明晰与模糊之间—从苔丝与嘉丽妹妹的形象

明晰与模糊之间—从苔丝与嘉丽妹妹的形象 Graduation Paper: Body Between Clarity and Vagueness—Morals of Hardy and Dreiser as Seen in the Images of Tess and Sister Carrie The reviews about Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Sister Carrie are thick and become each day greater in number since its publication. During the 19th century, the new thoughts of Naturalism and Darwinism came out as strengths to challenge the traditional Victorian morality. Many commentators have laid emphasis on how these new things affected thoughts of Hardy and Dreiser and how these were respectively reflected by the two novels. In addition, some reviewers paid more attention to research women characters in the novels, such as their fates, moral declinations and situations they are set in. What?s more, some researchers put emphasis on the pessimism of Hardy in Tess and the materialism in Carrie, etc. In my graduation paper, I intend to put Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Sister Carrie together and make a comparison between them. As a result, I can figure out respective moral inclinations of the two different authors. ?. Introduction A. Hardy and Dreiser and their moral inclinations Thomas Hardy, one of the great English writers of the 19th century, was born near Dorchester to a stonemason?s family. He accepted religion at a very young age. And with inclination of truthfulness, goodness and beauty being planted in his mind, and he dreamed of becoming a priest in the future. However, Hardy could not afford to pursue a scholarly career as he wished, so he studied the Greek and Latin classics all by himself at home. This enabled him to live in the country where all the things are close to nature, and to be greatly impressed by the purity of rural life. As a matter of fact, most of Hardy?s works were set against the rural world—referring to as Wessex in the novels. For Hardy, a man is born a part of nature and as pure as nature itself. He admired the honesty, sedulity and goodness of the rural people and the rural life. However, Hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social changes, when England was making its slow and painful transition from an old-fashioned, agricultural nation to a modern, industrial one. While some families of the ancient aristocracy faded into obscurity, businessmen and entrepreneurs joined the ranks of the social elite. In his works, Hardy demonstrates his deep sympathy for England?s lower classes, 1 Graduation Paper: Body particularly for rural women at such a changing time. In many respects, Hardy was trapped in the middle ground between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between Victorian sensibilities and more modern ones, and between tradition and innovation. He knew the world was changing, but what he believed in morality would never shake. Theodore Dreiser, was born in a very small town of Indiana state in America. His father is a very poor immigrant who was nuts about religion, and has a very bad temper. To Dreiser, the poverty and unhappiness of his family resulted from his father?s blind enthusiasm in religion. So from an early age, Dreiser had developed a strong detestation to the religion. And his two sisters Sylvia and Emma, who were said to be the prototypes of Carrie, had a great influence on him too. On the one hand, the two sisters? dissipated behaves brought shame and troubles upon him and his family, and on the other, through his sisters, he realized the strength of power and money and developed a life long liking for them. He had worked as a carter, a seller, a reporter and the occupation of reporter enabled him to penetrate into every corner of the world and get an in-depth knowledge of every aspects of the society. Although he knew how hard the poor lived in the society and he showed a bit of sympathy for them, he built a strong sense of status, self-interest, power and believed these were outdo honesty, sincerity. In addition, to Dreiser, marriage was a kind of fetter. In his whole life, he never stopped pursuing different women and he moved in his lovers. It can be said that, loyalty was never in his beliefs. B. The plot of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Sister Carrie and the moral attitudes of Tess and Carrie The novel Tess tells about a tragic story of a pure country girl. In order to support her poor family, she worked for her rich relatives, the D?Urbervilles. Before long, her guileful cousin, Alec managed to seduce her and made her pregnant. Being humiliated and, Tess returned home resolutely. Despite the rumors all around, she gave birth to a child bravely. After her baby died, Tess left home and went to work as a dairymaid at a distant farm, where she met Angel Claire. Soon the two fell in love and decided to get married. On the wedding night, Tess admitted about Alec D?Urbervilles and the child to Claire. She begged for forgiveness, but he left her in disgust. Tess had to return home again. To support her family, Tess went back to Alec D?Urbervilles, but when she found Angel Claire came back, Tess became more desperate. She stabbed Alec in the heart and killed him. For this crime, she was 2 Graduation Paper: Body first arrested and then hanged. In this novel, the protagonist Tess is depicted as a good, honest, beautiful and industrious girl, who fought against the cruel society and tragic fate. Although she was sentenced to death in the end, she shows all the way her strong sense of self-esteem and bravery to pursue true love and freedom. Sister Carrie was a small-town girl, who went to Chicago to make a living. After continuous desperate job hunting, Carrie became desperate and she surrendered to the lures of the modern city. She became the mistress first of a salesman, Trouet, who provided her comfortable abode and then of a saloon manager, Hurstwood, who has his own family but stolen money and eloped with her to New York. In New York, Carrie began her life career as an actress. When she became more and more successful and when, Hurstwood turned older, jobless, and became more and more of a burdensome for Carrie, she discarded him, who eventually committed suicide for having being trapped in a fight corner. The story tells about how Carrie got her achievements with the help of men and how she abandoned them after they became useless. She was cold, selfish and ambitious, taking advantage of every man, who could benefit him, then, sloughing them off when they became no use. Carrie was the typical person to embody Darwinism in 19th century. ?. Body: Detailed analysis of Hardy and Dreiser’s different attitudes toward morality on the bases of Tess and Carrie A. Personal values of the heroines and moral attitudes of the authors In the novels Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Sister Carrie, the protagonists Tess and Carrie made many choices on their way of life. Their choices showed their values. What they cherished and detested, to some extent, reflected the authors? personal values. Both Tess and Carrie came from humble origin. Similar family backgrounds endowed the two girls with some original characters in common. However they made quite different choices when troubles call upon them, from which we can detect the different personal values of the authors, Hardy and Dreiser. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, because she was the eldest child of her family, Tess not only did farm work for her family but also looked after her younger sisters and brothers. And even, in order to support her necessitous family, she went to work for the D?Urbervilles who is the source of her tragedy. Tess devoted herself to her family, she was industrious and 3 Graduation Paper: Body virtuous. From this angle, we can see the concept of family stood firmly in Hardy?s mind. One of the values of a person is struggle for his family. On the contrary, under the pen of Dreiser, Carrie never mentions much about her family. She goes to Chicago to seek help from her sister, Minnie, but not before long, on account of her brother-in-law?s odd temper and their repressive family atmosphere, Carrie moved out, for what she wanted was to enjoy in the big city other than live like her sister who was a typically housewife who lived exclusively for husband and kids. Minnie was no companion for her sister—she was too old. Her thoughts were staid and solemnly adapted to a condition. If Hanson had any pleasant thoughts or happy feelings he concealed them. He seemed to do all his mental operations without the aid of physical expression. He was as still as a deserted chamber. Carrie, on the other hand, had the blood of youth and some imagination. Her day of love and the mysteries of courtship were still ahead. She could think of things she would like to do, of clothes she would like to wear, and of places she would like to visit. These were the things upon which her mind ran, and it was like meeting with opposition at every turn to find no one here to call forth or respond to her feelings. (40) Carrie and her sister form a sharp contrast in their point view on family. As for Carrie, a family grounded by poverty binds her too much. She couldn?t understand her sister. To her, taking luxurious pleasure comes first. At the point of marriage, Dreiser had the same view point: on the one hand, he enjoyed the dubious relationship with a girl named Sally whom he had ever pursued, on the other hand, he felt repressive when he thought of marriage as a block to his success. “When he thought of marriage and kids in the future, Dreiser felt uneasy. What he wanted was only to get success and fulfill his ambitions. Marriage will just bring oppression” Jiang ( 20). In addition, Carrie and Tess exhibited different outlooks on love that can manifest the authors? values about love. As we all know, although Tess was seduced by Alec, Hardy gave the subtitle of the novel: A Pure Women. From this point, we know, to a large extent, Hardy not only commiserated Tess but agreed with her. In his novel, Tess had a clear-cut stand on 4 Graduation Paper: Body what to love and what to hate. To support her family, she was forced to work for Stoke, D?Urbervilles but returned home stoutly after she was seduced regardless of how hard the life would be. She hated Alec, no matter how terrible her life was, she never thought of taking advantage of her baby and ask him for help. She deeply loved Angel Claire, to whom she confessed her past and begged forgiveness, and for whom she killed Alec then was executed. Daring to hate and love, Tess appears to be a loser in the world, but she is so brave to pursue her true love. To other people, what Tess has done was injurious to morality, but Hardy stood by her firmly in his own point of view. But this encompassment of her own characterization, based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mistaken creation of Tess's fancy—a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason. It was they that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she. … All the while she was making a distinction where there was no difference. Feeling herself in antagonism she was quite in accord. She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly. (77) Unlike Tess, Carrie got no clear concept of love in the novel. She met with different men, among which none of them let her show desperate love. She had adored them and became their mistress. In her value, man was a roll booster on the way to her success rather than a reliable soul mate, although every now and then Carrie felt ashamed and sorry for the men who helped her before. As to Dreiser, the creator of Carrie, he neither showed any disagreement to nor praised her attitude obviously. Carrie?s occasionally self-condemnation and Dreiser ambiguous attitude were much necessary under the pressure of traditional conventions. Another important part issues concerning personal values is that both heroines want to get a way from the society they lived in and persons they consorted with. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Tess stands as a loser in the society, and what is more pitiful is that she seems unable to escape from her tragic destiny. But as a matter of fact, she never stops to strive for 5 Graduation Paper: Body her right of being respected, right of being free, although she failed at last. Tess shows her strong sense of self-esteem. She is brave, pure and industrious. She could have been a mistress of Alec and enjoyed a rich material life, but she refused. She lived for herself bravely. She wanted to raise her baby all by herself. The most she yearns for from the society and others is nothing but acceptance and basic respect. Under the conventional moral standard, what she had suffered made her feel ashamed, yet she struggled and lived for herself and never gave up. Hardy understood Tess and showed pity for her, and spoke highly of her. As for Carrie, she left her small hometown and stepped into the way to realize her social value. Though Carrie took any mean to achieve her goals regardless of moral standards, as far as Dreiser concerned, it is the social environment that changed people. According to him, in the sophisticated big cities, people are easily lured and have to go with the stream. When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. (1) To Carrie, it is the luxurious life standard of Chicago and New York that arouses her imagination and desires. When the first time she met the salesman Drouet, who showed off the sweet side of city life to her, Carrie cleared the aims in her new life of metropolis. However, people live in such a big city is not easy, let alone a little village girl without any special skills and experience. Within the strength of her own, her dream was too far to touch. Fortunately, Carrie is born with a natural beauty, of which she can fully take advantage. For earning a better life, Carrie became Drout?s lover. And when Drouet couldn?t satisfy her any more, she abandoned him and followed another man, Hurstwood who has a higher status and is more powerful in the society. However, when she won a great success on the stage, she left him. According the conventional standards, Carrie was totally immoral and unacceptable. However except for a little compunction in Carrie?s conscience, Dreiser accused nothing of her. On the contrary, Carrie went further and smoother on her career. That is, Dreiser 6 Graduation Paper: Body implicitly agreed with Carrie personal value: to enjoy a better life, gain social status and to achieve personal goals even if that means one need to use all means and take any advantage. B. Life goals and moral inclination of Hardy and Dreiser Both Carrie and Tess are country girls endowed with natural purity and set as being weak in their environments. However, their results given by Dreiser and Hardy are quite different. During the process of pursuing her life?s goals, Carrie was lured by the environment and took advantage of men around and became better and stronger. While in Tess?s life, she never managed to change her position as a weaker. This dissimilitude came out of their different goals of life and means by which they realized their goals. No matter what their goals were, the processes they were in or the ways they chose, these messages inform us of the authors Dreiser and Hardy?s moral inclinations. Born in a needy family, Tess must work hard to support her family. In Hardy?s writing, Tess is pure, kind and industrious. She knew how hard life was for her family and she was willing to help her parents. In addition, she was a girl having a strong sense of responsibility. When their only horse died, she regarded herself as its murderess. And as reluctant she was, she went to Stoke, D?Urbervilles and worked there. In such circumstances, Tess was a poor girl with a simple goal: supporting her family. Returning from Stoke, D?Urbervilles, she gave birth to a baby. At that time, for Tess, life was grey. Living under the strange looks of people around her, she worked crazily. She hated where her baby came from, but she loved her baby. Although the contradiction in her mind tortured her much, she never gave up her unbaptized baby. She wanted to walk out of her past and look forward to a better future. No, she would have taken it calmly, and found pleasures therein. Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations. Whatever Tess's reasoning, some spirit had induced her to dress herself up neatly as she had formerly done, and come out into the fields, harvest-hands being greatly in demand just then. This was why she had borne herself with dignity, and had looked people calmly in the face at times, even when holding the baby in her arms. (82) 7 Graduation Paper: Body In Hardy?s heart, Tess was strong enough to be cured by time and nature. That moment, the earnest goal of her was to set herself free from the horrible memories of the past. With self-esteem, Tess regained confidence in life. Goal changes as time and person changes. Before Tess met Angel Claire, the goal of her life was how to survive in the hard world with her own hands. The appearance of Claire brought her new hope and changed her target of life. Love is the most wonderful thing in the world. And Angel Claire, her sunshine, worked together with her to warm her desperate heart. Since then, Tess lived for true love. On the wedding night, she confessed to her bridegroom what she had suffered. Though she knew it would be a deadly stroke of their relationship, Tess did not hide the truth, for she was honest by nature and what she wanted from love was sincerity and forgiveness. But quite unexpectedly, Claire could not accept her confession and left her. In despair, she returned home and again, for supporting her populous family, she yielded to Alec. But when Clair came back for her, she uncompromisingly killed Alec. Though being weak in the world and repeatedly fooled by fate, Tess never gave up chasing her life goal for freedom and true love. And though seemly powerless in the mysterious and merciless world, the personal qualities of Tess were admirable. This, I believe is the message that Hardy means to convey to the readers, and the message from which we can detect Hardy?s moral inclination on this point. From a poor girl to a superstar in New York, Carrie experienced different life stages, on which she had various goals. In the novel Sister Carrie, Carrie dreamed different dreams since the first time she went to Chicago at her sister?s home. She was smart and a kind of thinker, always thinking about a better life and a splendid future on a rocking-chair, which became a kind of symbol of desire in every stage of her life. The first time she rocked the chair was at her sister?s home. She dreamed to earn enough money to pay what she wanted. Then, in Trouet?s rented house, she dreamed to live in glorious mansion. Both of the two dreamed goals were material demands. Then when she had a taste of success of being an actress, she dreamed to be a star. The fourth time she was on the rocking-chair was to consider leave Hurstwood, whom she needed no longer and who had became a burden to her. The last time when she rocked was when after Ames talked with her, she thought of how to achieve more on her career. The last three dreams were desires for career, success and social position. These dreams, desires or goals of Carrie were powerful evidences to show that, Carrie was ambitious, pragmatic and selfish. About Carrie?s dreams on the rocking-chair, Dreiser gave the following comment: 8 Graduation Paper: Body She had learned that in his world, as in her own present state, was not happiness…Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward, onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o'er some quiet landscape, or the glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in some passing eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It is when the feet weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise. Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel. (394) It is hard to see Dreiser?s clear-cut attitude towards Carrie?s life goal. Carrie succeeded and won what she wanted except happiness. He neither disgusted Carrie?s behaves nor agreed with her explicitly. What his comment on Carrie conveyed a sense of pity. She paid too much for her success. In fact, under the public eyes, Dreiser had to represent his agreement in a vague way. Although Carrie was not as happy as she hoped, she did succeed. The moral choices of her were necessities for a people to succeed in such a complicated society. C. Different attitudes towards the influence of living environment upon the heroines and different moral tendencies of the authors Environments in the novels had a great influence on Tess and Carrie. The growth of the protagonists and the evolution of the story have an intimate relationship with the environment. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Tess?s fate was closely linked with nature and the whole environment of traditional conventions. While, in Sister Carrie, the big social environment begot Carrie?s desires and made her succeed. The process of fighting against or adjusting to the environment of Tess and Carrie exhibits different moral attitudes of Hardy and Dreiser. Tess was born in a small town with beautiful natural scenery. As a part of nature, she 9 Graduation Paper: Body was pure and kind-hearted. However, fate played a joke on her. She was defiled by Alec. She was a victim that should have been sympathized by the society, but under the traditional moral standards and religious creeds, she was unacceptable. This forms a sharp contrast between natural environment and social environment. Her soul is that of a woman whom the turbulent experiences of the last year or two had quite failed to demoralize. But for the world's opinion those experiences would have been simply a liberal education... Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? She would ask herself. She might prove it false if she could veil bygones. The recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not denied to maidenhood alone. (89) In Hardy?s mind, the natural environment admitted and sympathized with Tess. And Tess would be recuperated naturally. But the social environment, which is filled with feudal code of ethics and mundane bias, refused her. Basing on this point view, we can see that Hardy?s attitude towards social morality is that of disgust. The subtitle of Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman speaks highly of Tess?s purity, goodness and beauty. Carrie was different from Tess; the environment of her is not small towns but big cities, which are flooded with money, position, power and desires. Pure as she once was, the mysterious charms of social environment changed her. Her inner desires were kindled by luxurious life of the metropolises. She took advantage of two men to satisfy her own demands and abandoned them at last. However, what Carrie has done didn?t suffer condemnation. Though, Dreiser never delivered himself of agreement, Carrie?s success in career highlights his opinion that, there is no other choice for a person living in such a circumstance. It?s the environment made Carrie. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, avast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognized for what they are, their beauty, like 10 Graduation Paper: Body music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions. (1) This is the environment of a big city. The golden rule there is that of survival of the fittest or that of natural selection. Living in such an environment, people are forced to be stronger otherwise they will become losers. Apparently, Carrie learned it and did well. In Dreiser?s view, the moral characters of Carrie, such as egoism, selfishness and materialism were just natural products of such a social environment. Living under the circumstances of the 19th century, both Hardy and Dreiser were deeply influenced by Naturalism, which was defined in The New Oxford Dictionary of English as follows: “The name „Naturalism? was given to a 19th-century artistic and literary movement, influenced by contemporary ideas of science and society, which rejected the idealization of experience and adopted an objective and often uncompromisingly realistic approach to art.”(1151) Obviously, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Sister Carrie, neither Hardy nor Dreiser idealize or beautify the true world, on the contrary, they wrote about it as they saw it. But with distinct personal values, life goals and experiences, they got different understanding of Naturalism. Hardy was pessimistic about the real world. He bestowed upon Tess almost all positive moralities, however, the society, the environment and secular moral standards denies her and leads her to her tragic fate at last. For Dreiser, however, the real world was quite as Darwin has said “survival of the fittest”. Traditional moral standards could not catch up with the new era, so he gave Carrie ambition, selfishness and cruelty, for only if people learn to take every advantage and fight for their own interest, can they survive and succeed in the cold society. That is why both Tess and Carrie were pure country girls at first, but in the process they made different choices, presented different moral attitudes, and under the arrangement of authors, they got different results. What we see from the novels about Naturalism are quite different. And from this point of view, we can detect different moral standards of the two authors Hardy and Dreiser. ?. Conclusion 11 Graduation Paper: Body Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Sister Carrie, the typical works of Thomas Hardy and Theodore Dreiser, exhibited two different fates of two country girls. One was sentenced to death, while another achieved big success. The protagonists? personal values, life goals and relationships with the big environment reflect well the authors? moral inclinations. With regard to personal values, Tess put emphasis on values for family, self-esteem and self-dependence, which presented her industriousness and purity. While for Carrie, personal values equal positions of a person in the society. Tess?s life goals are pursuits of love and freedom. And Carrie?s are material demand, social power and success in career. And so far as living environment is concerned, although Tess failed under the mundane moral standards, she showed her persistence and bravery in fighting against her miserable fate. And for Carrie her choice was to abide by the rule of big cities and to take advantage of every person and chance to be a winner at last. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Hardy took a clear-cut stance to support the moral traits of Tess, although she was not accepted by the society of her time. In Hardy?s mind, Tess is a symbol of purity, and her bravery, industry, honesty, sincerity, goodness are worthy of praising. However, Dreiser?s attitude towards Carrie is always ambiguous. Neither did he agree with her completely nor against her explicitly. In his novel, he took an implicit attitude to support Carrie. According to Dreiser, Selfishness, egoism and materialism are the only ways to attain money, power, position and personal success, and all of them are justifiable. 12