本文选自《Tess of the d’Urbervilles》《德伯家的黛丝》，作者是Thomas Hardy托马斯·哈代。

Thomas Hardy托马斯·哈代（1840年6月2日－1928年1月11日），英国作家；生于农村没落贵族家庭。

哈代于英国多尔切斯特攻读建筑，及后于1862年前往伦敦，并成为伦敦国王学院学生，学习建筑工程，同时从事文学、哲学和神学的研究。哈代当过几年建筑师，曾获英国皇家建筑师协会及建筑联盟学院奖项，后致力于文学创作。

他一生写了许多作品，他的小说多以农村生活为背景，前期作品长篇小说《绿荫下》、《远离尘嚣》，将宗法制农村生活理想化，反对工业化城市文明。以后作品现实主义成分逐渐加强。长篇小说《还乡》、《卡斯特桥市长》和《林中居民》，通过书中人物的悲惨遭遇，反映工业化势力深入农村后英国宗法制农村的巨大变化。《德伯家的苔丝》和《无名的裘德》是他的两部代表作长篇小说，前者描写农村姑娘遭受富人迫害以至毁灭的悲剧，后者描写农村青年在工业社会中理想被毁灭的故事。他晚年转向诗歌创作，写出诗剧《统治者》，痛斥给人民带来苦难的暴君。

他所写作品对人民贫穷不幸的生活充满同情，对工业文明和道德作了深刻的揭露和批判，但他的作品也带有一些悲观情绪和宿命论色彩。

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《德伯家的黛丝》（Tess of the d'Urbervilles），最初在杂志上连载，1891年以书籍发行。

故事描述英格兰夏夫兹堡（Shaftesbury）有个女孩名叫黛丝，是一位善良、美丽的贫家少女，她不小心把家里唯一的老马撞死了。为了帮助家计，她来到富有的远亲德比威尔家工作，这个家庭只有一个瞎眼的老太婆（Mrs. d'Urberville）跟她的儿子亚雷克（Alec d'Urberville）。玩世不恭的亚雷垂涎她的美色，对黛丝极尽挑逗，一日周末夜在黑暗的森林里，黛丝疲惫的睡着了，被亚雷强奸失身。黛丝对他并无爱意，于是回到家中，她的母亲怕亚雷克不肯娶她。不久黛丝怀孕，产下一子，不久胎儿死去。

在众人指指点点之下，黛丝被逼流落异乡，前往牛奶工厂上班，和三名员工 Izz、Retty、Marian 一起挤牛奶，过去是不为人所知，她与牧师之子安杰（Angel Clare）相恋，最后两人论及婚嫁，但是失身的痛苦，一直盘据在她的心头。她写信给她的母亲琼（Joan），征询他们的意见，琼告诉她保持沉默。新婚之夜，黛丝向安杰坦承自己曾经失身于亚雷，却得不到丈夫的谅解，安杰给她一些钱，并告诉她，他将尽力调解自己。但安杰终究无法接受这个事实，最后搭船远走巴西。黛丝只好回到老家，黛丝的母亲责怪她不该说这件事。亚雷克又来纠缠她，黛丝迫于家计，只好与他同居。这时安杰又回来找她，黛丝杀死了亚雷克，与安杰远走高飞，不久被警察逮补，安杰拜托警察让黛丝睡饱，黛丝醒来见到警察，便问说：“他们来捉我了吗？”“是的，吾爱，他们已经来了”“我已经准备好了”，最后黛丝走向刑场。安杰则遵守她的遗言，抚养她的弟弟们。

This passage is excerpted from Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, originally published in 1891.

In this scene, Tess and her younger brother are taking beehives to deliver to another town in the early morning hours.

When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground. Still higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow, well-nigh the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky, engirdled by its earthen trenches. From hereabout the long road was fairly level for some distance onward. They mounted in front of the waggon, and Abraham grew reflective.

"Tess!" he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.

"Yes, Abraham."

"Bain't you glad that we've become gentlefolk?"

"Not particular glad."

"But you be glad that you 'm going to marry a gentleman?"

"What?" said Tess, lifting her face.

"That our great relation will help 'ee to marry a gentleman." "I? Our great relation? We have no such relation. What has put that into your head?"

"I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's when I went to find father. There's a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge, and mother said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she'd put 'ee in the way of marrying a gentleman."

His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering silence. Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance than for audition, so that his sister's abstraction was of no account. He leant back against the hives, and with upturned face made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two wisps of human life. He asked how far away those twinklers were, and whether God was on the other side of them. But ever and anon his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his imagination even more deeply than the wonders of creation. If Tess were made rich by marrying a gentleman, would she have money enough to buy a spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as Nettlecombe-Tout?

The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole family, filled Tess with impatience.

"Never mind that now!" she exclaimed.

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

"Yes."

"All like ours?"

"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted."

"Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?"

"A blighted one."

"'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there were so many more of 'em!"

"Yes."

"Is it like that really, Tess?" said Abraham, turning to her much impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information. "How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?"

"Well, father wouldn't have coughed and creeped about as he does, and wouldn't have got too tipsy to go on this journey; and mother wouldn't have been always washing, and never getting finished."

"And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to be made rich by marrying a gentleman?"

"O Aby, don't—don't talk of that any more!"

Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy. Tess was not skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that she could take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for the present and allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so. She made him a sort of nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that he could not fall, and, taking the reins into her own hands, jogged on as before.

Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous movements of any sort. With no longer a companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning against the hives. The mute procession past her shoulders of trees and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in time.

Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she seemed to see the vanity of her father's pride; the gentlemanly suitor awaiting herself in her mother's fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage, laughing at her poverty and her shrouded knightly ancestry. Everything grew more and more extravagant, and she no longer knew how time passed. A sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke from the sleep into which she, too, had fallen.

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