Reading Tess from the Legal Perspective Abstract Thomas Hardy is one of the most distinguished English novelists and poets in the nineteenth century. His novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is one of the best-known novels. Upon publication, Tess of the d’Urbervilles received mixed reviews partly because it challenged the sexual moral of late Victorian England. Since then many scholars have had great interest in the writer and the novel, and have studied them through various approaches and from various perspectives. The thesis intends to explore the novel from the legal perspective and consists of five parts. Part one is the introduction of Tess and previous researches on it. The second part is an analysis of the correspondence between Victorian laws and what happens in the text, including laws concerning the land property, the rape crime, and the porce. The third part explores the discrepancy between Victorian laws and what happens in the text. The fourth part is my study on law and literature. The last part is the conclusion of this thesis.  47758

Keywords: Victorian era; Tess of the d’Urbervilles; legal perspective; law and literature

从法律角度解读《苔丝》

摘要托马斯·哈代是19世纪英国最著名的小说家和诗人之一。德伯家的苔丝是他的著名小说．由于这部小说挑战了维多利亚时代的性别道德观，刚一出版，就受到了各种批判。但之后的学者对其有很大兴趣,并对此从很多角度进行研究。本文是对《苔丝》从法律视角的解读，由五个部分组成。第一部分主要是对德伯家的苔丝这篇小说的介绍及研究综述。第二部分主要是这篇小说中的法律事件与维多利亚时期英国法律的契合点包括与土地财产、强奸和离婚相关的法律规定及处理。第三部分是这篇论文这篇小说中的法律事件与当时法律的不一致点。第四部分是对文学与法律的关系的探讨。最后部分是全文总结。

毕业论文关键词：维多利亚时代；德伯家的苔丝；法律角度；文学与法律

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Correspondence between the Victorian laws and what happens in the text 1

2.1 Land Property 1

2.2 Crime of Rape 2

2.3 Divorce 4

3. Discrepancy between the Victorian laws and what happens in the text 4

4. law and literature 6

4.1 Hardy’s novel and law 6

4.2 Studies on law and literature 6

5.Conclusion 7

References 8

1. Introduction

Tess of the d’Urbervilles is one of the masterpieces of Thomas Hardy who shows readers the social constraints on people’ lives in Victorian era, and criticizes those beliefs, especially concerning marriage, education and religion, that limit people's lives and happiness. The publishers in his time refused to publish this novel at first because of Thomas Hardy’s sympathy and forgiveness to Tess who has an illegal son and murders the man she lives with. Since it was accepted by people, many scholars pay attention to the causes of Tess ‘s tragic life, like personal characters, religion and moral standards and so on. For example Merryn Williams criticizes the double moral standards for men and women in the Victorian society in his book A Preface to Hardy, Besides, some critics make efforts to study fatalism in this novel and modernist tendency in Hardy’s writing skills. 

However, as far as I have researched, reading Tess from the legal perspective has not been paid due attention to. Wu Di is the first scholar who studies Tess from the legal perspective, which is really a new contribution to the domestic research on Hardy. He tries to make clear about the rape and murder in the novel. And a few other scholars also have focused on the causes of Tess ‘s tragic life from legal perspectives. For example, He Xin tries to explore the legal sources of Tess’ tragic fate by analyzing the laws revealed in the novel, especially the laws related to marriage, property inheritance system and justice system. Like He Xin, Gui Wenjuan focuses on the laws in Victorian era about marriage and murder. Besides, in Xue Qin’s essay ‘Criticism on the Cause of Tess of the d’Urbervilles’, The author criticizes the Victorian laws by analyzing substantive law, justice, and adjective law. Although the researches above have involved the legal issues in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, their researches mainly focus on the law’s unfair impact on the tragedy of Tess. They don’t pay much attention to the correspondence and discrepancy between Victorian laws and what happens in the text, especially the latter point. This thesis will try to analyze the ordinary people’s life involved in laws from Tess in two aspects: the correspondence and the  discrepancy between Victorian laws and what happens in the text. Besides, I will try to explore the relationship of Hardy’s novel with the law as well the studies of law and literature campaign in this thesis