Based on Tess of the D’urbervilles and its two versions in Chinese, the static feature of English is clarifi ed from two aspects: preponderance of nouns and feeble verbs while the dynamic feature of Chinese is refl ected by the frequent and fl exible application of verbs and verbal reduplication. The realistic value of this contrastive analysis is that it can point out the key points and diffi culties in learning English which is helpful for FL teaching, translation and lexicography.