西方文化(英文)

The symbolism of the natural images in Tess of the d’Urbervilles Abstract: In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy uses a lot of natural images and symbolism, which exaggerates the atmosphere of tragedy, profoundly portrays the personalities of the characters and their inner world, sets off the themes of the destiny by contrast. The paper described the definition of image and its symbolism. And it interpreted how Hardy manifested Tess’s tragic destiny more distinctly and vividly by means of using di fferent images.

Key words: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, natural images, symbolism

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorchester Dorset of southwest England, a small village where once a British ancient Wiessee Alex founded the kingdom. Hardy named many of his novels a s “Wiessee Fox novel”. In Hardy’s novels, the nature of Wiessee Fox has a vitality. Nature and characters inosculate as a whole. Nature reflects the characters’ appearance and spirituality, symbolizes the spirit of the character as well as the ideological content of the character. “Hardy’s masterpiece, Tess of the d’Urbervilles took Wiessee Fox as the background.”[1] Therefore, In this novel, he uses the more subtle but rich symbolic images to show the deep meaning of tne novel, to reveal the theme of the n ovel, and to arouse the reader’s emotions. The next paper will select three types of natural images and its symbolism appeared in high frequency to analyze Tess’s tragic fate..

一、the red image

Red image in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" appeared frequently, as a representative image of the whole novel, which shocks the bottom of the reader's hearts strongly and plays an important role in shaping Tess’s tragic image. At Beginning of the novel, Tess and his brother Abraham drove the horse "Prince" that her family earned a living on to market to sell cellular. On a dark road at night, The postal car drove into her horse. Suddenly, "blood was pouring out from the wound, falling on the ground with the hissing sound. Tess used hands to cover the wound, but the result was " from head to toe, she was yet red with blood. It is precisely because Prince’s death, Tess was forced to go to Urbervilles to work with guilty in order to make up her faulty and support the family. Eventually Alec had the chance to tarnish Tess, resulting in Tess's tragedy. When Tess was forced to get close to Alec, his two thick lips were red and smooth; when he went to the garden with Tess, he kept feeding Tess with the red strawberry and putting red roses on Tess's body. Here are a series of images: Alex's red lips, red strawberries in the garden, red roses on

Tess’s body . "Red, in the tradition of Western literary, is often used to symbolize sexual passion. The purpose of a series of images that author here uses is to symbolizes the nightmare that is about to befall Tess -- Alex's sexual passions." [2] At the end of the novel, when a weak who suffered tremendously called up all her courage to fight against the evil community at the last, inserting the knife into the evil’s chest, the author puts this scene in front of us: little red points she (the landlady) had never have seen appeared on the white ceiling] Soon, the biscuit-sized dots changed into palm-sized dots," and the dots were red. The white rectangular ceiling was stuffed with a pool of red dots, which looked just like a gigantic heart A. Here the red image implies that the murder occurred, and indicates a life comes to an end. the prison where Tess was hanged in is a red brick building --- a red house become s a symbol of Tess’death. In the use of the red images to symbolize Tess’s tragic fate, Hardy gives the red images special meanings to shape the heroine's personality, behavior and tragic fate.

二、the image of bird

Animal is Hardy's favorite image used in the novel, and he seems to be fond of birds. The image of bird is permeated from beginning to end in the whole novel. Hardy thinks that everyone is like living on the world stage, even thoung they don’t play the same role, they are all caged birds, no one can escape from the arragement of their fate. In In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the image of bird always has a close relationship with the heroine’ fate. When Tess ran into the troubles at the critical moment, the birds mostly had an indifferent attitude towards Tess’s suffering, indifferent to her fate; "When Tess was raped by Alex in the dark woods, gentle birds perched on a tree with playing the last nap. birds in here aymbolze the innocent and helpless image, symbolizes Tess's innocent virginity. From then on, her fate was completely changed. "[3] When Tess was a young lady ,she suffered from numerous miseries. she has known that "where there are birds singing, there are snakes hissing." "Unfortunately, Tess, like a solitary bird, her fate seems to be doomed to a tragedy without suspense." [4] "At the end of the novel, Tess failed to restrain her anger to kill Alex with all her strength, bravely appealed and challenged to the hypocritical capitalism. she was once compared to bird dropped into the network, compared to a sparrow to be killed "[3] which proves Hardy's point of view: Tess can not avoid becoming a victim of being punished, But we must question why all the pain are imposed on Tess? Thomas Hardy adds the special meaning to the symbol of the image of bird, or rather, the image of bird

symbolizes Tess’s tragic fate actually.

三、the image of sun

the image of sun is also permeated from beginning to end in this novel. The frequency of using the image of sun in Tess of the d’Urbervilles is unique in compared with Thomas Hardy's other novels. " In the foreign literature, the use of image is prevalent. Hardy also lays emphasis on shaping the image in his many works. some of the recurring images in his novels have a special meaning ."[5]" In Thomas Hardy’s works, the image of sunset is often used to express the hardship, a reflection of death and so on. Using them to symbolize Tess's sadness and unforture."[6] In the first chapter, Hardy describes that the" Durbeyfield lay on the daisies in the afternoon waiting for the sunset ", and his family was a declining aristocracy, whose fate was always unpredictable. Here the image of sunset indicates the tragic fate of the whole family. After suffering from Alex’s seduction, Tess frustrated and secretly left the Alex home on a morning. On the way, "although the sun just left the summit, the light was neither warm nor strong and looked dazzling. The sun did not make people feel warm; when Angel temporarily left the dairy farm, Tess and her three companions, "think that the morning sun suddenly overshadowed, and the singing of birds became low; When Tess first refused to marry with Angel, her heart is very painful. Then, the sun ... ... like a huge blast furnace; Tess was in the execution of the day, Angel and Tess's sister Liza Lu were involved in a abnormal grief. Then," the sun smiled without any mercy to them, and looked their sad walking posture. Thus it can be seen, in Thomas Hardy’s works, the purpose of using the image of sun is to symbolze Tess’s terrible situation and the complex inner thoughts.

四、Conclusion

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles，Hardy not merely perfects the tradition of British realist novel, but puts different writing styles together. Especially the extensive use of nature images, rendering the tragic atmosphere of the novel, vividly depicting the character's personality and the inner world, expressing the theme of fate, strongly criticizing the hypocritical moral values and religion of capitalist society. Meanwhile , the extensive use of nature images also add the permanent charm to the art of performance of the novel and set off the themes of the destiny by contrast. In addition to three images: color, bird, sun, there are lots of natural images in Tess of the d’Urbervilles as many as the mines buried under the ground, which needs to be further explored. By means of analyzing

these natural images and symbolism will contribute to understand how Hardy manifested Tess’s tragic destiny more distinctly and vividly and grasp he deep meaning of tne novel.

References

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