An Analysis of Tess’s Tragedy from a Psychological Perspective
资料包括： 论文(19页5577字)
说明：
Abstract：In this thesis, the tragedy of Tess, the heroine in Hardy’s Tess of The D’Urbervilles, has been analyzed from a psychological perspective, which is made possible largely due to Hardy’s special narrative. Hardy has devised a progress of Tess’s maturation, which manifests not only physically but also mentally. Observing such a progress helps to shed light upon Tess’s tragic fate from a psychoanalytical perspective, in which way the whole story can be seen as a trajectory of Tess’s constructing her gendered identity. As a transitional literary figure between Victorian and modern times, though unable to frame those psychological issues as they are demonstration by later 20th century theorists, Hardy has demonstrated in his literary works an awareness that they are significant matters worth concerning.. Presenting the splitting and suffering quo of Tess, Thomas Hardy not only observed the affliction of females in Victorian society but also attempted to examine the real source for it. Hardy’s depiction of Tess’s tragic fate, there lays a genuine sympathy and understanding, and thus there might also be a call uttered by the writer for people’s more awareness of the nature of Tess’s tragedy, in the wake of which a radical social change may usher in.
Keywords: Tess; tragedy; sexual seduction; spiritual abstraction;
An Analysis of Tess’s Tragedy from a Psychological Perspective
Outline
Thesis statement: the tragedy of Tess, the heroine in Hardy’s Tess of The D’Urbervilles and Tess’s psychological trajectory of becoming a woman have been analyzed from a psychological perspective in detail
Ⅰ.Introduction
A. Background
Virginia Woolf once claimed in her book The Second Common Reader: “When we say that the death of Thomas Hardy leaves English fiction without a leader, we mean that there is no other writer whose would be generally accepted” 1. Woolf’s comment on Hardy is more than a compliment. He deserves to be considered supreme as a transitional literary figure between “Victorian” and “Modern”. Adding to his high-honored fame for creative literary practice, Thomas Hardy is a highly productive writer as well. He has produced fourteen Wessex novels, more than forty short stories and numerous poems. Hardy both started and ended his literary career by writing poetry which was his favorite means of expression, but in the interval he had to turn to novels for a livelihood. Tess of The D’Urbervilles, from the day of its being published has been one of the two most controversial novels of Hardy (The other one is Jude the obscure). During the latest thirty years, its richest, complex textual and narrative signification brings a great number of feminist critical readings unfolded from a psychoanalytic perspective.
Ⅰ.Introduction background:
A. Background: Thomas Hardy’s reputation
B. Purpose of the paper
1. Feminist critical readings unfolded from a psychoanalytic perspective.
2. In detail Tess’s psychological process of becoming a woman.
Ⅱ. Hardy’s Narrative Strategy and a Real Tess
A.Hardy’s impressionistic way of statement Tess’s story
B.The character of Tess in Hardy’s description
Ⅲ.The Seduction of Tess
A. Tess is not a passive victim
B. Tess’s moral intensification proceeds little
Ⅳ. The Sublimation of Tess
A. Angel’s love for Tess and Tess’s love for Angel
B. Tess’s losing bodily purity makes her unaccepted in the Victorian times
Ⅴ. Fulfillment：
Tess tries to get the forgiveness form Angel by killing Alec and ask Angel to marry her sister, Ulf Liza Lu
Ⅵ. Conclusion：
Tess assumes the role as a trope
参考文献：
1Virginia Woolf, The Second Common Reader, New York: A Harvest Book. Harcourt Inc., 1986, p245. H. M. Daleski, Thomas Hardy and Paradoxes of Love, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1997, p5. 1
2H. M. Daleski, Thomas Hardy and Paradoxes of Love, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1997, p9. Kaja Silverman, “History, Figuration and Female Subjectivity in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” in Novel 18,pp5-28. 2
3Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, E. M. Parshley, trans, New York: Vintage, 1973, p301. Linda M. Shires, “The Radical Aesthetic of Tess of the D’urbervilles” in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy, Dale Kramer, ed., 上海：上海外语教育出版社, 2000, p151. 8
4 5Linda M. Shires, “The Radical Aesthetic of Tess of the D’urbervilles” in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy, Dale Kramer, ed., 上海：上海外语教育出版社, 2000, p149. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, New York: Airmont Publishing Company, Inc., 1990, p53.
6 7 8 Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, New York: Airmont Publishing Company, Inc., 1990, p53.
作者点评：
In this thesis I have argued that with the help of Hardy’s impressionistic narrative strategy, a psychoanalytic interpretation of Tess’s progress toward becoming a woman can be fulfilled. After the above four chapters’ analysis, it becomes evident that a Tess with individuality is presented in front of us: on the one hand she follows where instinctual drive leads her; on the other she experiences a progress that Foucault defines “subjectivation” in which Tess cannot help attaching deliberately to the symbolic order in the form of patriarchal law to which she subjects herself trading for a gendered identity. In Tess’s case, she has lost her bodily purity before marriage and thus according to the Victorian norm for woman she is not chaste. Since chastity and other connotations of the term “woman” are the devices facilitated by patriarchal society to strengthen the boundary for woman category, it gets both ridiculous and paradoxical to call Tess a chaste woman. However, through Tess’s loss-gain-loss personal history, the essence of becoming a woman can be revealed: denial of sexual instinct and abstracting the innate multiplicity in accordance with patriarchal injunctions are the prerequisites for labeling woman identity. Looking at Tess from this point of view, we can conclude that Tess assumes the role as a trope. Her tragedy is no longer a story of a particular female individual but rather a collective gender in dilemma of loss and gain rendered by their inevitable subjection process. The contribution made by Thomas Hardy both in presenting a true but mostly hidden human existence. Meantime, Hardy as well created and practiced a new way for narrative, which was inspired by the nineteenth-century impressionism