1. Much of her suffering comes from her worldly prejudices
One evening in late May, Tess's father, John Debbei, met the village priest on the road, who had sworn that he had recently discovered a big news item while sorting out the local chronicles: it turned out that John Debbei was a direct descendant of the famous Mendebe family. This is good, the poor John is happy, they even have such expensive relatives! He went home and told his wife about the happy event. However, I never expected that what awaited them was a series of mistakes.
That night, to celebrate this "happy event", John was very drunk. So Tess had to take the place of her father and drive the beehive to the market in a carriage at 1:30 a.m. However, their old horse had an accident and was hit and killed on the road by a mail truck. Under Victorian law, accidental fault was not responsible. The horses were gone, the family's trafficking business collapsed, and the Tess family was immediately in trouble.
At this moment, the parents thought of their noble relatives: Isn't there a rich Mrs. Deb in the nearby village? So they persuaded Tess to hurry up and confess her family to Mrs. Deb. Tess is an obedient child in the eyes of her parents, and she reluctantly goes to help the family out of trouble. However, she did not meet Mrs. Döb, but her son, Eric Döb. Eric immediately fell in love with Tess, and under his step-by-step coaxing, Tess eventually lost her virgin body in a dense forest.
When this happened, one way to do both was to marry this rich young master. But Tess would rather let others gossip than go against her heart, and she went home. It was a simple decision, she had never liked Eric, and now she was even more disgusted, so she didn't want to marry Eric, it was as simple as that.
However, the news of Tess's return soon spread throughout the village. From then on, everywhere Tess went, she felt that others were pointing at her, especially when she went to church to worship. This was the beginning of Tess's pain, and the beginning of her growth. Almost overnight, she became a much more mature woman than her peers, because in addition to suffering gossip, she had to torture herself and ponder a serious moral question: Having lost her virginity, in the eyes of others—and more importantly, in the eyes of God, had she sinned, had she been "pure"? Once virginity is lost, is it really lost forever?
Gradually, Tess stopped going out, and as time went on, almost everyone thought she was gone. At that time, Tess's only active time was when it was dark, walking alone in the mountains and forests. Only when she was in the forest did she not feel lonely, and the pain of life was not so intense. His only thought was to avoid humanity, the group known as the "human world."
As she walked, "sometimes she had a sudden whimsy, and she felt that the natural programs around her were emotional, as if they had become part of her personal life." It may be more appropriate to say this, because the world is nothing more than a psychological phenomenon, and it looks like it is how it is. The cool air and cold wind in the middle of the night, lamenting between the tightly wrapped shoots and bark of the branches in winter, were harsh condemnations of her, and the wet rain became an irreparable sorrow for her weakness. Whether it came from some vague moral deity, the God she believed in as a child, she could not be sure, but it was impossible to see it as something else. ”
A vague moral deity is nothing more than something created by the sum of the moral values of others, something that is not equal to truth. Tess also had a vague sense that someone else's God was not equal to her God. She found her surroundings full of "tattered stereotypes" and a bunch of chilling "moral goblins."
Tess was still pure in heart, not only did not hate the child born, but also carefully baptized the child before he died. In Hardy's view, the lost Tess is still a pure, natural woman. She thought she was out of place with everything, in fact very harmonious with everything.
It is clear that Hardy is contemptuous of secular morality, and while he despises secular morality, he also gives Tess a deeper sympathy, because the worldly prejudices that Tess has been exposed to from childhood to adulthood are a painful bondage for her. Because Tess should have understood, "That made her dare not look up and be a person, thinking that the world was staring at her thoughts, but it was actually just an illusion." No one saw her as being, experience, passion, or flesh-and-blood body. For all of humanity, Tess is nothing more than a fleeting thought. ”
If she had lived a very miserable life all her life, people would have said nothing more than — "Ah, she begged for food!" If she wants to live happily, to come out of the worry of losing herself, to enjoy the light, flowers, even the family, the children, people can only say a word - "Ah, she has a nurture" or if she lives alone on a desert island, will she still be troubled by what happened to her? Not necessarily. If she were born to find herself going to be a single mother without a husband, would she still feel hopeless? No. She will only accept it all calmly and find joy in it.
Therefore, her pain is mostly from her worldly prejudices, not from her innate feelings.
2. Blind goddess of destiny, fairytale love
In Greek mythology, the three goddesses of destiny are often depicted as three somewhat vicious women, while in some Western paintings, the goddess of destiny is simply painted as a blind goddess. So, in Tess's story, we see a series of terrible accidents. First Tess's origin, then the accidental death of the old horse, then the farce of recognizing relatives, the encounter with eric who is plotting, and even the encounter with Angel again at the dairy farm.
Falling in love with Angel at the dairy farm is undoubtedly the happiest memory of Tess's life.
If Eric is the devil in the book, Angel is an angelic character in the beginning — even angelic names mean "angel." He was intellectual, gentle and romantic, and more importantly, he soothed Tess's restless heart.
Once, Tess heard Angel's melancholy piano, and they talked about the misfortunes of life. Then Tess said to him, "I seem to see so many tomorrows lined up in a row, the biggest and clearest on the first day, and the rest getting smaller and smaller because they stand too far." But they're all fierce, very cruel, as if they're all saying, 'Here I come!' Watch out! Watch out! But you, sir, can summon good dreams with the sound of your piano and drive away all these terrible hallucinations! ”
Tess adored Angel with all her heart. The priest's son saved Tess from the darkness of life, and Tess had never felt so happy. In the season of vigorous green leaves, they also subconsciously explore each other, and both sides are suppressing a passion, obviously refusing to let it burst out. But the passion of both sides is governed by an irresistible law, like two streams running in the same canyon, always wanting to merge in one place.
Tess and Angel were the first to rise on the dairy farm, perhaps not entirely by accident. Tess got up and went out immediately, while Angel was always waiting for her. The morning light that pervaded the empty meadow was gray and bleak, half light and half dark, full of fog, giving them the impression of isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve. In this hazy moment at the beginning of the day, Tess looks solemn and superior in Angel's eyes from character to image, and has royal style, which makes him fall for it. At this moment when there was no one there, they walked together to the place where the cattle had spent the night.
However, the sweet love that the goddess of fate arranged for Tess was in sharp contrast to her final tragic end. The better the love, the more tragic her final ending.
At that time, Tess had been looking for an opportunity to explain her past to Angel, but an inferior idea that was not worthy of Angel slowed her down, and Angel was immersed in the excitement of love, and did not care about what Tess wanted to show until their wedding night.
That night, they poured out each other's secrets. Angel confessed first that he had messed with a woman, and poor Tess immediately forgave him. She sat down and spoke hopefully about her and Eric Deb's past. At that time, the hands of the two were still clasped together, and the ashes under the stove were illuminated by the fire above, like a scorching wilderness. The red light emitted by the charcoal fire was like the judgment of the last day. The terrible light shone on Angel's face and hands, and also on Tess's face and hands, into her hair scattered around her forehead, and on the delicate skin under her red hair. Tess rested her head on Angel's temple and began to talk about the back and forth of her acquaintance with Eric. She lowered her eyelids and spoke timidly and without fear.
But when she finished, Angel suddenly burst into a terrible burst of laughter as if she had been deceived. He had no sympathy or even forgiveness for what Tess had gone through. In his eyes, Tess had become a liar, a slut in disguise. He abandoned Tess and left.
Angel was not a perfect angel, as his name suggested. Born into a family of priests, he had a deep-seated prejudice against chastity. Perhaps the process of love is too beautiful, and the upheaval on the wedding night is particularly shocking. Angel's sarcasm for Tess, and the damage caused to Tess by his departure, surpassed all the previous rumors. Tess had a hard time rekindling hope in love, but unexpectedly fell from heaven into hell. This time, her pain was even greater than before.
Tragedy, Lu Xun said, is "destroying what is valuable in life for people to see." Tess is a tragedy. It shows us a lot of beautiful things: Tess's feminine beauty, her sincerity and kindness, her hope for life, her love for Angel... But they didn't end well. What we see at the end of the novel is Tess's fall and death.
Tess is hanged, and the novel ends in a tragic atmosphere. Hardy's Tess, which combines the most beautiful parts of human nature, is "a typical condensation of the essence of all women." Yes, at the mercy of worldly morality and fate, Tess leads to the tragedy of destruction, but Hardy hints to us that she was a pure and immaculate woman from beginning to end.
Edited | Liangshan
Typography | Liangshan
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