In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy makes full use of archetype. The heroine Tess is portrayed as Eve, Jesus and Job. Mary Jocobus says that “Hardy imposes a mythic tragedy of the exceptional upon a tragedy of the ordinary” (61).来!自~吹冰论-文|网www.chuibin.com

First, she is portrayed as Eve. Eve, Adam’s wife, the first woman and the mother of the mankind, is created through a rib from Adam’s body by God, according to the Old Testament. She is beautiful, kind and pure. Eve and Adam have a happy and peaceful life in the Garden of Eden. Although they are naked, yet they do not feel ashamed because of their innocence and naivety. God warns them that they can eat any fruit of these trees except one with fruits of wisdom which can help people to understand the righteousness or the weakness of their own acts. However, all the enjoyable life have finished after Eve was attempted to eat the forbidden fruit by the serpent which is the craftiest among all wilder animals in God’s creation. What’s more, Adam is persuaded to eat the forbidden fruit. Then they realize that they are all completely naked and feel so ashamed. Finally they are driven out of the Garden of Eden. God says to them “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow shall thou shall bring forth children, and thy desires shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3). Because of Eve’s tasting the forbidden fruit, she is no more a “pure” woman in God’s eye and suffers a lot in her following life. The fall of Eve implies the human beings’ fall.