Critics have used various approaches to explain the paradoxes or inconsistencies evident in the characterization of Angel Clare in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891); however, by examining the social purity movement and its response to increasingly popular theories of degeneration at the fin de siècle, we can understand the interplay of contradictory ideas at work in Angel. The tension between the supposedly modern, secular viewpoints that Angel exhibits in the beginning of the narrative and his unexpected return to a conservative and misogynistic ideology upon Tess's confession of her “fall” puzzles readers, fellow characters, and perhaps even the narrator of the novel itself, who accounts for the alteration as simply the hypocrisy of a man who “was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings” (Hardy 265; vol. 2, ch. 39). Oliver Lovesey suggests that the reason why “Clare somewhat bombastically renounces his father's Christianity, but . . . still stumbles on elements of traditional social morality” and why he “bypasses the resurrection, but cannot negotiate around Tess's ‘unintact state’” is that Tess's “virginity replaces the resurrection in his religion of unbelief” (913–14). Lovesey argues that Angel displaces religious faith in Christ's resurrection onto a material substitute, Tess's virginity, and that the revelation of her lack of virginity then catapults him into a despair akin to the despair of annihilated spiritual belief, “the void of an unbeliever's hell” (924). While I am also concerned with Angel's fetishization of virginity, I believe that it is significant that his obsession with purity extends beyond Tess's virginity to encompass rural space as a whole, a space in which Tess's virginity constitutes but one part. The very capaciousness of Angel's devotion to purity situates him squarely within the environmental binaries characteristic of later theories of urban degeneration.

中文翻译：

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城市的堕落，乡村的朴实：德伯维尔哈代苔丝中的遗传污点

批评者使用了各种方法解释在托马斯哈代的安吉尔克莱尔的表征中明显的悖论或不一致德伯家的苔丝（1891）；然而，通过研究社会纯洁运动及其对世纪末日益流行的退化理论的反应，我们可以理解在安吉尔工作中相互矛盾的想法的相互作用。安吉尔在叙事开始时表现出的所谓现代世俗观点与苔丝承认自己“堕落”后出人意料地回归保守和厌恶女性的意识形态之间的紧张关系，这让读者、其他角色甚至小说的叙述者都感到困惑本身，他将这种改变解释为一个人的虚伪，他“在惊讶于他的早期教义时仍然是习俗和传统的奴隶”（Hardy 265; vol. 2, ch. 39）。奥利弗·洛夫西（Oliver Lovesey）暗示，“克莱尔有点夸张地放弃了他父亲的基督教信仰，但是...... . . 仍然绊倒了传统社会道德的元素”以及为什么他“绕过复活，但不能围绕苔丝的‘完好状态’进行谈判”是因为苔丝的“处女在他的不信宗教中取代了复活”（913-14）。洛夫西认为，安吉尔将基督复活的宗教信仰转移到了物质替代品上，苔丝的童贞，而她缺乏童贞的启示随后使他陷入了一种类似于被消灭的精神信仰的绝望，“非信徒地狱的空虚” （924）。虽然我也关注安吉尔对童贞的迷恋，但我相信他对纯洁的痴迷超越了苔丝的童贞，将整个乡村空间包括在内，苔丝的童贞只是其中的一部分。