论文总字数：29259字

摘 要

托马斯·哈代是英国最著名的小说家之一，他在文学领域创作了许多杰作，探索了人的生存环境和人的性格，以及这两者与人的命运之间的关系。《还乡》是哈代以“性格与环境”为主题的代表性小说之一，也是他悲剧创作的开始。

小说故事发生的场景——爱格敦荒原,以及荒原上固守传统习惯风俗的居民,是整个人类生存环境的缩影。在故事中,无论是克林的回归荒原,改造荒原,还是游苔莎的憎恶荒原,逃离荒原,都反映了哈代那个时代的“现代”青年与环境的剧烈冲突。环境的冷漠和残酷，人物性格间的矛盾和命运的磨难使人物的抗争显得力不从心，最终必将酿成悲剧的结果。而这悲剧性的结果则表明，谁背叛自然谁将会迷失，那么悲剧也将会发生。

 为了探索托马斯·哈代《还乡》中的悲观主义，本文将从不同方面讨论小说中悲观主义的体现，包括环境刻画，人物性格和命运的悲剧。此外，本文还将对托马斯·哈代悲观主义的原因进行分析，这将帮助我们获得更好的理解和思考。最后，本论文将对哈代悲观主义的独特特征作出总结，并讨论其现代意义和含义。

关键词：《还乡》；悲观主义；环境刻画；人物性格；命运的悲剧

1.Introduction

1.1 Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a famous novelist and poet of critical realism who wrote numerous masterpieces at the turn of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in England. His writing career began with poems and ended in poems, but he was well-known for his novels. Harold Bloom (1987) once asserted that he was the last of the great Victorian novelists. In the year of 1910, Hardy had been awarded the Order of Merit.

Thomas Hardy was born in the rural decline of the aristocratic family. He was born and brought up in the southwest of England, named Dorset shire. His father was a stonemason and let him be an apprentice to an architect when he was 16. In the year of 1862, he left his hometown to study architecture in London. Later, he found himself was not interested in architecture and began his creation of literature. Desperate Remedies (1871) was his first novel and then he began his “Wessex novels”. One year later, Under the Greenwood Tree appeared with humor of rusticity. Until 1874, Far from the Madding Crowd was published, he reached huge achievement. In the same year, he married his beloved Emma in London and several years later he returned to his hometown to spend his last life.

Hardy’ s early and medium-term creation is mainly novels, while his later creation becomes poetry, which can be described as unique in the history of British literature. He is a writer who has spanned two centuries. His works have inherited the excellent tradition of British critical realism and opened the way for British literature in the 20th century. Hardy' s work reflects the profound changes in society, economy, politics, morality and customs caused by capitalist invasion of British rural towns and the tragic fate of the people (especially women), exposing the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality, law and religion Sex.

Hardy divided his novels into three categories: romantic and fantasy novels, love and conspiracy novels, character and environment novels (or "Wessex novels"). Because of vivid strokes in-depth discussion of the relationship between people and their living environment, some of his works nuanced description of the social transition in the social transition and all kinds of confusion. His novels use rural life as the background, the capitalist society of civilization and moral made a profound expose and criticism, but with pessimism and fatalism. The main characters in Hardy' s work are mostly the lower people, which give his works the spirit of Humanitarian spirit and a positive sense of urgency, which is to make people see the reality of sinister and the limitations of the history.

1.2The Return of The Native

1.2.1 Background ----the social reality

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the powerful British industrial revolution had not yet invaded Dorset, and the people there lived a quiet pastoral life. Hardy once had two serious illnesses in London, and got rehabilitation after returning to his hometown. So Hardy finally realized that the fresh natural air of hometown together with the harmonious and happy pastoral life gave him life and health. He belongs to "Wessex". From 1895, Hardy settled in the home of Dorset, which also means that his spirit returned home and returned to nature.

The Return of the Native, published in 1878, is important achievements in the middle of Thomas Hardy’ creation. In his creative career, Hardy consciously pursues the idea of "reflecting life, exposing life and criticizing life", and consciously exploring the continuous innovation of art. This novel, the representative of Hardy Wessex' s novels is the embodiment of the double consciousness in Hardy' s creation. Hardy’ s original intention when he created the novel is for the philosophical thinking of tragic life.

1.2.2 Main plots

The story began in Egdon Heath, a somber, powerful and mysterious place which maintained unchangeable traditional system. There are six main characters in this novel: Damon Wildeve, once an engineer but now running a pub. He dallies between two women by whom he is loved— the gentle Thomasin Yeobright and the beautiful Eustacia Vye. The gentle Thomasin rejects her humble suitor Diggory Venn— a reddleman, and is eventually married to Wildeve. The central character —“the native”—is Clym Yeobright, a diamond merchant in Paris. He disgusts his occupation and considers it worthless, so he returns to Egdon Heath, intending to become a schoolmaster in his native Heath. He falls in love with Eustacia Vye, who has come from the fashionable society and is tired of the simplicity of country life. In a brief illusion she marries Clym, hoping to induce him to return to Paris, thus escaping from Egdon. From the very beginning their marriage is an unhappy one, because Mrs. Yeobright, Clym’ s mother, opposes their marriage. To Eustacia’s despair, Clym will not return to Paris. And Clym’ s sight fails and he becomes a furze-cutter on the Heath. At the same time, she becomes the cause of estrangement between Clym and his beloved mother, and unintentionally causes the mother’s death. One day Clym’s mother comes to see the young couple, meaning to seek some comfort or compromise with Eustacia; but unluckily, Eustacia fails to see her coming, and the old woman, finding herself repulsed at the door of her son and her daughter-in-law, goes away in great sorrow and dies on the way. This, together with the discovery of Eustacia’ s relation with Wildeve, leads to a violent scene between Clym and his wife, and ultimately to Eustacia’ s flight with Wildeve. In the course of their elopement, both of them are drowned. Clym surfers a lot and blames himself for the death of his mother and his wife. In the end of the novel he gives up his former dream as a schoolmaster and becomes a wandering preacher, and the widowed Thomasin marries Diggory Venn, who has always been devoted to her.

2.Literature Review

As one of the greatest English novelist and a great poet, Thomas Hardy has been studied by many scholars both domestic and overseas, while The Return of the Native, one of Thomas Hardy’ s representative novels with the theme of “character and environment” are still being appreciated by people today.

Like Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native also presents a contrast between selfish and passionate love, such as that between Eustacia Vye and Wild eve, and a sincere and selfless love such as that of Diggory Venn for Thomasin. Abounding in pessimism, despair and gloom, the novel has touches of joy as in the portrayal of peasants like christian Cantle who live in harmony with Nature, and are thus happier than the central figures, or in the jokes of other rustic characters. The novel is also remarkable for its precise pictures and poetic descriptions of Nature.

The Return of the Native clearly shows Hardy’s increasing tendency to despair. Nothing in his own life can explain the deepening gloom. But in this and later works he becomes obsessed with the tragic issues of human endeavor and persistently refuses to admit the possibility that fate can sometimes prove to be indulgent and grant human desires.

In recent years, domestic and foreign scholars have carried out some research about the return of the native and have gained fruitful results, which includes prototype exploration, text and background analysis, ecology analysis and feminist analysis. However, there are few about the pessimism in this novel.

Therefore, this paper will explore the pessimism in The Return of The Native by Thomas Hardy from different aspects, including the characters' personality and the environment, accidental incident and misfortune. Besides, the significance will also be discussed, which may be meaningful for people all the time.

3.The Pessimism in The Return of The Native

3.1 Definition of Pessimism

Pessimism is a mental attitude. Pessimists anticipate undesirable outcomes from a given situation which is generally referred to as situational pessimism or believes that undesirable things are going to happen to them in life more than desirable ones. Pessimists also tend to focus on the negatives of life in general or a given situation. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?" situation. In this situation a pessimist is said to see the glass as half empty while an optimist is said to see the glass as half full. Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.

Philosophical pessimism is the related idea that views the world in a strictly anti-optimistic fashion. This form of pessimism is not an emotional disposition as the term commonly connotes. Instead, it is a philosophy or worldview that directly challenges the notion of progress and what may be considered the faith-based claims of optimism. Philosophical pessimists are often existential nihilists believing that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. Their responses to this condition, however, are widely varied and often life-affirming.

In Western philosophy, philosophical pessimism is not a single coherent movement, but rather a loosely associated group of thinkers with similar ideas and a family resemblance to each other. In Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit, Joshua Foa Dienstag outlines the main propositions shared by most philosophical pessimists as "that time is a burden; that the course of history is in some sense ironic; that freedom and happiness are incompatible; and that human existence is absurd."

3.2 The exemplification of the Pessimism in the novel

3.2.1 Description of the environment

At the beginning of The Return of the Native, the descriptions of the environment  foreshadow the tragic ending to readers. Hardy uses Egdon Heath as the circumstance of the story, a traditional and old heath, where there is no downtown bustling and high technology and the development is lagging behind and slow. It is profoundly ancient, the scene of intense but long-forgotten pagan lives. Egdon Heath does not merely serve as the background for the tragic story, but in a way has become an embodiment of the powerful and eternal force of the nature. In brief, whoever you are, if you want to rebel against nature, you will

get your punishment. As its tumuli attest, it is also a graveyard that has swallowed countless generations of inhabitants without changing much itself. The fates of the characters in this novel are all related to the Heath, and the Egdon Heath acts as a natural force that can determine man’s fate.

The relationship between the character and the living environment can be seen in the gap and contrast between the two big environments. And the choice of the environment reflected people’s dissatisfaction with the real environment in which they live. The female protagonist, Eustacia tries her whole life to escape from the poor Egdon Heath to a rich place. Clym returns back to the heath in order to run a school to change its educational condition. Wildeve comes to Egdon Heath and wants to take Eustacia out of there. They all disobey the traditional heath and the conflicts between human beings and nature appear. All those who attempt to get rid of Egdon Heath or try to change the Egdon Heath will be punished. Thus, the tragedy is inescapable.

As for the spatial environment of character activities, Hardy is has a preference for emphasizing the repetition of space, that is, the reproduction of the same environment which has changed, in order to glimpse the change of the tragic fate of the characters at different stages. The Egdon Heath in the novel is an example of repeatedly using one environment. Dominated by the invisible mysterious power, people's destiny is like a cloud of smoke. They are involuntarily come to where determine their fate changes, no matter how they resist. Facing the vast universe, humans seem so small and insignificant.

3.2.2 The characters' personality

People live in this world and survive in the real world, which is a tragedy itself. The causes of this tragedy includes not only social factors, but also subjective factors----personal will which Hardy's emphasis on, that is people's character. In the novel, there often appears the tragedy caused by the characters’ personalities. It especially can be seen obviously in the characters like Eustacia, Clym and Mrs. Yeobright.

Eustacia comes from Budmouth with dreams of social splendor, and She is dissatisfied with her life in the Heath, which makes her feel like a prisoner living in hell. She hates Heath so much that she knows nothing of its history and hasn’t learned its tongue. Almost everyday she prays for leaving there, she tries to struggle with and tries to resist the Heath through the marriage. However, God does not help. In the quagmire of the fate, the more people resist, the deeper people fall in, unable to extricate themselves. Finally, Eustacia drowned with Wildeve in a stormy night when they tried to escape from heath, resulting in The fate of the tragedy. Eustacia is an ambitious and unyielding woman, who chafes against her life on the heath and longs to escape it to lead the more adventure-filled life of the world. Some of the heathfolk think she is a witch. Hardy describes her as "the raw material of a divinity" whose "celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon."

Different from Eustacia, Clym loves Heath, their attitudes are totally different. Clym can interpret the Heath with his knowledge, awareness and consciousness. Clym had had active thought and diligent thinking since childhood, and he lived and worked in big cities after he grew up. He is a new youth who has extraordinary life experience, good quality, independent ideas and insights. At first, he wants to change Heath, but he doesn’t know Eustacia actually and his dream is not practical. At the end of this novel, he almost becomes blind and loses two women whom he loves, but the love to his native place saves him. Although Clym still lives in the Heath, he surfers a lot and blames himself for the death of his mother and his wife, so he gives up his former dream as a schoolmaster and becomes a wandering preacher.

Mrs. Yeobright is a typical rural woman of inflexible standards and has been living in poor and backward Egdon Heath. Her measure of human value is the secular social status and material wealth. In her view, Clinton's own work is respectable and proud. The fundamental reason for the contradiction between Clym and mother is that their life values are different. The mother and son can not reach an agreement in the cognition, so the contradiction is inevitable. This laid the ground for the tragedy of Mrs. Yeobright. Besides, she strongly disapproves of Eustacia. Finally, she goes away in great sorrow and dies on the way unluckily when she fails to seek some comfort or compromise with couple.

3.2.3 The tragedy of fate

In Hardy' s novels, the tragic fate can not be described through a philosophical point of view, so it is often shown through accidental incidence and misfortune of fate. Usually,there are a series of bedding. It can be seen that chance is also based on a certain basis, and it is another form of necessity. In The Return of the Native, there are a lot of specific plots.

Firstly, from the tragedy between Clym, Mrs. Yeobright and Eustacia, we can see a series of bedding and accidental incidence of fate. At first, Clym worked as a manager in a diamond shop in Paris, dependent with Mrs. Yeobright. Life is very happy. However, after returning from the Paris to Egdon Heath, things began to change. On one hand, Clym resigned from the original work, and on the other hand, he fell in love with Eustacia because of occasional encounter, and insisted on marrying her, both of which were Mother's strong opposition. This directly lead to the breakdown of the relationship between the mother and son. Later, Clym almost blinded the eyes because he worked so hard to read in order to set up a school , which once again deepened the contradiction between Clym and Eustacia. He had to rely on cutting thorns for a living, tasting all the hardships of life.The two Contradictions and injuries deepened step by step with the development of the story, leading to the ultimate irreversible tragedy of the story.

The tragedy of Mrs. Yeobright is very accidental. After a period of time keeping away from Clym, Mrs. Yeobright thinks she must ease the tension with his son. So she traveled alone to the residence of Clym, knocking on the door. Clym called his mother when he was dreaming, causing Eustacia thought that Clym opened the door for his mother, but in fact he didn’t. Mrs. Yeobright did not see his son, only had to go home along the same way she came. But on the road, she was bitten by a poisonous snake, and finally died in the absence of timely treatment ,which made Clym angry with Eustacia and deepened the contradiction between them again. After the conflict, Clym wrote a letter of apology to Eustacia, told the little maid to take it to Eustacia. But the little maid inadvertently forgotten the letter of apology in the hat. So ultimately the contradiction between Clym and Eustacia is not able to resolved timely, which is the first step in the tragedy. Later, the letter of apology came to the hand of the old captain. When he wants to give the letter to Eustacia, he saw that Eustaciahas had fallen asleep. In order to avoid disturbing her, the old captain put the letter on the fireplace. This became an indirect cause of Eustacia leaving from home and eventually dying with hate.

In addition, Hardy's pessimism can be seen from the misfortune of fate. Clym suffered from the multiple blows of love, affection, and job, experiencing from hope to desperate. Simply say, that is there is a goal, but people receive a devastating disaster in the time of implementation.

As for business, Clym is very keen on education career. In order to run the school, he gave up the superior life of Paris to the Egdon Heath., hoping to improve people's wisdom through teaching. But he encountered a lot of difficulties in the creation of business. At this time, he hoped Eustacia to help him to accomplish dreams. But in fact Eustacia does not have any emotion for the people on the Egdon Heath. So she does not want to take this responsibility. Later, Clym suffering from eye diseases because of reading too much. His goal of the educational business is also gone.

From the point of view of love, it is romantic for Clym and Eustacia to fall in love. But Clym did not understand Eustacia and thought that she was able to help with his business. But in fact, she just want to take over her dream of the city life with the help of Clym. Eustacia’ s mind run counter to Clym’ s. plus later Mrs. Yeobright' s death, the two people's love was completely shattered.

As for affection, Mrs. Yeobright did not endorse the marriage between Clym and Eustacia. They moved out of the mother's home after they were married. Mother-child relationship broke down. Later, Mrs. Yeobright wanted to ease the tension of the relationship, but she did not see his son and was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Finally, she was not able to make peace with his son.

3.3 The causes of Thomas Hardy’ s Pessimism

Firstly, the formation of Hardy's pessimism was related to his family and living environment. Hardy himself gave up a successful career as a London architect and returned to his native

Dorchester to become a writer, so his character---Clym is a man of about thirty who gives up a business career in Paris to return to his native Egdon Heath to become a “schoolmaster to the poor and ignorant”. The Return of the Native clearly shows Hardy’s increasing tendency to despair.

Besides, Hardy’s pessimism had a very close relationship with the historical and social background at that time. Under the common influence of the two, Hardy formed his unique Tragic Values. During his studies, he studied a large number of Greek tragedies and Shakespeare's tragedies. At the same time, due to the influence of Schopenhauer's tragedy theory and Darwin's theory of "natural selection", he had a unique cognition of life and a deeper thought of fate. He also tried to use the ancient Greek tragedy as a model for tragedy creation. Hardy sees life and explain the causes of social development and the tragedy with the idealist view.

In addition, Hardy' s novels are deeply influenced by pacifist philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Hartmann. In his opinion, nature is so powerful that can determine one’s fate. Because of the limitations of his understanding of laws of social development, he only uses fatalism to explain the problems he faces. Hardy comes up with the fatalism as well as the thought that human beings can not escape the pessimistic fatalism. In this and later works he becomes obsessed with the tragic issues of human endeavor and persistently refuses to admit the possibility that fate can sometimes prove to be indulgent and grant human desires.

4. Conclusion

As one of the greatest English novelists and a great poet, Thomas Hardy has been studied by many scholars at home and abroad, while The Return of the Native, one of Thomas Hardy’ s representative novels with the theme of “character and environment”, is still being appreciated by people today.

Compared with most other works, Thomas Hardy' s novel is more concerned with the relationship between human's living environment and human nature, and the relationship between the two and the fate of man. Through the tragic conflict of man and fate as well as being tricked by the fate eventually leads to tragic suffering, Hardy' s novel criticizes and reveals the capitalism and tends to have a strong pessimism.

The Return of the Native is a highly moving novel depicting man's helplessness in the face of a cruel and omnipotent fate and showing him as a mere plaything in the hands of the gods. The indifference of the Universe to Man's condition on earth and the cruel treatment meted out to him by Nature, are touchingly revealed by Hardy in this novel.

Hardy’ s purpose of writing novels is to survive. Although there are many unfair and evil sides in this world, and the fate of mankind ends with tragedy, people must fight against the disaster, so as to find the opportunity to survive. This is the belief of Hardy. Hardy once tried to explain the real dilemma and tragic fate from a philosophical point of view, but eventually he concluded that there was no way to lead to happiness or to avoid misfortune.

From the description in the novel, we can see that the characters often cannot bear the brunt of the environment pressure. People struggle, but only to meet the bitter tragedy. Meanwhile, from the creation of the characters and destiny, we can also see that he can face up to and realize the reality soberly with unyielding struggle and resistance. This is the unique characteristic of hardy' s pessimism, which actually teaches people to be brave and persistent. Man has a certain relation with the environment, and sometimes people’s fate may be influenced by the environment.

Thomas Hardy' s pessimistic value is not only the essence of academic status, but also his thinking about the tragedy of life and the crystallization of human’s wisdom. The character's living environment determines the character's personality, while the character's personality determines the fate of the characters, which is fully reflected in the fate of the main characters in

this novel. In addition, when the accidental incidence encounters with the misfortune of fate, the characters’ the struggle becomes powerless, which will eventually lead to the tragic suffering. Thus, Hardy’ s unique pessimistic value in his creation not only has profound social critical force and philosophical implication of metaphysics, but also influence the development of the literature.

Works Cited

Gao, Jihai. [高继海]：《英国小说史》，中国社会科学出版社，2003

Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. New York: Bantam Books, 1981

Hardy, Thomas. 《还乡》，王守仁译. 南京：译林出版社，1997

Li, Guanghai. [李广海]：《托马斯·哈代的生活哲学在其主要作品中的体现》，哈尔滨工程大学硕士论文，2007

Li, Haiyan. [李海燕]：《托马斯·哈代的悲剧人生观》，内蒙古大学硕士论文，2002

Li, Peng. [李鹏]：《从故土意识把脉哈代的悲观主义走向》，《南都学坛（南阳师范学院人文社会科学学报）》，2005年第3期.

Qin, Xiaoli. [覃晓莉]：《徘徊在激进与传统之间—哈代威塞克斯小说的女性主义解析》，湖南师范大学硕士论文，2009

Tan, Nian. [谭念]，《论托玛斯·哈代的小说创作思想发展历程》，华中师范大学硕士论文，2003

Wu, Di. [吴笛]. 哈代新论[M]. 杭州:浙江大学出版社，2009

Wang, Zhigeng. [王志耕]. 欧美文学—人的主题史[M]. 北京：中国社会科学出版社，2009，（8）

Yu, Kaixiang. [余开祥]主编：《西欧各国经济》，复旦大学出版社，1987

请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：29259字