解析苔丝与海斯特的女性意识.doc

毕 业 论 文

（ 2010届）

题 目
解析苔丝和海斯特的女
性意识

学 院
新华学院
专 业
英语
年 级
2006级

2010年 5月10日

The Comparison Between Tess’ and Hester’s Feminist
Consciousness

A Thesis Submitted to
Xinhua College of
Ningxia University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
Bachelor of Arts

by
Zhou Qiao

Xinhua College of
Ningxia University
May 4 , 2010

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Guo Jihong, who gave me many valuable instructions and helped me much in every stage of my thesis writing during the completion of my thesis.
Secondly, I also greatly appreciate the help coming from my respectable teacher, Song Xiaoyan, who gave me great support during my four years’ study.
Moreover, my numerous thanks go to my dear friends, Wang Yan and Ma Wei who spend much time with me on my thesis.
Finally, I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to my brother, for his heartfelt understanding and encouragement.
Without these helps, it is impossible for me to carry out the work through to its end.

Abstract

While Tess and Hester live in different times, different countries, their life experiences, however, have striking similarities. This paper will use the feminist perspective to analyze Tess and Hester’s love, independence, motherly love, the love of the community and love of her relatives, and analyze the two heroines’ feminist consciousness from their aesthetic images and sacrificing spirit.

Key words：Love, feminist consciousness, aesthetic image, sacrificing spirit

摘 要

尽管苔丝和海斯特生活在不同的时代、不同的国度, 她们的人生经历却拥有惊人的相似之处。本文将利用女性主义视角, 分析了苔丝和海丝特的爱情、独立意识、母爱的流露、对社会的爱和对亲人的爱，并且又从审美对象和牺牲精神两个方面, 对苔丝和海斯特两位主人公的女性主义意识进行分析。

关键词:爱情, 女性主义意识，审美形象，牺牲精神

Contents

Acknowledgements…………………………………………......ⅰ
Abstract………………………………………………………….ⅱ
摘要……………………………………………………………....ⅲ
1 Introduction………………………………………………… …1
2 Literature Review………………………………………………1
3 Tess’s Feminist Features………………………………………..2
3.1 The Pursuit of Love………………………………….......... 3
3.2 Independent-Mind………………………………………….4
3.3 The Love of Family………………………………………....5
4 Hester’s Feminist Features………... …………………………..5
4.1 The Pursuit of Love……………………………...................6
4.2 Independent-Mind……...…………………………………..8
4.3 The Love of Family……………………………………........9
4.4 Love of the Community…………………………………. ...10
5 The Female Awareness of Hester and Tess………………..12
5.1 The Beauty of Nature and Self-esteem……………………12
5.2 Sacrifice for Love…………….………………………...14
6 Conclusion………………………………………………….........17
Bibliography………………………………………………….........19

The Comparison between Tess’ and Hester’s Feminist Consciousness

1 Introduction
Tess is a novel, which wrote by English prominent novelist- Thomas Hardy in nineteenth-century. The novel is gradually replacing the traditional images of small-scale peasant of the Victorian era by using the way of agricultural production. The heroine Tess’s emotional entanglement with two men, Alec and Angel are regarded as the main line, displaying the brief and tragic life of her. Similarly, in the nineteenth century, the distinguished Romantic writers Nathaniel Hawthorne's immortal masterpiece The Scarlet Letter in the United States, presents us a picture of a woman with modern ideas and a strong woman with a tragic image of Hester. We can read this article from a feminist perspective, Tess and Hester, show their love, independence, motherly love, the love of the community and love of her relatives, and analyze readers can the two heroines’ feminist consciousness from their aesthetic images and sacrificing spirit.

2 Literature Review
Tess is a prominent novel, written by famous Thomas Hardy in nineteenth-century, and Romantic writers Nathaniel Hawthorne's immortal masterpiece The Scarlet Letter in the United States, present a woman with modern idea and the strong woman with a tragic image of Hester. Zhang Zhongzai points the book is an ethic article in Tomas Hardy’s thought and creation, and pointed out Hardy write a subheading that Tess is a pure woman. This is a moral narration about character, Hardy describe Tess through her tragedy destiny, the capitalism under male power, rule's darkness, traditional ideas of moral, the bourgeoisie law, the religious belief, and propose the intense protest and criticized. At the same time, Nina · Boehm saying: Hester’s image, Hawthorne has portrayed that she is a genuine lady in the American novel, and she is a female hero. But I think the action is due to the social corrupt, feudalism ideas and the community’s darkness. Women have no any rights to get their happiness in that time, and they were limit by puritan and acknowledge in their lives, therefore, female’s fate is so tragic. As a woman, who should struggle with the inequality society, and in order to break the traditional ideas.

3 Tess’s Feminist Features
We know Tess is a brave and independent woman from the novel, and we analyze her natures from her pursuit of love, independent-mind and the love of family.

3.1 The Pursuit of Love
For this ancient and eternal theme of love, from ancient times to the present, under the literature writer’s wording and purport from generation to generation, love becomes the persistent pursuit for a number of females , who pay a high price. Tess is a typical unfortunate woman in the millions of people. When Tess was seduced by Alec, she was no longer a pure and untouched girl, but she did not take this opportunity to be his wife or lover like other girls as homeopathy. On the contrary, she chose to leave firmly, and later she loved pastor's son Clare when Tess restarted her independent life in a dairy. Her momentary happiness begins from then on, but, the largely unfortunate is also following. Tess deeply loved Clare, but a reason made it difficult for her to forget the past’s stigma about herself, good-hearted Tess is full of contradictions and pains. However, facing an enthusiastic pursuit of Clare and her sincere love, she finally overcame remorse for past events, and she agreed to marry him. On the wedding night, for a loyal to Clare, Tess confesses the experiences of losing her virginity to him. She couldn’t expect that she was actually suffered a ruthless abandon of Clare. Unfortunately, Tess, for the first time the wounds were not healed, and now for the bride, would be again abandoned. The fate of her to be troubled in the endless abyss started once again. Therefore, Alec ruined Tess physically, Clare damaged her spiritually, and that gave Tess the most lethal strike.
3.2 Independent-Mind
Tess lives in such a vanity of the family, but he maintains a simple, kind-hearted nature. She doesn’t expect to use other means to obtain the so-called "happy" lives. When Tess received a letter from Mrs. d’Urbervilles of Tranridge, of course, the Durbeyfield family found it all very exciting. They saw it as Tess’s golden chance to marry into the d’Urbervilles. Tess just said: I hope the opportunity is to make money, rather than anything else of it. You’d better stop saying that on the outside. (Thomas Hardy 37) This is a manifestation of Tess’s self-consciousness. At the same time, when she was seduced by Alec, she chose to leave firmly, for herself dignity, she could not marry the person that she is not love. Her decision is simple, action is brave and strong, and she is not aware of this decision’s consequences, and she increasingly kept herself apart from other people, so she sat in her room day after day. And her heart was filled with shame and guilt. Later she gave birth to a baby. At last her old common sense came back to her. But now that she was beginning to live again, but a fresh sorrow came to her. One afternoon the baby was dead because of illness. She never told Alec about the child, as she clearly knew even when he knew the thing, it would not help. Besides, when her family suffered troubles, she never expected to seek help from others, but she affords heavy duties to maintain her family. When she was forced to live, return to Alec side, Tess was also ashamed of these pleasures. That made Alec destroy her again, and she finally picked up the knife with hatred, and killed Alec who destroyed her happiness and constancy. Tess used her life to recover a fair price for herself. This not only shows her courage, fortitude, love and hatred but also clearly reflects her own spirit and a strong resistance of spirit.
3.3 The Love of Family
Tess was the eldest daughter in the family, and her family condition was poor. She took over the ruining of the house and family when she was 17-year-old, and she endured everything without complaints. While Tess met great hardship, her love didn’t bring about change to the family; her hardness mostly fought for to her parents and relatives. For family, she sacrificed her all. In particular, the second time when she lived with Alec together, this plot can better reveal the typical meaning of Tess. She showed her great spirit of sacrifice. As a weak female from the bottom of society, her family couldn’t break away from the social evils, while they lived in the wilderness, her mother and younger brothers and sisters needed to have a settled life. Therefore, Tess came back to Alec’s family, there was also self-sacrifice engaged to save the family. After Tess got Clare’s understanding, and recovered their love. She still worried about her brothers and sisters. If I got into trouble, I hope you marry Eustacia Lu (her sister). (Thomas Hardy 186) She sacrificed herself day after day, she is willing to consider others at every thing, but not had her own ideas and wishes.

4 Hester’s Feminist Features
Hester is a bold and challenging woman, but her fate is very complicated,We can describe her characteristics from her life experiences.
4.1 The Pursuit of Love
A woman is always linked with love, while Hester’s appearance is a tragedy. The pursuit of happiness of love make she become an adulterer. Church give her the most serious penalties at that time, ---put on public platform to punish in the market. But Hester is not to admit her sin in the public, she resists and challenges to the Puritan taboos in order to protect her innocent love. She was dressed in colorful clothes to surpass the standard provisions at that time, on the breast of her gown, in fie red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. she was smiling, looking around the people at leisure. Every one saw how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. (Nathaniel Hawthorne 11) she embraced the beautiful baby’s that made people actually reminisce the female deity on the scaffold. Hester thought of the past married life in a trance, short stature and disabled Chillingworth to be indulged in books all day, a beautiful youth was buried in the lonely and desolated situation. She dared to face all everything, Hester did not regret for her "crime", because the marriage had not brought her true love. The result of the trial was a failure, Hester refused to account for lover's name, preferring to bear the commitment of public. There is no requirement about Hester to stay in New England in Punishment, but she did not leave, and took Pearl away from the town's seaside cottage, strive to make a living with needlework, to feed herself and her daughter. The only reason left was that she still had illusions of love:
There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgement, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. (Nathaniel Hawthorne 53)
Although this pursuit of pure love violates religious precepts, such a bold personality requirements and man-made social ethics collision is occurring. Hester still looked forward to changing the rules and prohibitions of the constraints in order to make people feel freed. To some extent, the pursuit of love becomes a women's silent protest at that time. Precisely, this kind of love make Hester has the courage to continue to stay in this place which gives her a "disgrace”, so she just bears the "shame" to go through the Cross to face the world.
4.2 Independent-Mind
The scaffold serves as the symbol of patriarchy of basic rule of the Puritan. As Hester walked down the sentence, she will no longer accept her fate, but it has a different traditional thinking and judging criteria. At the time, it should be quite uneasy for women to surport themselves, let alone taking care of kids. Hester is strong and does not seek help from her lover Dimmesdale and her husband, depedending on herselfr --- excellent sewing skills, and found herself between the patriarchy and Puritan society. The exquisite needlework of Hester appeared in a variety of occasions, the Governor's high-crepe collar, military ribbon, priests tie, and these noble and sacred places can show her embroidery. To promote the monotonous life of Puritan New England, works of art in itself is a secular luxury. Hester used the art to destroy the barriers, hierarchy and rules and prohibitions, and lifted the repression of its existence to females, returned her ability and qualifications. Not only did Hester economic independence also achieve intellectual independence. Living in the environment which almost isolated, she was neither haughty nor humble, and showed her graceful, whether in expression, the verbal, psychological, or in the action, not any behaviors that people dislike, let alone make people submit. Because of the strength of her spirit, as well as an independent pursuit of life supports, Hester from beginning to end, remained stay in that piece of land which had brought her hurt and humiliation. If there was no strong and independent self, there was no desire for a new life and the pursuit of pure love, Hester could not bear the humiliation of the scarlet letter, in the people's contempt and indifference, in so difficult environment to survive. This is her strength of self-expression, which is a sign of the awakening of women's self-consciousness. When you see Dimmesdale can’t get rid of deep-rooted Puritan tradition and the spirit will near-collapse in the heart of the torment, Hester put forward a bold plan to escape, to persuade Dimmesdale break free of the shackles of tradition, and with her toward the freedom of heaven and earth. This reflects the distillation of Hester feminist consciousness: to take the initiative to fight back the suppression of depriving and social authority of the Church for her happiness, to the elimination of patriarchal binary opposition between men and women, based on the new changes in men and women.
4.3 The Love of Family