《还乡》中游苔莎的悲剧命运分析

《还乡》中游苔莎的悲剧命运分析

摘 要

19世纪英国著名的现实主义小说家托马斯·哈代创作的《还乡》是一部“性格与环境”的代表性悲剧小说。被哈代称之为“夜之女王”的女主人公游苔莎，一直以来也被文学界所关注。本文先从游苔莎在爱敦荒原的生活，与克林的婚姻，以及不可避免的死亡来展现其悲剧，再从三个方面对游苔莎的悲剧命运展开剖析：首先从她个人的性格因素着手，然后分析其当时生存的自然环境和社会环境，最后是推动情节发展的巧合因素。外部环境起到的只是推波助澜的作用，内在的性格弱点才是其悲剧命运的根源。因此本文着重从三个方面对游苔莎的内在性格因素进行分析：酷似“女巫”的个性；游戏爱情与婚姻的态度；爱抱幻想的思维。本文通过分析游苔莎的悲剧命运，尤其是她的性格弱点，旨在加深读者对这部作品的理解。

关键词：游苔莎；爱敦荒原；悲剧

1．Introduction

The Return of the Native is the representative tragic novel of Thomas Hardy, who is considered as the last great novelist of the Victorian period. In Hardy’ novels, he seems to be continuously complaining about an overwhelming, persuasive blind force, which he considers as Fate and Chance. D. H. Lawrence praised Hardy with ambivalence, and associated him with Tolstoy as a tragic writer in Study of Thomas Hardy he wrote. Hardy is outstanding for his tremendous power of producing tragedies comparable to classic tragedies.

The Return of the Native is a tragic novel which analyzes the psychological paradox of the characters and the conflict between man and nature. When the novel was published in 1878, a great number of commentators praised Hardy for his vivid

descriptions of the geographical landscapes—Edgon Heath, especially those in the first chapter. While, on the contrary, others thought that his portrayal of the local characters was shallow and unconvincing. A review in Athenaeum deemed it “distinctly inferior to anything of his novels we have yet read.”Jean R. Brooks commented that this fiction “strikes a harsher note than Far from the Madding Crowd”

[1]269

.Eustacia, the heroine of The Return of the Native, has attracted

extensive attention from academic readers. For example, Albert J. Guerard holds the opinion that Eustacia is the first of Hardy’s irresponsible and mildly neurotic hedonists[2]127. Havelock Ellis believes that “superficially she was timid; it was beneath that timidity that her stronger and more rebellious spirit dwelt.” David Eggenschwiler sees Eustacia as the consequence of a dialectical struggle in Hardy with regard to his own Romanticism; while in Perry Meisel’s opinion, Eustacia and her story represent Hardy’s own return of the repressed. In a word, Eustacia received both appreciation and criticism, so did the causes of her tragic fate. In this paper, the author plans to analyze the tragic fate through three aspects: surroundings, inner characters and coincidental factors. On the basis of natural and social influence, the author is going to try to explore more inner characteristic elements that give rise to the tragedy.

2. The author and the novel

In The Return of the Native, Hardy makes a deep contemplation of woman. On the one hand, he shows a great concern for the suffering of Eustacia. On the other hand, it is impossible for him to arrange a good fate for his heroine: the strong woman in his novel dies in the end. Observing Eustacia’s little power to fight against her fate, Hardy, the creator, can do nothing but stand silently.

2.1 Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) , born and brought up in Dorset shire, where later became the famous “Wessex” in many of his novels, is considered as an English poet and regional novelist, and also a short story writer, essayist, playwright, and architect. He was keen on architecture, music, country folk-tables and literature, which appeared in his novels and his own life. When he was young, he always experienced the life of common people. He showed great sympathy to those poor traders, women and farmers, who led the miserable life under the influences of capitalistic development. His experiences of a simple rural life later became the plentiful materials of his novels.

Hardy began to write poetry and novels from 1867, and he devoted the first part of his career to the novel. There were statistics that Hardy produced more than 20 long novels in his whole life. His novel writing can be classified into three stages. In the first stage, he has a strong interest in romanticism. The major works are: Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Then he goes to another one, in which he mainly depicts the social tragedies in Wessex. The Return of the Native (1878) and The Mayor of Caster bridge (1886) are two typical novels in this stage. In the last stage, Hardy tries his effort to describe the tragic fate and the bankrupt peasants of Wessex, which we can learn through Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). He also handed down many collections of poems, such as Wessex Poems, Poems Past and Present, The Laughing Stock of Time as well as Early and Late Lyrics. Hardy’ works not only handed down the great tradition of England realism, but also led a bright way for British literature of 20th century. Until his death at 87, he remained there writing novels and later poetry, living simply and quietly in spite of his worldwide fame.

2.2 The brief introduction to The Return of the Native

The story begins with two women, Thomasin Yeobright and Eustaeia Vye, simultaneously falling in love with Damon Wildeve, whose marriage to Thomasin Yeobright is delayed by some errors in the marriage certificate. As a matter of fact, Wildeve, to some extent, uses Thomasin as a device to make Eustacia jealous,

because he is infatuated with Eustacia Vye. Diggory Venn loves Thomasin. When Venn learns that Eustacia and Wildeve have an unusual relationship, his own love for Thomasin induces him to intervene with them, which he will go on doing throughout the novel. However, Venn's efforts to persuade Eustacia to consent Wildeve to marry Thomasin, just like his own marriage proposal to Thomasin, are failed.

Eustacia finally marries Thomasin’s cousin Clym Yeobright, a native man who returns from Paris, despite the strong objections of Mrs. Yeobright. Eustacia sees urbane Clym as a chance to escape from the hated heath. But it is not long before she is thoroughly disillusioned with her husband. Eustacia's dreams of moving to Paris are rejected by Clym, who comes back to stay in the village because he is tired of city life. He has，on his return，the intention of running a school. When Wildeve hears of Eustacia's marriage with Clym, he begins to desire her again, although he is already married to Thomasin. He met Eustacia in a country dance, seen by the omnipresent observer Diggory Venn, and later when Wildeve visits Eustacia at her home while Clym is coincidentally sleeping. During this visit, Mrs. Yeobright knocks at the door. She has come hoping for reconciliation with the couple. Eustacia, however, in her confusion and fear at being discovered with Wildeve, does not allow Mrs. Yeobright to enter the house: heart-broken and feeling rejected by her son, she succumbs to heat and snakebite on her way home, and finally dies.

When Clym finds out the truth of his mother’s death, he separates with Eustacia. After a fierce argument between the couple, Eustacia leaves Clym for her grandfather’s cottage. Soon, Wildeve offers to help her, hoping she will become his mistress and leave Egdon with him. Clym writes a letter to Eustacia to call her back. Meanwhile, Eustacia consents to leave with Wildeve at midnight without receiving it. A terrible storm begins to savage the heath as Eustacia slips out of the house to meet Wildeve. On the way, however, she realizes that escaping with him is not a solution. Losing all hope and being frustrated, she drowns herself to death.

3. The embodiment of the tragic fate of Eustacia

Eustacia’s tragic fate is so obvious in this novel, such as her life in Egdon Heath;

marriage with Clym and her inevitable death. The Heath survives by endurance and submission, so does it require of its dwellers, Eustacia realizes this, but feels it rather ashamed. She wants to realize her dream depending on her future husband and wishes he would help take her escape Egdon Heath. Instead of meeting her desires, marriage shatters her life dream. Losing all hope, she drowns herself to death.

3.1 Life in Egdon Heath

Tragedy arises out of the gap between what the character is—his true

self—and what he does—the identity he presents to the outside world [3]59. Eustacia is portrayed as a prisoner on Edgon Heath by the author, which frustrates not only her passion, her sexuality, her consciousness of time, but also all her escaping attempts.

Egdon Heath is a primitive, primal Heath, where the instinctive life heaves up. “Paradoxically, the heath is not only a metaphor for the cosmos, but it mirrors mankind’s common internal chaos” [4]37. It is serious, and its indifference to human feelings and complete ignorance of the effect of time are hated by Eustacia, whose greatest desire is “to be loved to madness” and to live a life filled with “music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that is going on in the great arteries of the world”. Rather than living in harmony with Egdon Heath, Eustacia is contradictory to it in all its related meanings. Egdon is stoic, but she is tragic; Edgon accommodates, but she violates; Edgon approves solemnity and self-restraint, but she aspires to burn out with a great passion; Edgon ignores time, but she likes to stare at the sand running out in her small hourglass. [9]88 She enjoys protruding herself by mocking its conventions: “On Saturday nights she would frequently sing a psalm and it was always on a weekday that she read the Bible, that she might be oppressed with a sense of doing her duty” [5]179.

On Egdon Heath, it appears that only Eustacia, equipped with her grandfather’s telescope and her grandmother’s hour-glass, which are metaphors of “transience”, is especially concerned with the passing of time. Watching the sand running out in her small hour-glass, she feels that “any love she might win would sink simultaneously with the sand in the glass” [5]92. Eustacia’s desire to enjoy the present moment, according to Brooks, Jean R, is the universal thrust of life to grow out of the primal stage of blind, self-absorbed groping towards the sun to a state of being where light, form, and meaning are imposed on matter [1]62. However, Eustacia’s consciousness of time is threatened by timeless Egdon. Instead of doing any good to her, it makes her

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