Thomas Hardy: Criticizing the Victorian Expectations for Women through Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

Université de Lorraine

Département d’anglais

UE74 – M1 MEEF 2nd degrés

Mémoire

Thomas Hardy: Criticizing the Victorian Expectations for Women through Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

Juliette GRAS

Sous la direction de Mme Barbara Schmidt

[pic 1]

‘Tess flung herself down upon the undergrowth of rustling spear-grass as upon a bed’.

A Herkomer illustration for the Graphic serialization of Tess, December 1891.

Année 2017-2018

Table of contents

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..

PART I: Women in the Victorian Era: Birds in a cage………………………

1. Women as depicted by Victorian artists…………………………………….
2. Purity does not equal virginity……………………………………………….
3. Women, broken by society…………………………………………………..

PART II: Women and their relationship with men: Double standards and   sanctions…………………………………………………………………………

1. Double standards: a Victorian scourge………………………………..
2. The divorce question………………………………………………….
3. Inside the marriage……………………………………………………….

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………

[pic 2]

William Hatherell's illustration for the serial

published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine,

December, 1894 - November, 1895.

D.H Lawrence, in his study of Thomas Hardy, said: ‘This is the theme novel after novel: remain quite within the convention, and you are good, safe and happy in the long run, though you never have the vivid pang of sympathy on your side: or, on the other hand, be passionate, individual, wilful, you will find the security of the convention of a walled prison, you will escape, and you will die (…)’^[1]. This citation encapsulates quite well the themes of Thomas Hardy’s novels. Hardy lived in a time where women were expected to be mothers, wives and housekeepers but not much more. They were supposed to be pure and obedient. Many Victorian novels depicted them as passive and eager to marry and they wanted to warn women about the ‘dangers of marital indiscretion and ultimately transgression’^[2] but as time passed, more and more writers were changing this image of the perfect ‘angel in the house’ that society wanted to see. Hardy strongly believed that women were strong and independent beings, capable of intelligence and passion. Writing about issues such as premarital sex, children outside of marriage and adultery was taboo in the nineteenth century but Hardy wanted to show that double standards, and the hypocrite expectations of society for women were destructive. Indeed, he was outraged by the social standards established by the Victorian society and the damages they could cause to women and through his writing, he was trying to illustrate the consequences of social expectations. Will be discussed in this paper women in the Victorian era: how women were depicted by other writers in the nineteenth century to compare their representation in the literary world, the idea of purity in the Victorian society and in Hardy’s eyes and the consequences of society’s expectations as seen in Hardy’s works. Then will be analysed their relationships with men: the idea of double standards at the time and how Hardy criticized them, the question of divorce and finally the marriage as it was supposed to be for society, and how it is really represented in Thomas Hardy’s books.

I/a) WOMEN AS DEPICTED BY VICTORIAN ARTISTS

Thomas Hardy’s novels were, for most of them, a representation of women in the Victorian society. Being worried about their conditions and the messages society was trying to give them, Hardy wrote many novels to warn women about the dangerousness of these arrested ideas. This first part of my paper will be focused on women in relation with society. During the Victorian Era, women were expected to be educated and brought up to be mothers and wives only. They were seen as weak and helpless, not strong enough or not allowed to make their own decisions. The Victorian social life was marked by the ideology of separate spheres of activities for the sexes, men were the kings of the political and economic life and women were expected to stay in the private sphere, they were denied political and economic power but also sexual feelings, which will be treated later in this paper. The recurring idea society had about women was this image of an ‘angel in the house’^[3] (expression created by the poet Coventry Palmore in a poem describing his wife whom he thought was the perfect wife). Women had to be devoted and submissive to their husbands, they were supposed to stay at home and raise their children to be ‘good Christians and teach them morality’^[4]. They were supposed to protect the religious faith and to ensure the perpetuation of British society. In one of Marie Corelli’s novels, God’s Good man, one of her characters says: ‘Society! Why, now, many women in society ere atheists, and made no secret of their shame!’^[5], indeed Corelli had her on vision of the New Women, which we will discuss later.  Young girls were not allowed to read the newspapers, for fear of the evil effects of contact with the real world. Thus, women were kept in this fake world where they had no power, they were only supposed to make men’s lives easier for them to be part in the real world, in the political and economic spheres. George Moore illustrated this idea of ‘imprisoned women’ in his novel Esther Waters, in which the protagonist, a woman, walks alone in the streets of London. A man comes to talk to her and she almost faints, she does not dare to look at him in the eyes: she is not supposed to be here, she is supposed to be home with the children but it is unusual to see a woman alone in the streets, it is not her sphere. As stated by Anthony Jennings in Stranger than Fiction. Life and Literature in the Late Victorian Age: ‘Victorian Britain is associated with an idealised, prudish and unrealistic view of women. (…) Women were expected to conform to an artificial notion of 'feminine delicacy'.’ ^[6]. They had the responsibility to protect the religious faith as mothers and ensure the perpetuation of British civilisation. In God’s Good Man by Marie Correli, one of her protagonist, John Walden, cries: ‘Society! Why, now, any women in society were atheists, and make no secret of their shame!’.^[7] Marie Corelli, a writer of the Victorian Era, had a quite strong idea about the role of women in society and she wrote several novels to express it. She thought that the New Women – who were independent and daring – were a threat to modernity, they were seen as ‘a return to a previous state of barbarianism as it was challenging the rules of behaviour’^[8]. She even compared New Women with apes because they were more active sexually than they ‘should’. Marie Corelli used the feeling of shame to avoid women to be more passionate and independent. In her novels, she used emotions to create a fear of social exclusion in her readers. As Sharon Crozier De Rosa stated in her paper ‘Shame, Marie Corelli, and the New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle Britain’: ‘In both her fiction and non-fiction, Corelli revelled in the sordid dimensions of the modern world while simultaneously bitterly condemning them. She blamed and shamed transgressive modern women while indulging in their decadence.’^[9] Her message, in a word, was ‘Stay at home as it is your duty and if you do not you will have a miserable life’. One could think that it is what Thomas Hardy was doing, as his heroines very often (if not always) miss a happy ending. The fact is that Hardy loved his heroines as if they were his children but he could not give them full happiness as it would have been too chocking for his readers. He sometimes tried to protect his characters by giving them moments of respite but their fate is inevitable as they are fallen women, he had to respond to society’s expectations for them to avoid any scandal. This is what George Moore did with Esther Waters, he gave her moments of respite by finding her jobs, the fact that they end where they fall can mean ‘retirement from hardship even if it could also mean confinement for sin’ ^[10]. Thomas Hardy’s heroines, such as Tess in Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Sue in Jude the Obscure, do not show any conformity to the Victorian angel in the house. They are both emancipated but ultimately crushed by society.  Sue prefers the notion of free love over a licensed marriage which lays the groundwork for Hardy’s religious cynicism toward the contemporary religion. As Nizar Taha wrote: ‘Sue Bridehead represents the New Woman as she is rebellious and attacks the conventions of her time (…). Her intellectual emancipation and her contradictoriness which are clear throughout the novel do not only reflect Hardy’s views about woman liberation but also the intellectual literary and science development of the time’.^[11] Sue is an intellectual; she is emancipated and wants to be able to do everything that men are allowed to do. She is not the naïve Victorian woman whose main faculty relies in her obedience to her husband’s wishes and raising the children in conformity with the conventions of a society that treats her as a property. On the contrary, as Taha states: ‘this intellect and reflectiveness makes her the New Woman’^[12]. Thanks to these authors, the readers can clearly understand how women were seen and treated during the Victorian era, but one thing also stands out in these novels: the idea of purity.

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