Author(s)

Yunqing Yang ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom

Corresponding Author

Yunqing Yang

ABSTRACT

A Test of Love (Qing Tan¹, 1957) and Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1892) both depict betrayal in love, marital dissolution and female vengeance. The two heroines are both kind and compassionate. They fall in love and marry their beloved ones in circumstances where their husband did not, or cannot, care much about the status of the two females. Yet soon they are betrayed and deserted by their partners, and later, the two heroines both avenged themselves. However, the similar narrative progressions in both works have different underlying contexts and character developments. Even as a ghost, Guiying still wants to believe that Wang Kui may still have a trace of humanity so that she could forgive him; while Tess, on the other hand, decides that her loss of virginity is the reason for her marital dissolution, so she decides to kill the man who has raped her. By studying the similarities and differences between the two stories, this thesis aims to find out how the social norms in the Song dynasty of China and Hardy's Victorian England are reflected by the portrayal of female figures in A Test of Love and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I will analyze the tragedy of both stories in terms of their depiction of marriage, betrayal, and vengeance, unveiling how the social norms of their time are demonstrated accordingly.

KEYWORDS

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Yue Opera A Test of Love, Female Figures, Social Norms, Marital Dissolution, Vengeance

CITE THIS PAPER

Yunqing Yang, A Comparative Study of Female Figures in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Yue Opera A Test of Love (Qing Tan). Art and Performance Letters (2025) Vol. 6: 19-31. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/artpl.2025.060404.

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