Good morning, Distinguished professors and teachers, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending the oral defense. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, professor Zhanglin, for his intellectual guidance, invaluable instructions and comments on my thesis. It is with his valuable assistance that I have finally accomplished this thesis. And also I will show my sincere gratitude to every teacher here who attends my defense.
My name is suhong. I am a student from business English majors 07 Grade class Two and the topic of my paper is Honesty, bravery, and resistance---On Tess’s characters from a study of letters in Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Firstly, I will give a short introduction about the writer of the novel which associated with my thesis. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is an outstanding English writer who stretches over the 18th and the 19th century and possesses a very important position in the history of English literature. Of his nearly 20 full-length novels, Tess of the d’Urbervilles is one of his greatest works. Though more than 100 years have been passed since its first publication, many readers are still attracted by its moving plot and unique artistry.
Secondly, the reason why I choice the topic is even though there have been a lot of researchers who study on this novel, but they mainly focus on the analysis of the moral significance and the use of folklore,
nature images, etc. From a different angle that Tess’s characters reflected from the letters are not given enough attention to. Tess, as a female heroine in Tess of the d’Urbervilles which created by Thomas Hardy, is frequently embodied by describing others, sometimes by the two male co-protagonists, Angel and Alec, sometimes by the minor male roles, sometimes by the narrator himself. Therefore, this thesis attempts to analyze the characters from Tess’s letters which deserve readers’ special attention and help them to understand Tess’s characters and the connection between her character and her tragedy in this novel.
Thirdly, I will give a brief introduction to the structure of my thesis. Chapter one, I write something about Thomas Hardy the writer of the Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I say something about his life experience, his career and also the structure of my paper. Chapter Two, I clearly set force the classifications of the backgrounds in the three letters and also the connection between the backgrounds and letters. Chapter Three I analysis the Tess’s three characters that honesty to her love, brave life attitude and resistance to her fate embodied from the three letters. Chapter four conclusion, I draw a conclusion to the full-text and summarize Tess’s characters and the connections between her tragedy. The last part is work cited.
