摘 要

《德伯家的苔丝》是维多利亚时代英国悲剧的代表作之一，以悲剧性的情节和人物形象而著称。过往的许多学者倾向于从人物性格和社会背景的角度来探讨苔丝悲剧人生的成因。尼采曾提出现代哲学和美学的一个重要理论：悲剧诞生于日神精神与酒神精神的相互作用，他的观点在当代西方文学批评中被广泛应用。然而，不少探讨《德伯家的苔丝》这部经典之作中所含悲剧元素的文章却很少运用到尼采的悲剧美学。这部小说中出现了一些关于阿波罗和狄奥尼索斯的象征，为悲剧的结局提供了线索。日神精神和酒神精神渗透于字里行间，对小说环境和人物的个性塑造发挥了至关重要的作用。因此，本文将结合尼采哲学中有关悲剧的理论来解读哈代这一经典之作，为该小说的研究提供新视角。

本文分为六部分。第一部分介绍托马斯哈代的写作特点、小说的时代背景、小说的主要情节以及有关该小说的研究现状。接着，第二部分介绍本文分析所运用到的理论基础，即尼采提出的以日神精神和酒神精神为核心的悲剧美学。而后，第三、四部分分析小说中日神精神和酒神精神在环境描写、场景设定和小说人物性格中的体现。进而第五部分分析日神精神与酒神精神的相互作用，两者对苔丝爱情及其悲剧结局产生的影响，得出尼采的悲剧美学与《德伯家的苔丝》的悲剧内核具有共通之处的结论。

关键词：《德伯家的苔丝》；悲剧；日神精神；酒神精神

Abstract

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, one of the representative British tragedies of the Victorian era, is well-known for its tragic plot and characters. Many scholars tend to focus on the cause of Tess’s tragic life from the perspectives of the personality of the characters and the social background. The interaction of Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit proposed by Nietzsche is an influential theory of modern philosophy and aesthetics and it is widely applied to the western literary criticism nowadays. However, the articles that deal with the tragic elements of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a literary classic hardly mention Nietzsche’s tragedy aesthetics. Some symbols of Apollo and Dionysus appeared in the novel, providing some clues of the tragic ending. The Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit infiltrate in lines, playing a vital role in the fictional environment and affecting the personality of characters. Thus, this essay provides a new angle to understand the masterwork of Hardy with Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas about tragedy.

This paper consists of six parts. The first part presents the writing features of Thomas Hardy，the background of the novel, the main plots and the research status of the novel. Then, the second part introduces the theoretical basis of the novel analysis: Nietzsche's tragic aesthetics with Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit as the core. In the third and the fourth parts, the embodiment of Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit in the environmental description, the setting of scenes and the personalities of characters is analyzed. The fifth part explains the interaction between Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit as well as their affect to the love of Tess and her final destruction. The last part is the conclusion that Nietzsche’s tragic aesthetics shares some common elements with Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Key Words: Tess of the D’Urbervilles; tragedy; Apollonian Spirit; Dionysian Spirit

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Theory Basis: Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit 4

2.1 The tragic aesthetics of Nietzsche 4

2.2 The concept of Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit 4

3 The Fictional Environment that Links to Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit 6

3.1 The Apollonian images in environmental description 6

3.2 The background setting related to Dionysian Spirit 7

4 The Embodiment of Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit in the Characters 9

4.1 Angel: a symbol of Apollonian Spirit 9

4.2 Alec: a symbol of Dionysian Spirit 10

4.3 Tess：a contradiction of Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit 10

5 The Interaction between Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit 13

5.1 The conflict between Tess and Angel 13

5.2 The self-destruction of Tess: the victory of Dionysus 14

6 Conclusion 15

References 16

Acknowledgements 17

A Tragic Glimpse in the Victoria Era—Reinterpretation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles

1 Introduction

Thomas Hardy, considered as a monument of British literature, left some classic works with strong tragic consciousness and won a good reputation overseas. Honored as “the Shakespeare of British fiction”, he finishes 15 novels and 4 short stories all his life. His works form a connecting link between the realism and the modernism, sticking to the traditional principle that fictions reproduce the typical characters within typical surroundings while revealing the alienation and distortion of human along with the social development (Dan, 2016). He exposes the darkness of life, such as poverty, betrayal, degeneration, and corrupted convention. The characters under his description suffer from the inevitably destructive power from community, unable to handle their destiny, so he is also believed to be a naturalist^[1] writer. Created in the late 1800s, his novels always reflect the features of the Victorian era, yet they also transcend the limitation of thought at that period, especially the bias and oppression of female.

The Victorian era when Hardy started his writing, was under the trend of change. With the Second Industrial Revolution, the capitalist economy developed fast. The group of emerging bourgeoisie expanded thanks to the new pattern of production, while the old landlord class and aristocracy decayed. The rising of modern science gradually took up the living space of the theology, so the society was faced with a crisis of faith (Zhang, 2011: 923). However, these new-growing theory was not totally accepted in a short time and the conflict between conservative morality and the ideological emancipation can be found in each field. The change in economy, politics, and culture caused the change in life style of British people. In terms of the transport, cars started to run on the city road owing to the innovation of internal combustion engine and the commodity was possible to send all around the country on the railway. On the other side, the development gap between rural areas and urban areas still existed: most villagers tried to keep their traditional life pace and adhere to the conventional moral standards. Yet, the “civilization” broke into their peaceful world, corroding their simplicity though they lived in an isolated environment that hindered them from the rapid changes to some extent. Thomas Hardy felt upset about that emotionally while rationally he considered it as a necessity of social progress (Liu, 2007). He tended to focus on characters that grew in countryside and exposed the contradiction aroused by modernization.

Tess of the D’urbervilles, his representative masterpiece, caught the spotlight as soon as it came out in 1891, but it was controversial and blamed to be immoral due to heroine’s life experience that was regard to be sordid by the mainstream. Tess Durbeyfield, an innocent country girl living in the village of Marlott, lack of the knowledge about sex and love, has vague sense of danger about indiscreet male. Her virginity is wrested by Alec d’Urberville, a son of the new landlord, after a dancing party and she get pregnant. Unfortunately her baby dies of disease before he can receive the baptism. She falls in love with Angel Clare, a son of priest in the dairy which she works in. At their wedding night, Tess tells her past towards Angel, hoping he can forgive her guilt. However, Angel’s image about Tess breaks into pieces. He cannot accept the fact, abandons Tess and goes to Brazil. Heart- broken Tess comes back to Alec after the death of her father because of poverty. Later, Angel regretfully finds Tess again, wanting to get reconciled with her. Impulsively, Tess kills Alec and rejoins her husband. They begin a journey of escapement, enjoying a short but cheerful time together. Tess is arrested in a morning at the Stonehenge and is hanged finally.

Literary reviewers choose diverse critical approaches to analyze Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Song Luyao(2018) views the novel from the perspectives of psychology in A psychoanalysis of Tess's personality in Tess of the d'Urbervilles delivered in 2018, and applies Freud’s psychoanalysis to explain the personality of Tess in order to explore the cause of her tragedy. Liu Xin(2018) pays attention to the male writer’s dilemma of identifying his gender concealed behind his description of the female character in her article Women's image and men's dilemma in Tess of the d'Urbervilles published in 2018. In terms of the article in a similar topic with mine, On Dionysian spirit in Hardy's Novels——Centering on Tess of the d'Urbervilles written by Chen Zhen published in 2016, analyzes the social environment affected by Dionysian spirit and its influence on the tragedy of Tess, yet its opposite counterpart, Apollonian Spirit is not mentioned. Besides the Dionysian spirit contained in Tess’s personality is overlooked.

The interaction of Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit proposed by Nietzsche is an influential theory of modern philosophy and tragic aesthetics and it is widely applied to the western literary criticism nowadays. However, the articles that deal with the tragic elements of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a literary classic hardly mention Nietzsche’s tragedy aesthetics. Thus, this essay provides a new angle to understand the masterwork analyzing the tragedy.

2 Theory Basis: Apollonian Spirit and Dionysian Spirit

2.1 The tragic aesthetics of Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a Germany philosopher, wrote The Birth of Tragedy in 1870, put forward his own opinion about the spirit basis of Greek tragedy. Nietzsche explains the nature of Greeks and Greek culture based on the pessimistic outlook of Arthur Schopenhauer (Wei, 2017:57). Meanwhile, Nietzsche opposes to Schopenhauer’s view about literary creation in The Birth of Tragedy. Schopenhauer insists the birth of lyrics originate from the process that subjective will controls individuals and separates from them as a result of object’s attraction (Schopenhauer, 1982:346). Nietzsche argues that the origin of arts is the objective force and human are led by that invisible objective will; when a genius becomes one with the objective creator, such as the God, he or she can understand the real meaning of arts (Nietzsche, 2017).