【正文】 ably understand human nature.Chapter 1 The Writing Background and Summary of the Novel The Writing Background Thomas Hardy was the last important novelist of the Victoria ages，which was an age of great change and many difficulties when England was making its slow and painful transition from an oldfashioned, agricultural nation to a modern, industrial one. Businessmen and entrepreneurs, or “new money”, joined the ranks of the social elite, as some families of the ancient aristocracy, or “old money”, fated in to obscurity. In many respects, Hardy was trapped in the middle ground between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between Victorian sensibilities and more modern ones, and between tradition and innovation. Victorian novels were full of sensibilities and were tended to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end。 virtue would be rewarded and sinners are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart. While this formula was the basis for much of earlier Victorian fiction, the situation became more plex as the century progressed. It was also an age of realism rather than of romanticism. Realism tries to tell the whole truth showing moral and physical diseases as they are .Victorian literature, in general, truthfully represented the reality and spirit of this age which was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long article. Hardy, who also shown the truth of this age with a high place in Western literature which came from the turbulence of life and deterministic of human being .His tragedies in the history of Western literature were not an accident for the tragedy consciousness. The tragedy consciousness in Hardy’s novels originated from Western traditional tragic spirit which was full of rationalism and profound reflection on the contradictions of human society .And it also revealed an ineluctable and inevitable conditionality of fate. That is to say, the heroes or heroines would lead to the tragic road of life in the end in Western literature no matter whether they liked or not .Tragedy mostly was their final arrangement. Thomas Hardy’s novels are deeply influenced by Greek tragedies and Shakespeare’s tragedies .And he was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer’s tragedy consciousness. Schopenhauer was a famous philosopher who believed that life was a tragedy and life was filled with desire .Schopenhauer divided tragedy into three types: the tragedy caused by those who mitted heinous crimes, the tragedy led by the irony of fate and the tragedy caused by misunderstanding and distrust between persons in everyday life. He believed that the last tragedy was most terrible one which we can see in Hardy’s works .Hardy began to creating the novels in the early the late 1890s,he turned to write poetry. The Britain in this period was undergoing a transition period from laisser –faire capitalism to imperialism. The capitalism thought that the social system of this period could not be changed .But Hardy’s works exactly clashed with it , which reflected the tremendous changes of society because of the invasion of industrial capital to the village .He had exposed the mask of British society which can reflect in the novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Summary of the NovelTess of the D’Urbervilles is one of the best and most popular works by Hardy. It tells a love tragedy between three people. The poor peddler John D’Urbeyfield is stunned to learn that he is the descendent of an ancient noble family, the D’Urbervilles. Mr. D’Urbervilles and his wife decide to send Tess to the D’Urbervilles mansion, where they hope Mrs. D’Urbervilles son, Alec D’Urberville’s estate. Tess has no choice but to accept, because she hopes to improve her family poor situation by her hard work.Tess resists Alec’s attempts to seduce her when she is working. Tess is very pure, so Alec seduced her in the woods one night after fair. Tess knows she does not love Alec, and then has to return home in disgrace. Tess give birth to Alec’s child, whom named Sorrow. Sorrow dies soon after he is born, and Tess is miserable to spend a year at home. She finally decide to seek a job. She finds a job as a milkmaid at the Talbothays Dairy.At Talbothays, Tess meets Angel Clare, son of a clergyman, and slowly fall in love with each other. Tess struggled again and again, finally decide to marry him. Tess enjoys a period of contentment and happiness at Talbothays. However, on their wedding night Tess and Angel tell each about their past. Tess forgives Angel, but Angel cannot forgive Tess. He give her some money and leaves her for Brail, where he once thought he would establish a farm with Tess.Tess struggles. Poverty forces Tess to work at a farm Fintb Ash where she is insulted and illtreated by master. She tries to visit Angel’s family but overhears his brothers discussing Angel’s poor marriage, so he leaves. Then her father’s death drives her to seek for assistance from Alec, and latter now a preacher, soon resumes his former illicit relations with her.At last, Angel decides to forgive his wife. He leaves Brazil, desperate to find her. Instead, he finds her mother, who tells him Tess has go