《德伯家的苔丝》人物形象新论

A New Interpretation of the Characters in Tess of the D'Urbervilles

苔丝标志着新的农业工人新形象的诞生。尽管思想上具有软弱性,但在灾难面前表现出来的刚毅和自我牺牲的献身精神,使她成为一个富有悲剧力量的人物。安玑.克莱是资产阶级虚伪道德的形象,在哲学意义上是一个理想主义者。他思想上具有矛盾性,那脱离客观现实的理想主义的爱情,是现实同理想发生矛盾的结果。亚雷.德伯是依靠商业致富的资产者和暴发户形象,他是同安玑.克莱这个“精神的人”相对照的“肉欲的人”,他对苔丝的玩弄,展示了资产阶级宗教的伪善。安玑崇拜,倾慕和追求她,在精神上摧残她,亚雷.德伯用卑鄙可耻的手段把她占为己有。在他们身上,展现了人性的多重性,他们从精神和肉体上绞杀了苔丝。苔丝视安玑为天神,视亚雷为恶魔,但她始终无法挣脱资本主义文明社会的天罗地网。如果说亚雷残暴地毁灭了苔丝的清白之身,那么安玑则是无情地伤害了苔丝的纯真之心。亚雷和安玑从两端拉起资本主义社会的网,捕杀了苔丝,他们是扼杀苔丝的双刃剑。

With many distinctive features, the characters in the novel Tess of the D＇ Urbervilles are very impressive. Tess, the heroine, is a symbolic image of a completely new agricultural worker. She is the embodiment of beauty and love, daughter of the nature, with both the traditional and modern characteristics in her. She is noble-minded, but is considered a woman offending public decency. Although sometimes weak and feeble in her personality when confronted with the calamities, she displays both fortitude, with a steadfast spirit of the self-sacrifice. All these make her a moving and tragic figure. That isn＇ t only the personal resistance, but also the demonstration of her demanding for the human rights of all the working class and the exposure of the evils of the whole society. Angel is a representative of a capitalist hypocritical morality and an idealist in the sense of philosophy. The contradiction of the ideology and the lofty ideal of love divorced from reality are the contradictory results of the ideal and the reality. His philandering with Tess reveals the hypocrisy of the religion. Adored and wooed by Angel, Tess is destroyed spiritually. Tess has been forcibly occupied by Alec, who was a figure of an upstart, by means of the business, in the early capitalist period. Contrasted with Angel, the idealist, Alec was the devil of the carnal desire. All the characters show the varieties of humanity nature and it is the two male characters who had actually strangled Tess. Although being looked upon by Tess either as god or devil, they make Tess unable to escape from the drag net of the capitalism. If Alec could be said to have ruthlessly occupied the purity of her body, we may also say that it was Angel who has mercilessly damaged the innocence of her mind. In a word, Angel and Alec has captured, killed and destroyed Tess spiritually and bodily.