Wen | Ms Grace
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Tess said, "Is chastity a thing that, once lost, lost forever?" If she can cover up the past, she may be able to prove it wrong, that organic nature has the ability to restore itself, and why is virginal virginity alone not? ——Quoted from the novel Tess
"Tess" is a well-known literary work in Europe and the United States, but the book was repeatedly tried and tested before publication. In Victorian Britain, the plot of Tess being deceived and giving birth to an illegitimate child was not allowed to be published publicly, which led to the rejection of the manuscript by several publishers.
Hardy had to compromise and delete this and other slightly sensitive content before Tess was able to meet the reader in 1891 as a weekly serial.
Despite being castrated, Tess was a hit after serialization and was soon published in a single edition, reprinting five times in a row within a year.
The context of the times determines the lethality of the traditional concept of chastity to Tess
The subtitle of "Tess" is "A Pure Woman", and "purity" is the author Hardy's definition of the protagonist Tess, and it is also the focus of controversy.
In the social environment at that time, the wife's virginity was regarded as the prerogative of the husband, and the woman's loss of virginity meant uncleanness.
As Hardy says, whether Tess is a pure woman is the most discussed in the book, but no matter how much controversy there is, Hardy always keeps the subtitle.
On the surface, Tess, who lost her virginity and killed people, is indeed not a "pure" woman, and the controversy shows that most people only recognize the superficial meaning of these two words, but Hardy redefines "purity" with the tragedy of Tess's life.
Tess, a 17-year-old peasant girl, is defiled by the rich young master Alex, but her self-esteem makes her reluctant to be Alex's mistress, but Tess is still influenced by traditional concepts of chastity, and she feels guilty, inferior and guilty because of her loss of virginity.
After falling in love with Angel, the collision of these complicated emotions reached its peak in the depths of Tess's heart, Tess at first did not dare to accept Angel's feelings, and after accepting his feelings, her mood was even more contradictory, she despite her mother's objections, wrote a letter to Angel to confess her past, but she stuffed the letter under the carpet in a panic, and Angel did not see it at all.
Tess married Angel with a nervous mood, and on the wedding night, Angel told Tess that he had had 48 hours of indulgence with a woman much older than herself, and the naïve Tess forgave her husband, and at the same time she also confided her secret to Angel, and in Tess's view, they were evenly between them, but angel did not expect Angel to refuse to forgive his wife.
Tess's image of purity is disillusioned in Angel's heart, he is worried about the loss of virginity of his new wife, and Angel does not know how to face this pain, so he chooses to escape, Angel leaves after leaving A sum of living expenses for Tess.
Before leaving, Angel tells Tess that maybe one day he will accept living with her, but ask her not to take the initiative to find him until he comes to her.
After reading Tess, the reader generally has the view that Alex and Angel acted as spokesmen for the traditional view of chastity, one physically plundering and the other mentally squeezing, and they joined forces to send Tess to the gallows of fate.
However, it was not until many years later, after I read "The Kite Chaser", especially a book review written by Mr. Wu Zhihong for this book, that I realized that the factors that contributed to the tragedy of Tess's life were manifold.
Acting as double cannon fodder for love and affection leads Tess to the path of destruction
Wu Zhihong wrote in the book review: "Many people will be moved by the first page of the novel- Hassan never refused me anything. Sounds like what a loyal love. However, when I read this sentence, it was painful, and I hated this sentence and the praise in this sentence for This emotion of Hassan. Because, it reminds me of a word that has been circling in my mind lately—cannon fodder for love. ”
Tess and Hassan are essentially a kind of person, and they both act as cannon fodder in their emotional relationship, but what do Tess and Hassan have in common?
Tess's first identity: cannon fodder for love
First of all, Hassan, he was born a servant, and the physical defects of rabbit lips, the most important thing is that Hassan did not have the opportunity to go to school, he could not read, all of which led to Hassan always being inferior in front of his peer Amir young master, and inferiority led to him becoming a weak party in the emotional relationship, starting from saying "for you, thousands of times" to Amir, Hassan gradually embarked on the road of cannon fodder.
Talking about Tess again, her father is a drunken and grumpy peddler all day, and her mother is a housewife who swallows her breath, although she has amazing beauty, in front of Angel, the priest's son, Tess's mentality of being poor and uneducated is inferior, and after falling in love with Angel, the loss of virginity has aggravated her inferiority, which has led to Tess and Hassan always being on the weak side of the relationship.
The letter that had been mistakenly tucked under the carpet before the wedding showed Tess's nervousness and her desire to get Angel's forgiveness; and after being abandoned by Angel, Tess did hard work without financial resources, and in order not to dishonor Angel's status and reputation, she did not use Claire's husband's surname, but insisted on using her own name; all this showed that in Tess's heart, Angel's importance had exceeded her own.
From the analysis, it can be concluded that Tess and Hassan, based on various factors such as poor births, low social status, and lack of opportunities for a good education, have led to their shallow knowledge, inability to be spiritually self-sufficient, and need to rely on others to survive.
Once the dependency relationship is formed, the weaker party is more eager to maintain the relationship for a long time, but because of their low mental inferiority, they hope to exchange the recognition (love) of others by paying, so as to prove the value of their existence.
However, for the weaker party, as the payment increases, it is usually more and more difficult to grasp the scale, and then gradually become cannon fodder in the emotional relationship, escalating from giving to sacrifice, and finally embarking on the path of sacrifice completely.
Tess's second identity: cannon fodder for affection
The road to cannon fodder is not a day,giving, sacrificing, and then sacrificing, as is Hassan and Tess is no exception.
Hassan only served as cannon fodder in his friendship with Amir, and Tess was more miserable than he was, acting not only as cannon fodder in love relations, but also as cannon fodder in family relationships.
Tess's parents are poor and vain, and when they learn that they may be related to the wealthy D'Urberville family, they plan to let Tess recognize the family, but in fact, the real intention is to improve the economic situation of the whole family through the beauty of their daughter. However, Tess is reluctant to do so, and as the eldest daughter, she is eager to work hard to support her family.
On a dark night, Tess replaces her drunken father and her brother in a carriage to the market to sell the beehives that are about to end of the season, but there is a car accident on the road, which kills the family's old emaciated horse and makes her father no longer in the business of a mobile vendor. Tess confessed to being a sinner in the family, and she followed her parents' wishes and went to D'Urberville's house to confess her relatives.
Mrs. Bird's son Alex was fascinated by Tess when he saw her, and he plucked the strawberries from the garden and fed them to Tess, who was somewhat disgusted by his actions, but for the sake of her family's livelihood, she ate the strawberry anyway, and then accepted Alex's arrangement to work on his family's chicken farm.
Here, strawberries have a metaphorical role, accepting strawberries on behalf of Tess that has since embarked on the road of cannon fodder, but when she first served as cannon fodder for her family, Tess was obviously still a little reluctant.
After being tarnished by Alex, her self-esteem led Tess to leave, and she returned to her hometown and soon gave birth to an illegitimate child. Gossip made it difficult for Tess to gain a foothold, and after the unfortunate death of this poor child, Tess left her hometown to work on a dairy farm, where she met Angel, and then fell in love with and married her.
After the new marriage was forced to separate, Tess could only run to her parents, but Tess was reluctant to tell her family what had happened to her family, and she did not want to stay in the village to suffer more criticism, she gave half of Angel's living expenses to her parents and left her hometown again.
It is not difficult to see from Tess's actions that although she is in a difficult situation, Tess is more concerned about the needs of her family, and with the change of mentality, Tess's road of cannon fodder begins to transition from paying to sacrificing.
Tess kept her husband's empty promise and waited for him to change his mind, but Angel didn't hear anything after sending Tess money once. Unbeknownst to Tess, Angel, who was in Brazil, had a severe fever and nearly died.
Tess receives the money from Angel and a letter from her mother, who thinks she is now living a wealthy life and asks her for money to repair the house and other expenses. Tess sent most of the money she had in her hand to her mother, and when she had spent the last bit of her savings, she had to do the hardest and most tiring work.
Because her beloved has no news, the helpless Tess has to take her family as the last emotional sustenance, but after Tess has helped each other again and again, her family has become more and more greedy, and under their continuous oppression, Tess has completely given up the struggle, starting from paying to sacrificing.
Her father's death became the last straw that crushed Tess, and then the rent expired, the villagers drove the family out of the village, there was no news of Angel, and Tess could not bear to watch her mother and siblings living on the streets, desperate to accept Alex's support.
Tess constantly exchanged her own compromises and concessions for the happiness of her family, from willing to give to the hidden sacrifice to the final selfless sacrifice, completely completing the road of destruction of an emotional cannon fodder.
Why isn't a pure woman happy? Tess's tragedy lies in her purity, the world kisses her with pain, and she always reciprocates with love.
After combing through Tess's life vein, it is not difficult to find that the factors that make her life tragedy come from both social and human aspects, and under the blow of secular prejudice and the double wrapping of love and affection, this woman with a difficult fate eventually becomes a victim and a victim.
It seems to me that Hardy, though writing a downright tragic story in a sharp tone, is still a warm writer, at least he has given Tess love, which is the only bright color in her tragic and short life.
Although Angel is not a completely positive figure, and fully exposes the selfish side of human nature in him, it must be admitted that Angel has always loved Tess, and his pain stems from his love for Tess.
Angel finally figured it out after more than a year, and he found Tess's residence, but by this time Tess had become Alex's mistress, and she had no choice but to reject Angel. However, after Angel left, Tess couldn't help but cry bitterly, alex's constant taunts made her completely lose her mind, and Tess picked up the knife on the table and stabbed him in the heart.
Tess arrives at the train station and catches up with angel, who is about to leave, but instead has no intention of escaping, but instead hides together for six days in an idle house somewhere in the mountains, after which Tess is arrested and hanged.
These six days were the happiest days of Tess's life, she enjoyed the sweetness of love with peace of mind, but also rebelled against the unfair fate, although the happy time was short, but for the first time in Tess's life, she really lived for herself.
Write at the end
After the publication of Tess, Hardy made several adjustments, not only restoring the original deleted content to the original state, but also making repeated changes to the characters, time, events, etc. according to his own changes in thinking, until 1912 (11 years after the first edition was published) until the final draft.
Hardy wrote in the notes for the first edition of Tess— "I need add only one thing: the purpose of writing this book is to be completely sincere, to attempt to represent a series of real events in the form of art. This book is about what everyone now feels and wants to say; and I have to ask those who are too elegant to remember a famous quote of Saint Jerome: 'If the truth offends anyone, let him offend, and the truth cannot be hidden.' ’”
Even today, times are long different, but Tess's story still has a profound cautionary significance, which makes people have to admire the author Hardy's vision beyond the times, it is under his repeated insistence that the essence of the novel can be retained, but also give this masterpiece eternal artistic vitality.
Tess, a pure woman. After reading her life story, I wonder what you understand the word "purity"?
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