Abstract

Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a representative masterpiece written by British writer Thomas hardy in the late 19th century, and Sister Carrie was a first novel written by American writer Theodore Dreiser in the 20th century. Tess and Carrie, as the heroines in these two novels, were regarded as the immortal image of women in the history of world literature. They had the same living background, and both came from rural areas. The authors described the miserable lives of them which were dominated by men. Although these two novels were written by two writers from two different countries, they expressed the same theme of unequal women status and miserable fates in the period of capitalism, and exposed the evils of capitalism society. 

This paper aims to analyze the causes of Tess and Carrie’s different fates from the feminist perspective. It tries to compare them from the aspects of their different family backgrounds, personalities, views of love, and the author’s ideologies. Finally, the paper comes to draw a conclusion that women should set up a correct outlook on life and values, should not blindly pursue material wealth and ignore the spiritual wealth, because without any of them, life is not complete. Meanwhile, women should put themselves in the right position, trying to learn to be independent in the community, and should never be too dependent on men.

Key words: causes; Tess; Carrie; different fates

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

2 Literature review-2

2.1 The authors and the two works-2

2.1.1 Thomas Hardy and Tess of the D’Urbervilles-2

2.1.2 Theodore Dreiser and Sister Carrie-3

2.2 A brief introduction of Feminism-5

3 Similarities and Differences between Tess and Carrie-6

3.1 Similarities of Tess and Carrie-6

3.1.1 The incarnation of kindness and purity-6

3.1.2 The Spirit of independence-7

3.2The Differences between Tess and Carrie-9

3.2.1 Different attitudes towards life-9

3.2.2 Different endings-10

4 Causes of Different fates for Tess and Carrie-11

4.1 Different social backgrounds-11

4.2 Different views of love-12

4.3Different characteristics of Tess and Carrie-13

4.4 The authors’ Different ideologies-14

5 Conclusion-15

References-