"Tess of the D'Urbervilles", a masterpiece published by the British writer Thomas Hardy in 1891, tells the disillusionment of a beautiful girl's love and life. It can be regarded as a youth elegy composed by the author for this pure girl.
Because of this book, Hardy was publicly accused at the time, and critics believed that he was rebellious and desecrated the sacred traditions of Christianity and British society.
But the laborers at the bottom of society were full of gratitude to the author, and many of the poor in the slums, the peasants and the workers, especially the women among them, always held Tess and watched it with tears in their eyes.
More than a hundred years later, the scolding has long disappeared, leaving only praise and praise, and this book has become a classic in the history of English literature.
Let's take a look at what kind of fate this girl named Tess in the book has experienced.
<h1>The unintentionally known noble origin is the beginning of Tess's path to tragedy</h1>
Born in the south of England, Tess, a country girl, is simple and kind, industrious and beautiful, but her family is very poor.
One day, her father, John DeBecfield, a mobile peddler, accidentally learned from the old priest who wrote the local chronicle that her surname, Debecfield, was derived from the once famous knightly family in the local area, Deberfield.
John had heard from his elders that his ancestors had had a very good day, and that there was still an ancestral silver spoon in his home and an ancient seal engraved with a lion motif.
These things prove that he is indeed a descendant of the Deb family with noble blood.
John was originally lazy and slack, and from then on, he felt that being a hawker was insulting to the noble dignity of the family's ancestors, and he was unwilling to make a living and support a large number of children in the family.
The Debei couple thought of their kind and beautiful eldest daughter Tess, and planned to let her go to the nearby rich Mrs. Deb's house to confess, perhaps to get the favor of the rich family and bring some benefits to their family. Maybe even, through her, A good family affair for her daughter.
However, the self-respecting Tess is unwilling, preferring to use hard work to maintain the family's life.
On a dark night, Tess replaces her drunken father and her brother in a carriage to the market, selling beehives that will soon be out of season.
No, 16-year-old Tess and eleven-and-a-half-year-old brother both fell asleep in the uniform shaking of the car, the horse lamp hanging on the car was accidentally lost, and the unmanned carriage drove into the opposite lane, colliding with the speeding mail truck.
The car accident took the life of the family's only possession, the skinny old horse. My father had no way to engage in the business of itinerant hawkers.
<h1>Because of his lazy and vain parents, the little sheep personally sent himself into the tiger's mouth</h1>
Tess felt that she had become a sinner in the family, so she had to go to Mrs. D'Urberville's house to confess her relatives as her parents thought.
The rich man named Debo is not actually a true descendant of the Deb family, but an upstart who has moved from out of town and becomes an imposter. The man is dead, leaving only the blind old lady and a wandering son, Aare Debo.
As soon as young master Ya Lei saw Tess, he was fascinated by her beauty.
He plucked strawberries from the garden and tried to feed them to her, and put roses on her hat and placket. These actions disgust Tess, but in order to complete the family's mission, it is not good.
Yarey conceals Tess's confession from his mother, Mrs. Debord, and arranges for Tess to work on his chicken farm.
One day, after going to the market, Tess and the local female workers went back together. By the time they finished dancing in town, it was already night, and on the way back, the beautiful and gentle Tess was attacked by a pair of fierce sisters.
At this time, Yare came on horseback and pulled Tess on his horse, and the girls knew Yare's notoriety, and when they saw Tess being taken away by him, some were full of sympathy and some were happy.
Along the way, Yare only cared to admire the figure of Tess in the moonlight, allowing the horse to walk aimlessly into a deep forest.
Tess insisted on going back, but in the misty forest they were disoriented.
Yare soothed Tess and picked up a pile of leaves for her to lie down and rest. He took off his clothes to keep Tess warm, and told her that he had given her father a horse and bought gifts for her younger siblings.
Tess was embarrassed by this, she knew that Yare did this because she liked herself, but she knew that she didn't love Yarey.
Exhausted, she fell asleep with mixed feelings and tears on her eyelashes.
Aare tied his horse to a tree and hiked around on his own. When he returned, in the darkness, he was tripped by his clothes draped over Tess.
He leaned down, listened to the breathing of the sleeping girl, and repeatedly asked Tess for closeness, but he was always rejected, this time without controlling himself, and the ignorant Tess lost her virginity.
Tess was pained and ashamed of this, and at dawn she quietly left the chicken farm, and Yarey drove to the mouth of her village to save her, so that she could write a letter when she encountered difficulties, and he would definitely meet her requirements.
Although he had a slippery tongue and did not mean to marry Tess, he was really willing to care about her and be good to her.
A few months later, Tess gave birth to a baby.
One day, she was working in a wheat field, and her little brothers and sisters carried the baby to breastfeed her. That night, the child developed a high fever, because there was no money to buy medicine for treatment, and the child unfortunately died.
Tess is heartbroken, and she vows never to marry for life, and she does not want to stay in her sad hometown.
<h1>Met love, but was ruthlessly betrayed</h1>
Introduced by her mother's friend, Tess went to a dairy farm dozens of miles away to work as a milking lady.
There, he fell in love with the priest's son, Angie Claire, who had made a trip to the dairy farm to learn cattle breeding.
But thinking of that unbearable past, and the vow she had made for life not to marry, she did not dare to face Angie's love.
In fact, before she lost herself to Yare, she and Angie had a relationship and had feelings for him if they were nothing.
It was the day his father learned of the family's lineage, and they were celebrating the harvest goddess in the village, and Angie passed by with her father and brothers, and on a whim, went into the girl's pile and invited a girl to dance.
But he did not invite Tess, who thought that might be a bad omen between them.
She escapes Angie's tenderness and strongly recommends three other milking girls who all like him.
But Angie only loved her and pursued her persistently; she finally could not hide her feelings and agreed to his marriage proposal.
In the process, she tried to confess the past to Angie countless times, but she was either distracted by him, or she did not have the courage to speak out.
On the night before the wedding, she wrote those words into a letter and shoved them under the door into Angie's room. The next day, Angie happily went to church with her to sign a marriage contract and held a wedding ceremony.
She suspected that Angie hadn't seen her letter and quietly ran to his room to look at it, and sure enough, because she was too nervous, the letter was tucked under the carpet.
She thought, maybe this is providence, and if that's the case, then she will follow her mother's instructions and never mention those past events to her husband.
But unexpectedly, the girls in the dairy farm who loved Angie deeply, watched her and Angie leave, one ran away, one threw herself into the water and was rescued, and one drank heavily.
Tess was deeply disturbed by the news, and she felt that her love for Angie was far less pure and deep than that of the other girls. She was tangled again.
Angie learns that Tess is a descendant of the D'Urberville family, and deliberately rents the new house in an old house that once belonged to the D'Urberville family, but inside, two portraits of female ancestors with fierce faces and cursed faces make Tess deeply uneasy.
On the wedding night, Angie was the first to admit that he had had a carnival experience with a woman who was many years older than him. Tess was delighted to hear that, and she thought that this would level it out and Thatkey would be able to forgive her for that experience.
Unexpectedly, when she said it, Angie broke down, and he couldn't accept such a reality at all. Because Tess's greatest charm that attracts him is purity.
Angie was in so much pain that he did not touch the carefully prepared glass of wine, nor did he go to the marriage bed where Tess was. But after falling asleep, he sleepwalked sadly with Tess in his arms, saying words of love to her.
Tess was sad and ashamed, and it hurt Angie even more.
The two men carefully passed through four days, and both felt depressed, awkward, and miserable. They decided to temporarily separate.
Angie sends Tess to her mother's village and tells her that maybe one day he will accept living with her, but until he comes to her, ask her not to take the initiative to find him.
He gave her a small amount of living expenses and told her that if she needed money or other help, she could go to the priest's mansion to find her parents.
Tess's parents are surprised by the return of their newlywed daughter, but Tess is reluctant to tell her family what happened to her family or to be criticized in the village.
She gave half the money to her parents and left home again.
<h1>In order to support her mother and siblings, she once again betrayed herself</h1>
At first, she was reluctant to look for humble jobs, for fear of insulting her husband's status as a superior person.
In pain and confusion, Angie went to the north to investigate the agricultural site without success, and accidentally saw an advertisement recommending people to carry out colonial agriculture in Brazil, so he planned to visit Brazil.
Before leaving, he happened to meet Itz, the girl who had thrown water for him, and thinking of Tess's loss of virginity, he invited Itz to go to Brazil with him on impulse.
Izzy was overjoyed and agreed to him, but during the conversation, she inadvertently revealed that Tess was the one who loved Angie the most. Shocked, Angie apologized to Itz and went alone to distant Brazil.
He got a severe fever there and nearly died. After sending Tess money once, he never heard from her again.
Tess receives money from him, as well as a letter from her mother, who thinks she is living the life of a rich lady and asks her for money to repair the house and some vanity expenses.
Tess sent most of the money to her mother. When she had spent her last dollar, there was no way but to do the hardest and most tiring work.
To protect Angie's reputation, she did not use Mrs. Claire's title, but her own.
Letty, the girl who had learned to drink, learned of Tess's situation and wrote to invite her to work with her where she worked.
In the alpine mountains, they help people pluck turnips in the ice and snow, pull them out of the dirt, and repair the dirt and ice slag on the roots of the radish. They slept on straw-paved floors at night, and there was very little food.
From Letty's mouth, Tess learns that Angie once wanted to take Izz to Brazil, and she is very sad, thinking that Angie does not love herself at all. So I wrote to him again and again, and then I tore it off again and again.
As the years passed, life became more and more bitter, but her self-esteem and stubbornness never allowed her to go to her in-laws for help.
At a very difficult time, once she once walked a mountain road for a day and found the priest's mansion, wanting to inquire about Angie.
But because she could only go out on Sundays, the priests were preaching in the church when she arrived. She was waiting outside the priest's mansion when she overheard Angie's two brothers saying something that looked down on her, and she left in a daze.
On her way back to work, she stumbled upon Aare, who was preaching.
It turned out that Angie's father had preached to the lost Yare many times, and had been humiliated and even beaten by him for this. But eventually, his kindness and dedication inspired Yare, who repented of his previous actions and began to preach, intending to sell his family property and become a priest in Africa.
But after meeting Tess, her beauty aroused all his love desires, and he gave up the sermon and pestered her like a shadow, proposing to her.
With the arduous labor on one side and the bitter entanglement of Yare on the other, Tess finally wrote a heartfelt letter calling on Angie to come back and rescue her.
However, before Angie could reply, Tess waited for her sister late one night, and she told her sister that her parents were sick and that her mother was dying.
Tess rushed home overnight, taking good care of her parents, her mother slowly getting better, but her father died soon after.
Their family, the father was lazy, the mother was vain, the eldest daughter had a bad reputation, the younger children rarely went to church to pray, and the villagers did not want them to bring bad customs, and drove them out of the village when the rent was due.
Tess and her mother left the village with a cart of tattered furniture and a large pile of young siblings, penniless and displaced, and Angie was still not heard from.
At this time, Tess's female companions, the two girls who also loved Angie, who had thrown water and learned to drink heavily, were very sympathetic to Tess, and they wrote to Angie together, telling him about Tess's situation and asking him to come back to her as soon as possible.
Despite Tess's strong rejection of Yare again and again, he chased her all the time, with a moment of good words and sneers, and he repeatedly told her that Angie would never come back, and asked her to give up waiting.
Angie still hasn't heard from her. In the end, the desperate Tess, unable to bear to watch her mother and younger siblings living on the streets, finally compromised and accepted Yare's adoption.
Yare settled her mother's house, sent her younger siblings to school, and took her to live in another city.
<h1>Angie's sudden appearance causes Tess to lose her mind, and she kills Yare and ruins her future</h1>
But it didn't take long for Angie to find her rented apartment. Tess came downstairs to meet him, and she looked even more beautiful in her gorgeous and fashionable clothes.
The gaunt and thin Angie tells Tess that he still loves her, and he receives letters from her and her female companions and rushes back to find her.
Tess still loved Angie deeply, but she felt that she was even less worthy of him, and she just cried and told him that it was too late, too late.
Angie left disappointed.
Yare saw Tess crying and went back and began to taunt her again, saying bad things about Angie.
Tess hated him, hated him for taking away her virginity and letting her lose Angie for the first time. Hates his entanglement and deception, causing her to lose Angie once again.
Hatred and madness made Tess lose her mind, and she picked up the knife from the table and stabbed Yare's heart.
Then she dressed up, put on a veil and a parasol, and went out the door to look for Angie.
She catches up with Angie near the station and calmly tells him that she killed Yare and that he will never be able to influence them again.
Angie was shocked by the violent blood of her Döber family, but the thought of her being his wife who had abandoned her for many years and looking at her infinite trust and dependence on herself, his heart surged with infinite love and tenderness.
Together they fled into the mountains and spent the happiest five days of their lives in an unused house.
On the last night, they left the house and fled inland, and Angie thought that those who pursued them would probably only go to the coastal ports to look for them.
In the darkness, they walked to the forest of stone pillars of an ancient temple and rested on the stones.
Angie knew that there were wilderness all around, and they were easy to spot, but Tess said that she couldn't walk, she knew she couldn't escape, and she and Angie had the happiness of these few days, and she was already content.
Exhausted, they fell asleep in the dark.
When the sun rose, Angie woke up first, and he saw the sixteen men who were pursuing them, slowly gathering around them.
He tried to resist, but found it useless, and begged them not to alarm Tess to sleep and wait for her to wake up on her own.
The sun fell on Tess's face, and she woke up, and she stood up and calmly told the pursuers that it was time to go.
Tess was hanged.
In accordance with Tess's last wishes, Angie took her eldest sister, Lisa Lu.
Tess thought that her sister had both her beauty and purity that she didn't have, and that she could bring anything to Angie the happiness she wanted to give but couldn't give.
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
After reading Tess's story, people can't help but deeply regret that she is such a beautiful woman, beautiful, pure, full of love and responsibility. However, it was these virtues that caused her unfortunate fate.
It is precisely because of her beauty that she has attracted the covetousness and defilement of Yare; it is precisely because of her purity that she cannot hide secrets in her heart and give everything to her husband and discord; it is precisely because of her unrestricted love and responsibility for her family that she betrays herself again and again against the will of her heart, pushing herself into the abyss of tragedy.
Of course, Tess's misfortune, there are deeper reasons, in the 19th century, the Victorian era in Britain, just like the China of that era, virginity is the most important measure of a woman's value, the loss of virginity is more serious than the loss of life.
And Angie, the man who claimed to love Tess deeply, acted as a spokesman for feudal and religious traditions and secular prejudices, and he was gentle and amiable on the surface, but in fact gave Tess the most fatal blow and oppression.
Secondly, the social background at that time was also one of the killers of Tess, because of the rise of capitalism, the rapid decline of the agricultural economy, many peasants went bankrupt, they lost their land and houses, and had to be displaced.
Such an economic foundation is the root cause of Tess's tragedy, the poverty of being a farmer, the laziness of her father, the vanity of her mother, a large number of younger siblings who have to eat and drink, and in the process of constantly sacrificing herself for them, she is also mutilated by Yarey's flesh, and by Anji and the villagers. So, she is more sympathetic.
Although in the end, her identity is that of an "unclean" woman, a murderer, in the reader's mind, she is always beautiful, docile, flexible, and pure.
Beautiful Tess, who ended her young life on the gallows, was "executed" and, in Aeschylus's words, the king of the gods' teasing of Tess was over. ”
Yeah, fate's teasing of this poor girl was over. For her, to stay away from all kinds of prejudice and oppression and discrimination, and to lie in silence forever, perhaps, is a fortunate relief.
【About the author】I am Xiao Cain and like to read books. I am happy to share with you Chinese and foreign masterpieces, celebrity stories and personal insights, if you like my articles, welcome to pay attention to me!
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