers created their novels according to his social background. We can see many literary works written on the basis of their ages. They wanted to bring out the social facts by their works. It should be such a free way that they could rebuke the dark society. People can feel the society of the writers from their works and then identified with the writers. The writers hoped that they could let the people know the dark aspects of the government and then fine an echo from them by their works. To some extent, a novel should be a history. From the introduction of Thomas Hardy and the main content of Tess of The D’urbervilles must be helpful to show us the background of Clare’s tragedy.
2.1.1 About the writer –Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (1840～1928), born in 1840 near Dorchester, was a famous British poet and novelist. He carried forward and developed the literary traditions of the Victorian age. He vividly and truthfully described the tragic plots in his works. The critics of literature called him “Shakespeare of British novels”. Hardy was born into an architect’s family and was expected to become an architect. He trained as an architect and worked in London and Dorset for ten years. Hardy began his writing career as a novelist, publishing Desperate Remedies in 1871, and was soon successful enough to leave the field of architecture for writing.
Hardy was pessimistic in his view of life. The dominant theme of his novels is the futility of man’s effort to struggle against cruel and unintelligible fate, chance, and circumstances, which are all predestined by the Immanent Will. He bravely challenged many of the sexual and religious conventions of the Victorian age. And he exposed the hypocritical morals, laws and religions of capital. Hardy’s works reflected the tremendous changes and people’s miserable lives especially the women’s lives in social economic, politics, morals, custom, etc after the invasion of industrial capital to the British villages. Moreover, where we see Hardy's real mastery is the difference in the language of people from the social classes (e.g. the Clare’s in contrast with the farm workers’). He was good at viewing life with a tragic light. “Tess of The D’urbervilles” was his masterpiece which was noted by lots of critics of different periods.
2.1.2 The main content of Tess of The D’urbervilles
Tess of The D’urbervilles came into conflict with Victorian morality. In this novel, Hardy reaches the height of his achievement as a novelist. Like most other Hardy novels, rural life is a prominent issue in the story. And the issue of fate versus freedom of action is another important aspect of this novel. It tells of that a village girl called Tess who was a beautiful, pure, plain, honest, assiduous and clever went through a miserable life. She was born in a poor family and lived in a peculiar society. The son of the D’urbervilles Alec raped her and she was pregnant. She fell in love with Angel Clare before long. Clare loved her very much and longed to marry her but she delayed to answer this offer of marriage just because she did not know how to tell the truth of being raped. Despite this, at last this kindhearted and sincere girl decided to tell him this bad thing. However, when Tess told him the truth that she was raped by a knave Alec, he could not forgive her for having another man’s child even tho
ugh she forgave him everything. Angel Clare became very angry and abandons Tess. One day she found Alec became a minister. After her father’s death unexpectedly, Tess had the burden of the family welfare on her shoulders, and they were shortly thereafter evicted from their cottage. She believes deep down that Angel had abandoned her, and Alec said it as well, and Tess knew her family would do well by Alec’s wealth and property. But to her surprised, Angel returns from Brazil, repenting his harshness, but found her living with Alec. Tess kills Alec in desperation, she was arrested and hanged. She makes him promise to marry her sister, Liza Lu, after her death, which he agrees to do.
In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy has directly satirized nature. This novel revealed the tragedy of common people’s destiny and flayed hypocritical gentlemen and morals. In this novel, Hardy demonstrated his deep sense of moral sympathy for England's lower classes, particularly for women. He succeeded in portraying an artistic image –a village girl with kindness, tenderness and amorousness. The novel, which indicated the tendency of anti-religious sentiments, against feudal morality and the laws of capitalists, was warmly received by the reading public though British upper class was bitter against it.
Chapter3 The origins of Angel Clare’s tragedy
Tragedy can also be a vision of life, which is shared by most Western cultures and having its roots. The essence of tragedy is almost the same thought different writers create the stories from different points of view and with different techniques. A number of critics had many kinds of interpretations for Angel Clare’s tragedy in Tess of The D’urbervilles. They analyzed his complicated character from different perspectives. This paper will explain his tragedy as the following aspects:
3.1 Social roots
Here social roots refer mainly to the social conventions and moral standards which led to Clare’s tragedy. Clare lived in such conditions which the masculine authority played an important role in traditional society. Angel Clare was one of the victims of this society. At that age, women were regarded as being subordinate in the household. The chastity for them is the most important thing. The traditional view on chastity considered a woman’s chastity as the prerogative of her husband. If the women lost her virtue, she must be immoral. On the one hand the male made the moral standards for the female, demanding of the female to be pure and virginal; on the other hand, the male indulged himself in sexual matters. They demanded that the most magnanimous act the female had should be chastity; nevertheless, those who broke the women’s chastity were the males themselves. That is to say, only the males in that society were right. The female could say nothing for his wrong. So Tess asking Clare “Forgive me as you a
re forgiven! I forgive you. Angel” (Hardy, 1993) would become the impossibility.
Under such circumstances, after Tess lost her virginity, she should be Alec’s concubine or make their relationship legalized according to the social bad habits of the time. But Tess, who pursued her innocent love, had rather be “a lady of easy virtue”. In the literature, there was a set form for the images of women, namely, women should be beautiful and virtuous, gentle and biddable, and should cleave to his husband and families. All these sets are related to the real society. Traditionally, a woman must obey her husband like his wretched slave. The description about this age given by Hardy was just the society whose “social morals” had manifested mainly in “chastity” that centered on men. Even if a man of that age was bold in challenging the old system, it was impossible for him to abandon the social morals. In addition, a large part of people around him were still controlled by feudal ideas, so the social roots should be the direct cause of Clare’s tragedy.
3.2 Psychological roots
A person’s way of seeing things plays an important role all his life. Hardy naming his hero “Angel” might have his own intent. We know that Angel should be pure; however, from the development of the plot, we can not see “pure” from Angel Clare. Angel Clare was born in a rich pastoral family, but he was unwilling to obey his father and brothers. He did not abide by the old custom and etiquette, and gave a damn for the superior of material things such as wealth and position. He was born and bred the religion. But he thought that he could not honestly be ordained a minister as his brothers were. He took up a disdainful position on the social customs and found the value of working people. He abandoned the chance of studying in university and went to the countryside and to study the agricultural skills. This is sufficient to show that he was bold in struggling with the traditional view and tried to show off the shackles of the class. At the newly-married night, Tess decided to tell him her “guilt” in detail. An
gel fell out with Tess and then went to Brazil alone though he had lived a loose life with a woman who was not acquainted with him. He could not forgive Tess her “guilt”. The so-called “pure” in his mind was so ingrained that he could not accept Tess’s past. He considers her as a "fallen women".
Clare was also such a man with a ridiculous point that a man could have affair with many girls but a girl must keep to be a virgin before she become a bride. It showed his cowardice in his character. Tess trusted him and made a decision to confide her secret to him. But on the night of their wedding, when Clare learned that Tess was not a virgin and had had a bastard, the original perfect image was suddenly broken by the sad facts. Apparently he said he was deeply attached to Tess, but actually he could not face the truth with courage. He just loved Tess’s pleasing appearance rather than any other things of her. Angel Clare was more or less an open-minded bourgeois intellectual. In love, although he was not as despicable as Alec, he was devoid of selfless and sincere feeling as Tess did. Clare loved Tess just because of her beauty. And she could become his right hand in the future.He told Tess: “I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you. Another woman in your shape.”(Hardy, 1993) He could not belie
ve this bad truthe and said “Tess! Say it is not true! No, it is not true!” It is clear that he took a deadly knock psychologically. Clare’s character determined his tragedy –he could not accept her past.
It is clear that the seeds of tragedy are sown when all the rigid rule of his forebear and the unfair social systems firmly laid hold of Angel Clare, who had preached the liberation of mankind no longer exists. When Clare finally realized the immensity of Tess’s love and the piteous plight it had brought upon her, everything was too late. He could not completely get rid of social conventions and moral standards. Tess would go away forever. It was Clare’s tragedy –the social system and morality and his character decided that it could be inevitable.
Chapter4 Conclusion
Literature has come very close to daily life, reflecting its practical problems and interests and is used as a powerful instrument of human progress. Literature originates from life and then reforms life. They can make you subconsciously and deeply believe that all the things they described really happened. After you finish reading, the characters that it depicted will appear vividly in front of you. They are true to life—— you can see their faces and feel their sound, pace and thoughts. With the excellent literary works, we can feel the history vividly. As an important part of literature, tragedy has showed its artistic attraction. The reason why a great number of readers tend to be affected by the plots of tragedies is that some of them had the same or similar experience with the characters in the novels.
The western tragedies put emphasis on the soul-stirring spirit from the fear. The strong tragedies can touch the heart of the readers. The modern western tragedies represented the life style of modern westerners. They have some characteristics of modern lives and consciousness. Studying on the masterpieces of an age can help a lot for studying its history. Thomas Hardy was born in Victorian age. The novel in this age became the most widely read, the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought. Although writing from different points of view and with different techniques, the writers of this age shared one thing in common, that is, they were all concerned about the fate of the common people. In Hardy’s works, man is also shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary characteristics which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment. He vividly portrayed different characters of tragedy. Tess of the D’urbervi
lles was one of his masterpieces. The conflicts between the traditional and the modern, between the old rural value of respectability and honesty can be clearly seen in this novel and it is not difficult to see the roots of this tragedy either from Tess or Clare. This paper analyzed Clare’s tragedy and described the roots of tragedy in this process. A wonderful description is just a part of a novel, but only those things which can strike deep into the minds of the people will be remembered by them. From the tragedy of Angel Clare, we can see the dark of a society again.
Bibliography:
[1] Abcarian, Richard. Marvin Klotz: Literature—The Human Experience[M]. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000
[2] Force, Lorrain.M. Cliffs Notes on Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles[M]. Washington University, 1996.
[3] Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles[M]. Foreign Language Press ,1993.
[4] Robert Ackerman. Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D'Urbervilles[M]. Beijing: Simon&Schuster Press and Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1996
[5] 马新国主编，2002，西方文论史[M]，北京：高等教育出版社
[6] 颜学军，论哈代悲剧小说的现代主题[J]，四川外语学院学报，2001(3)
[7] 张谷若译本，1990，德伯家的苔丝[M]，北京：人民文学出版社
[8] 朱立元，1997，当代西方文艺理论[M]，上海：华东师大出版社
apa格式英文论文范文篇二
On Thomas Hardy’s Religious Sense in His Works
小议托马斯•哈代作品中体现的宗教观念
Abstract: Religion has a profound influence on the works of European and American writers. .From a series works of Thomas Hardy, clearly we can see the influence of The Bible on him .Nevertheless, though Hardy failed to eliminate the limitation of Tragic predestination and religious tradition , By the case study analyzing on the works of Thomas Hardy ,this paper makes an research on the distinguished religious sense of Thomas Hardy as well as its cause of formation.
内容摘要：宗教对欧美作家的文学作品有着深远的影响。从托马斯•哈代的一系列作品里，我们可以清楚地看到圣经和宗教对托马斯哈代的影响。然而，虽然哈代没有摆脱悲观宿命和宗教习俗的局限性，但他对人物形象地塑造以及小说意向的组合无疑对社会的伦理道德和基督教义进行了讽刺和抨击。通过对托马斯•哈代作品的个案研究分析，本文分析了哈代独特的的宗教观念及其成因。
Chapter1.Background of Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is one of the greatest English poet and novelist between the 18th Century and the 20thcentury(Victorian period).Hardy is famous for his depictions of the imaginary county "Wessex”. Hardy is a cross-century literary giant. Success has masked the Wessex novels left a profound impression. Hardy's work reflected his stoical pessimism and sense of tragedy in human life.(women especially),and of deep changes of social economy, politics, ethics and custom after the invasion of capitalism into the English countryside and towns. They exposed the hypocrisies of the capitalistic ethics, law and religion, which inherited the excellent tradition of realistic criticism as well as exploited a road for English literature in the 20th century. Hardy kept cracking tragedies of Greek and Shakespeare with all his life, and was influenced by the skepticism of neoteric scientific ideology, so that his opinion towards life was pessimistic and fated, and he thought that no matter what kind of degree human
so
ciety had developed, human being were unable to get rid of the tricks of the fate. This kind of ideology became a big window for Hardy's writing, and in his works, coincidences were everywhere, nature’s tinge suffused around, environment served as a foil to the roles, and the roles' characters were mixed up with the environment. These were ingenuities exerted by the writer, in addition, Hardy had worked as an architect in his early time,so his works were written with a style that could be relished again and again. The scenarioes, characters and sceneries of Hardy's works were so fine, perfect, compact and harmonic that few writers could compete with him.
Chapter 2 Thomas Hardy's Religious Beliefs
1.1Profile
Like so many other major Victorian authors, on his early stage, Thomas Hardy had an important Evangelical phase that left a deep impress on his thought. Examining the text of a sermon clearly marked by "Evangelical style and theology" that the eighteen-year-old Hardy wrote, we can concludes that it provides convincing evidence of Hardy’s already being sympathetic to Evangelicalism by October 1858, his taking sufficiently seriously his so-called “dream” of ordination to practice writing a sermon, and, most significantly, his having a personal faith that was both ardent and orthodox”. This new evidence proves important because it requires rewriting the history of the novelist's religious belief or beliefs.
Thomas Hardy used to be an architect’s apprentice in Dorchester. At this stage, Hardy studied intensively on the Bible and further inquired into Anglican doctrine on pedobaptism.
1.2Detailed Research
Although one his oldest friends, Henry Bastow, an ardent Baptist who emigrated to Australia, long ago claimed that in Hardy had been an Evangelical, scholars have generally dismissed his remarks, largely on the basis of the autobiography.The Hardy of Life and Work" presents his "youthful faith as gentlemanly and unimpassioned, more social that religious, and fundamentally different from the Evangelical — indeed evangelistic — zeal embodied in the sermon. This Hardy presumably never underwent a classic Victorian loss of faith because he never had a sustained, personal faith to lose”. The new evidence paints a very different picture.
Citing Timothy Hand's 1989 "notable book on Hardy and Christianity," Dalziel lists the novelist's lifelong connections to the orthodox Christianity he was soon to abandon:
(1)His family's associations with the established church ;
(2)His lifelong love of church music and the language of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer;
(3)His continued attending religious services ;
(4)His poetry's occasional expression longing for belief (e.g. "The Oxen").;
(5)His conviction that the Church was — and should remain — the social, ethical, and educational center of a community.
Despite these lifelong connections with the Church of England — connections much firmer and more numerous than most Victorian authors who lost their belief — "Hardy repeatedly articulated both his conviction that the Cause of Things must be unconscious, 'neither moral nor immoral, but unmoral,' and his hope that this Unconscious Will was evolving into consciousness would ultimately become sympathetic”. Nonetheless, Dalziel argues that however far Hardy moved from his Evangelical sermon of 1858, its three main points remain the "central preoccupations" of his life: the emphasis "on the law as curse, on suffering, and on the saving force of love" . She therefore argues that Hardy the atheist remained "profoundly Christian" in many ways.
However, there are some question remains .if one retains some of the cultural, emotional, and even ethical attitudes of Christianity, as so many Victorian non-believers did, but does not have any faith in a personal god, much less in the divinity of Christ and salvation through him, can these attitudes still be considered Christian? Wouldn't it be less tendentious and a lot more convincing simply to state that Thomas Hardy might have wished he could have remained a Christian, but that he didn't, or that he always retained many ideas and attitudes associated with Christianity (and, of course, with other religions as well) but not the fundamental beliefs that grounded them. Such a characterization of Hardy would seem more true to the Victorian frame of mind that would overemphasizing Hardy's Christian-ness. For me the point remains not that, like so many other Victorians, he retained habits of mind associated with Christianity after he abandoned it but that he abandoned it for a belief in some Unconscious Wi
ll.
Chapter2 Case Study (1): Take Jude the obscure as an example
2.1 About the novel
Jude the Obscure was initially published in abridged form in Harper New Monthly under the title Hearts Insurgent between 1894 and 1895, and later published in full in the 1895 edition of Hardy’s works. To say the very least it was poorly received. Perhaps due to such fierce criticism it was Hardy who last novel before he took to writing only poetry and drama. It is the story of various illicit unions that form themselves around the central character of Jude Fawley, the village mason. He is encouraged by Phillotson, a schoolmaster, to apply for Christminster (representing Oxford University), but as in every part of his life he is tormented by rejection. In this novel, Bridehead (married unhappily to Phillotson) and other chanters have an illicit relationship. However, her contradictory desires prevent their long-term contentedness since she seeks freedom to the cost of love. We learn of the death of Sue and Jude’s children at the hands of Jude’s only child by Arabella since the latter believes none of them
have the right to live. The novel concerns Jude’s ambition as it is thwarted repeatedly by the squalid nature of a life ruined by poverty and the indecision of others. Like The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D’rbervilles and others the novel ends with the protagonist miserable death that represents only the indecency of fate that causes suffering even or perhaps especially in the pure of heart.
2.2 Religious sense in Jude the Obscure
In Jude the Obscure, Hardy shows his views on religion and commitment to the Church which were said to have declined in the latter years of his life. (Ingham, xxvii) Throughout the book Hardy displays his feeling that religion is something that people use in order to satisfy themselves by giving their lives' meaning. One instance in which Hardy clearly displays this is when he writes, "It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to cling to." (Ingham, 94) In order to bring out this point Hardy chooses to create Jude as an orphan and has him come from obscure origins. By doing this, he creates a character who is looking for something to give him an identity. As a result of his relationship with Mr. Phillotson (who leaves for Christminster in order to become ordained), he finds religion and feels that he can use it to help him gain an identity. Hardy feels that people should shy away from their old ways of thinking and begin to forma new one.
In this novel,Jude,is a kind-hearted sentimental young man who fell guilty on every hurt of creatures even a earthworm. Ironically,every such a religious man like Jude failed to get the bless from God. Here, Hardy is telling a truth to readers :God is indifferent with human beings..
Chapter3 Case Study (2): Take The Return of the Native as an example
3.1About the Novel
As one of the master pieces of Tomas Hardy, The Return of the Native(1878) is a story of extremes, of all-consuming passions and fierce ambitions, played out in the vast and overwhelming setting of Egdon Heath. It is a tragedy of ordinary lives: a family quarrel, romantic entanglements and the desire to escape are the elements which are brought together with a life-shattering intensity. Here, all life is a struggle for existence and the working of an apparently malign fate drives the story with a tragic inevitability. A foreboding atmosphere dominates most of the novel, and superstition and pagan rites contribute to the sense of the powerful forces which seem hostile to humanity, yet in control of human destiny.
Like all of Hardy’s work, The Return of the Native is passionate and controversial, with themes and sympathies beyond what a good Victorian would ever admit. A modern and honest novel of chance and choice, faith and infidelities, this dark story asks what is free will and what is fate? What is the true nature of nature, and how do we fit together? Can we fit together?
A tragedy set in the barren land of Edgon Heath. Our heroine, Eustacia, is proud, passionate, cruel, fickle, avaricious, and desperate. She burns every life she touches, never able to find the mad love and exotic world she dreams of. Our supposed hero, Clym, is modest, steady, plain, moral, and dutiful. He is satisfied returning from Paris to the simple comfort of home.
When they come together, the Heath will come apart. Originally released as five books, in classic tragic form, a sixth, tacking on a ‘happy ending’, was added by editor and public pressure
3.2About the Religious Sense in The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy's characters in The Return of the Native live in a world governed by a harsh and indifferent ironic God. Hardy sees the reigning power of the universe as being essentially unjust and morally blind, as in his poem "Hap." Instead of rewarding the good and punishing the evil, this entity presides over a universe in which suffering abounds in the form of a perverse irony. Irony is defined in the Oxford Dictionary of Current English as "a situation that appears opposite to what one expects" (480), and the critic Mary Caroline Richards elaborates by stating that "irony is the issue of an action which is intended to produce one effect (good for the agent) and ends by producing its contrary (disaster for the agent)" (Part One 272). Hardy uses this definition of irony in his works, but M. H. Abrams further delineates his style in A Glossary of Literary Terms by classifying his texts in the category of cosmic irony, wherein "a deity, or else fate, is represented as though deliberately manipulating even
ts
so as to lead the protagonist to false hopes, only to frustrate or mock them" (137). The ironic deity or guiding principle in Hardy's texts acts as "the mockery of potentiality, intention, and promise by unfulfillment" (Richards, Part Two, 28). Richards argues that Hardy follows various laws set up by the universe that act as the source for human ironies.
It is the nature of Life to dangle pretty prospects before our eyes--inner and outer--and then to snatch them away ; secondly, the indifference of the Will to justice; thirdly, the universe manifests not only indifferent but cruelty; fourthly,inner potentiality and practical possibility are all out of step; and finally,a gross lack of correspondence between man's nature and the materials of his life results. (34-35)
In Hardy's fiction and poetry, the "indisputable henchmen of this force [the ironic deity] against man's felicity are Change and Chance" (Richards, Part Two, 25). Hardy's characters live in a world governed by these twin powers, whose influence all too often is for evil, not for good.
Throughout The Return of the Native, bad things always happen to good people. There is a tragic heroine, Eustacia, is stifled by her environment in the heath and marries Clym Yeobright as an escape, despite his mother's disapproval. Her former lover, Damon Wildeve, spitefully marries Clym's cousin Thomasin in revenge for Eustacia's rejections of his charms. None of these characters is evil, but much misfortune befalls them before the book concludes. There seems to be no justice for the good or mercy for the mistaken. The critic Albert Elliot describes Hardy as having "no desire to explain experience; he wishes only to present it" (12). Although Hardy is often considered a pessimist as a result of his negative view about the possibility for hopefulness in life, he believed that he was merely "treating matters of life just as they were" (Elliot 13). In attempting to represent reality as he saw it, he wrote novels whose plots were heavily influenced by factors of chance and change, often leading to a negative
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nclusion. Hardy did not enjoy witnessing the suffering in the world around him, and "felt sympathy for almost all of his characters; the 'villain' has almost no place in his works" (Richards, Part Two,24) because to him all of humanity is guided by an outside agency and so have little responsibility for the painful outcomes that occur. There is a "tight linking of incidents toward doom" (Elliot 62) and, although The Return of the Native concludes with the happier Sixth Book, the overall tone of the text is an ironic and tragic one. In The Return of the Native, Hardy proves a dismal view of life in which coincidence and accident conspire to produce the worst of circumstance due to the indifference of the Will to issues of equity and justice. Examples of the workings of this agency abound in The Return of the Native, but I have selected two major episodes from the novel to demonstrate the workings of chance and change upon Hardy's characters. The first is the adventures of Mrs. Yeobright's guineas, and the s
eco
nd her journey across the heath to reunite with her son.
A key episode in the novel that hinges upon the element of chance begins with Mrs. Yeobright's decision to send a gift of guineas. Her son, Clym, is marrying Eustacia against her wishes, and she hopes that, by offering this gift, she and her son can repair their relationship. The other half of the money is to go to her niece, Thomasin, who has recently married Damon Wildeve, Eustacia's former lover. Unfortunately, Mrs. Yeobright selects as her messenger the inept Christian Cantle, the village simpleton. This ill-considered decision has major ramifications, and ultimately deepens the rift between herself and her son instead of bridging it. Instead of hurrying to the wedding party, Christian attends a raffle with his fellow heath men and happens to win. To the simple man, this occurrence is evidence of newly discovered, infallible luck. He declares: "To think that I should have been born so lucky as this, and not have found it out until now!" (Hardy 175). The naive fellow is so sure of his mastery over chanc
e t
hat he agrees to gamble with Damon Wildeve using Mrs. Yeobright's guineas. However, nobody can antipate the actions of Hardy's ironic deity; here, its henchmen Chance and Change work against Christian's supposed "luck." He loses the guineas intended for Thomasin and recklessly continues the game, betting Clym's share in a desperate bid to regain his earlier "luck." He moans, "'I don't care--I don't care!' . . . 'The devil will toss me into the flame on his three-pronged fork for this night's work, I know! But perhaps I shall win yet" (Hardy 179). Instead of withdrawing after losing only Thomasin's money to her husband, the chance of Christian's earlier win at the raffle which goaded him into enter the game prods him to believe that he may yet prevail. The element of coincidence at work in this scene is clear to the reader as the two men are playing with dice, symbols of chance and luck. Accord ing to the laws of probability, each man has an equal chance of winning with each fresh roll of the die, but chanc
e f
avours Damon and he wins all of Mrs. Yeobright's precious guineas.
After Christian has sorrowfully left, Diggory Venn, a former suitor of Thomasin and Damon Wildeve's rival, reveals that he has been observing the dice game from a nearby hiding place. He has overhead the gamblers, and had watched the drama unfold. He challenges Wildeve to extend his winning streak, and the two men play. At first, "The game fluctuated, now in favor of one, now in the favour of the other, without any great advantage on either side" (Hardy 182). However, Lady Luck soon deserts Wildeve. He eventually loses all the coins to Diggory Venn. Venn is unaware that they were to be divided between Clym and Thomasin, and so presents all the guineas to Thomasin. As she did not know the amount of the gift, she does not think to question the precise number of guineas. Through this convoluted chain of events Mrs. Yeobright's hopes for reconciliation are dashed. An examination of the evening's proceedings reveals multiple incidents of change, chance and coincidence. For instance, on all of the great heath, D
igg
ory Venn happens upon the two men quietly playing their game. When their lamp runs out, there are convenient glow worms nearby to light the game. As Christian won the earlier raffle and asked if he could keep the winning dice, he provided the materials for his downfall. Christian success in winning the raffle at all is perhaps the greatest example of chance. Thomas Hardy's characters are manipulated though links of unfortunate events towards the worst possible outcome. Even when chance appears to favor someone, such as Christian winning the raffle prize, it really is a two-fold cruelty on the part of the universe. The prize is a woman's dress, which the bashfully, socially inept man has no use for as no woman will have him, and his naive belief in his luck causes him to fail at carrying out Mrs. Yeobright's instructions.
The second set of proceedings that I shall examine for the influence of chance and change is set into motion by Christian Cantle's failure to deliver Mrs. Yeobright's wedding gift of guineas to her son or to tell her of his mistake. This situation drives mother and son father apart as she believes Clym received the gift but made no gesture of thanks. Eventually, she decides once more to attempt a reconciliation with her son and his new wife, and again Hardy's philosophy of how change and chance conspire to cause human suffering comes into play. The day Mrs. Yeobright chooses to make her journey is unseasonably warm, resulting in a difficult expedition:
In cool, fresh weather Mrs. Yeobright would have found no inconvenience in walking to Alderworth, but the present torrid attack made the journey a heavy undertaking for a woman past middle age. (Hardy 215)
As she approaches her son's home, she sees a furze-cutter up ahead on the path and reflects that "'His walk is almost exactly as my husband's used to be'" (Hardy 217). In a burst of understanding, she discovers Clym's current state. Since he has been married, incessant studying has caused him to become partially blind, and to bring in an income he has turned to the physical labour of furze cutting. Her beloved, well-educated son who was formerly a prosperous businessman is now an incapacitated common laborer. A difference of minutes could have delayed her discovery and disappointment but to be true to Hardy's vision of life, she must witness her son and see him enter his home.
After resting outside his house (just long enough for her tired son to fall deeply asleep), she sees a man enter her son's house. It is Damon Wildeve, Eustacia's former lover, and when Mrs.Yeobright knocks on the door she interrupts their discussion. Afraid of incurring her mother-in-law's wrath, Eustacia decides to withdraw to the back of the house with Damon, assuming her sleeping husband will wake and allow his mother to enter. As they left, "they could hear Clym moving in the other room, as if disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word 'Mother'" (Hardy 222). However, the 'conjuncture' that Clym will awake and let in his mother, as Hardy labels it in his chapter title, is incorrect, and Mrs. Yeobright sorrowfully leaves her son's house. Having seen him enter and Eustacia look from a window at her, she is convinced that her son's new wife has poisoned her son's mind against her and comments, "'If they only showed signs of meeting my advances half way how well it might have been done!'" (Hardy 224
).
The readers know that Mrs. Yeobright's belief is unfounded--although Eustacia did make the faulty assumption that Clym would answer the door, she did not act with malicious forethought. However, Hardy's powerful chance denies Mrs. Yeobright and Clym a reunion, and the distraught mother begins the long and hot journey home. She randomly encounters a young village boy on the heath and confides to him that she is "'a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son'" (Hardy 225). Mrs. Yeobright soon collapses on the heath from exhaustion, the heat, and disappointment.
Meanwhile, Clym wakes with no knowledge of what has occurred. While Eustacia is sorry and apprehensive of Clym's anger when she realizes that she has unwittingly turned away his mother, she decides not to tell him of his mother's visit. Once again, irony intrudes when Clym decides that he ought to attempt a reconciliation with his mother. If he had only made this decision a day earlier, then the entire incident could have been avoided. Mrs. Yeobright would not have undergone her trial in the eat or experienced what she thought was a rejection at the hands of her son and his merciless new wife. As Clym journeys to his mother's home, he discovers her prostrate body on the heath. Although he does prevent her from dying alone, she has been bitten by an adder and expires during the night without regaining full consciousness and being reunited with Clym. Even worse, her young companion arrives on the scene to inform Clym of his mother's last words.
After Mrs. Yeobright's death, Clym becomes ill as "Despair had been added to his original grief by the unfortunate disclosure of the boy who had received the last words of Mrs. Yeobright (Hardy 239). Clym's ramblings dramatically illustrate his tortured state of mind:
“'I cannot help feeling I did my best to kill her… My conduct to her was too hideous--I made no advances; and she could not bring herself to forgive me. Now she is dead! If I had only shown myself willing to make it up to her sooner”. (Hardy 239)
Clym blames himself for her death and their failure at reconciliation. To Eustacia, who knows herself truly guilty for not letting in Mrs. Yeobright and therefore avoiding her death and facilitating a reconciliation, listening to Clym's self-denouncing speeches are agony. After monologues such as these, "There escaped from Eustacia one of those shivering sighs which used to shake her like a pestilent blast" (Hardy 239), but she cannot bring herself to tell the truth. Elliott describes Hardy's female heroines by saying, "They are undecided about telling it [their secret], and usually wait until confession only leads to disaster" (96). Eustacia's death and downfall could still have been avoided if she had immediately confessed to Clym after he woke on the day of his mother's visit and begged forgiveness. However, she stays proud and silent and Clym discovers the truth on his own, causing an irreparable breach between them due to her deceit.
All these events are guided by chance and chance to the worst possible outcome-death, and no reconciliation. If Mrs. Yeobright were not as elderly--if Clym had not fallen into such a deep sleep-if Wildeve had not come to the house--then the tragedy could have been avoided. However, all of these events did occur, proving to the reader that human "potentialities for happiness, satisfactions, [and] Good are seldom fully exercised" (Richards, Part Two, 270) by the universe's guiding force. The "shocking discrepancy between what happens and what should happen if Right prevailed in the world" (Richards, Part Two, 274) is brutally prevailed in Hardy's texts. When Clym discovers the part Eustacia played in his mother's demise, the two have a horrific fight and she eventually decides to fly to Paris, where she has always hoped to live, with her old lover Damon Wildeve. They will each abandon their spouses and live together. Their flight, however, is interrupted by a horrific storm and Eustacia plunges into the weir, whether by suicide or accident. Damon and Clym leap into the water to save her, but both Damon and Eustacia perish.
The Will is "blind and distributes good or bad without regard to merit" (Chapman 146) in Hardy's novels. Eustacia and Wildeve, Clym and Thomasin are all good people without evil intent. It is through misunderstanding and unfortunate coincidence that events drive Eustacia to her death and Wildeve to follow her. Clym's promising life has completely changed direction at the conclusion of the text, and he is now a roaming preacher on the heath. Of the principle characters in the book, only Diggory Venn and Thomasin find happiness. But because of some incredible coincidence, events could have unfolded in a completely different manner. Hardy would insist that his vision is true to life because the higher power does indeed influence humanity's life for the worse, using its agents of chance, change and coincidence. Unlike many other novels, The Return of the Native shows the workings of higher deity but does not offer the "assurance of a continuing restored stability or an explanation of why things are as they are
" (Chapman 153). Other Victorian authors often preferred to end their novels with a happy coincidence, restoring right to the world and humanity's faith in providential justice. Hardy did not see that justice in the world around him, and so it is absent in this text. The ironic contradiction between what is and what ought to be reverberates The Return of the Native, marbling the characters' lives with 'if only's'. Various instruments of fate influence his characters' lives as he believed influenced all of humanity's, and this tragic novel lends great insight into Hardy's philosophy of the workings of our own world.
Chapter4 Conclusion
Therefore, a perspective can be concluded: the unique religious sense influenced Thomas Hardy’s work heavily. Check out the literary experience of Thomas Hardy, the author was changed to the suspicion from firmly believing on God, and turned in the irony and satire in the end. The hardness and bitterness of common people make Hardy realized that the common people can never be rescued by the “Almighty God’, not to say of getting rid of the miserable real life they have. As a result, Hardy put all his desire and will not to current life but the future lone, Not to God but to human beings. And in the late years, Hardy also shows a rebellion on God. He Declared that God not help him to complete his career, he would not make his dream come true unless by his own sweat-taking struggles.
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