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3.2 Darwinism in Tess of the D¡¯Urbervilles 3.2.1 Natural basis

Darwinism breaks the domination of biology, which believes that the world is created by God; this completely destroys the religious rule from a scientific perspective, opening up a new era for the natural history.

The influence of evolutionary theory is far beyond the biological science itself; it releases people¡¯s thought from the idea that God creates the world and from the theory of metaphysics. Therefore, this theory has become a great power to promote the progress of human society. The evolutionary theory not only promotes the development of science in the 19th century, but also makes a profound impact on the field of literary and artistic creation. Thomas Hardy¡¯s ideas and creativity is an example of the impact of Darwin¡¯s ideas, especially in terms of genetic theory, which is part of Darwinism. Hardy expresses Darwinian genetic theory when he writes about Tess¡¯s family.

People could choose their ways of life but they couldn¡¯t choose their born situation, and it¡¯s the born situation decides their development most, it¡¯s clear that Tess¡¯s tragedy is most due to her social position, that is, being born in a poor rural family during the Victorian age. In this respect, it is reasonable to suggest that, as the central idea of Darwinism, natural basis can be found in Tess of the D¡¯Urbervilles easily.

Considering Tess¡¯s tragic end, she is, in practice, the embodiment of the lower class farmer, and her own life time trajectory embodies exactly Darwin¡¯s theory of natural basis, that is, one¡¯s born position determines one¡¯s future development to a great extent. Tess¡¯s life time trajectory reveals the secret of the peasant class¡¯s downfall in south England in the Victorian Age.

3.2.2 Survival of the fittest

Darwinism insists that the principles in the natural world, such as natural select,

survival of the fittest, also play a dominant role in our human society. This idea can be found in Tess of the D¡¯Urbervilles when Hardy describes the destructive process of the rural society.

The process of Tess¡¯s family¡¯s decline is a typical example that Hardy delineates the Darwinism theory of survival of the fittest.

In the Victorian age, the struggle for existence became more and more harsh, of which the novel as such could give a better representation. For example, the horse of Tess¡¯s family serves as a certain symbol that delineates the decline of Tess¡¯s family, or further the decline of the rural society in that being the major agricultural instrument of the rural production, the horse, instead of being strong and sturdy, becomes weak, this certainly implies the weakening of agriculture or the traditional rural life. Still another example, when talking with her brother, Tess compares their living condition to ¡°a bad apple¡±, which also serves as a symbol with implied meaning, that is, the family is in a bad condition, and is being ruined as a result of the death of their horse, which dies in an accident in which the horse pulling a dilapidated carriage, the symbol of rural society, hits a new postal carriage, the symbol of prosperous industrial society. When the two carriages collide, that is, metaphorically speaking, when the old, backward, unfitted rural society collides the new, advanced, the fittest industrial capitalist society, and the unfitted one loses the game. This figurative scene is an explicit evidence that Hardy is influenced by the Darwinist theory of the survival of the fittest. Hardy describes Tess¡¯s family¡¯s process of decline to imply that Tess¡¯s fate is predetermined. When Hardy describes the D¡¯Urbervilles¡¯ family cemetery, he says that Tess¡¯s family was extinct from this world, in a sense, the author combines Tess¡¯s misfortune and her old family¡¯s decline together and by referring to her family¡¯s decline, Hardy proves the necessity of the decline of her own family, and indicates that it is the result brought by social evolution. In this way, Hardy expresses his Darwinist orientation in the novel.

3.2.3 The evolution in morality

In the creation of his article, Hardy not only use Darwinism to explore the

reasons of the decline of the south England¡¯s countryside, but also uses it to solve a series of moral problems that come up in this novel.

¡°Darwinism thinks the generating of human beings is the result of the animal organism evolution¡±10. The social and cooperation instinct of human beings, as higher animals, is the natural premise of morality¡¯s emerging, the evolutionism and the mechanism that animals adapt to environment fit human beings and their society as well. They pointed out the order which human beings were trying to build was the same as the order that the whole nature world had been obeying. The vital selection existing in the nature world can also be applied to man¡¯s social life, and morality is a reflection of organic evolution in human society. On the principle of the evolution theory, morality changes as living conditions change; the improvement of moral standards is a long and constant process of man¡¯s organic instinct adapting to both natural and social environment. Generally speaking, the way authors deal with moral problems is based on their own times¡¯ moral standards or perceptual knowledge while Hardy is an exception. One vital point in his artistic treatment is not to stick to the moral standards that had been accepted by his time or some classes but to apply the evolution theory into his moral judgment, so that the moral problems which are intractable to many other authors were easily solved.

Hardy had absorbed the evolution theory in moral perception to build his evolutional moral standards and applied these standards to tackle the problems in his work. In the Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the protagonist, Tess is a woman who has lost her chastity but without any mistakes of her own. Hardy didn¡¯t try to set Tess as an example of perfect morality from the traditional moral standards. What he did was judging the social concerning moral problem with the new theory from his period¡¯s position. The moral problem in Tess of the D'Urbervilles mainly focuses on the lost of Tess¡¯s chastity and a series of social moral evaluation. Tess herself has no mistakes in losing her chastity for she is inveigled and raped by Alec. Nevertheless she becomes an epitome of demoralization. Under the pressure of the whole society, her tragedy is doomed. In the description of the plot in which Tess loses her chastity, it could be inferred that Hardy dealt this moral problem on the foundation of the evolution theory.

Standing in the view of organic evolution, he reckoned that the consequence of Tess losing chastity was a moral one. According to the evolution theory, man has the ability of self-regeneration, just as animals. Woman¡¯s chastity can also be regenerated in natural process of evolution. Tess losing her chastity is nothing in biological meanings, what she has confronted are the remarks which label her as sinful given by the lagging society and its moral standards.

Conclusion

After the analysis of Darwinism and Tess of the D¡¯Urbervilles, some social problems in the Victorian age in south England are revealed. That is, by the end of the 19th century, the Victorians had experienced fundamental changes, when the pastoral village life was on its way out and the encroaching feet of modern civilization had moved in, when agriculture and dairy farms were being replaced, and the railway laid a solid menace on the fringe of the village---the backbone of rural life, and when rapid development of science and technology, new invention and discoveries in geology, astronomy, biology and anthropology shook people¡¯s religious convictions. The slowly developing rural area at south England was due to be eliminated, because it was too out-dated to it the times. Simply speaking, its elimination is inevitable, because only those who fit society and age the most will survive, that is, survival of the fittest.

In spite of the limitation of this project, the findings could be useful for extant researches on Tess of the D¡¯Urbervilles in China; it provides another way to appreciate this novel.