Name: Joshi Toral
Paper: 5 Thomas Hardy as a novelist
Topic:"Hardy's portrayal of women character" in his novels
SEM: 4,
M.A. part 2.
Year: 2012
Submitted to,
Dr.Dilip Barad,
M.K Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar
Introduction:
Hardy is a remarkable twentieth-century
poet as well as a nineteenth-century novelist. He was writer nature in his
novel more. In his the Wessex novel are gallery of women portraits. The
important women figure can be divided into groups.
In this we took about his five novels
is….
1
Tess of the D’ Urbervilles.
2 The Return of the Native.
3 The Mayor of Caster Bride.
4 Two on a Tower.
5 The Well Beloved.
In these novels Hardy has portrait
women as an object. He is a ported women and the low in Victorian England.
This “Victorian dichotomy” is a moral
and intellectual construct or generalization that was created largely by males
without much reference to human realities to say that any women who is not chaste
must be depraved is to put half of the human creation into just two categories
and this must be a gross over simplification.
Probably Hardy’s must challenging
rejection of his dichotomy was to give
“Tess of the D’ Urbervilles the sub-title”, “A Pure Women”.
Hear Hardy trying to make is that Tess
is essentially pure and innocent, despite the fact that she has been exploded
and abused by Alec. In this novel Angel seems to regard her in this way, and
the irony of this situation is that he himself had a sexual relationship
outside marriage. From his point of view there is one low for a woman, another
for a man.
“The
Return of the Native”
Eustain Vye combines the strength of a man with the beauty of a woman. Like the
health, Eustacia is untamable, dark and wild. The Victorian ideas displayed in
Eustacia’s feminine desires conflicts with this masculinity.
“She had the passions and
instincts which make a model goddess that is those which make not quite a model
woman” (Ch xi)”
The women characters in the novels of Thomas
Hardy:-
(1)
Tess of the D Urbervilles:-
Ø Tess
Tess was the eldest of the
Durbeyfield family, between her mother and Tess, with her nation school
education, lay a gap of two hundred years, that between the Jacobean and the
Victorian ages. Thu both have their thinking is also different to each other.
Tess never ague with her mother diction.
“ {… } Quite a Malthusian
towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and
brothers when it was such a trouble to nurse and provide for them.”
Tess thinking about and help her
family, she went to work, as soon as she left school on near by farms hay making,
harvesting and preferably, milking and butter- making like at her home.
Tess overcame her reluctance to go
after forming an unfavorable impression of a
Alac
D’Urbevilles.
“She
was a fine and handsome girl-not handsome than some other possibly-but her
mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to color and shape.
She was a red ribbon in her
hair…”
“It would always be summer and autumn, and you always
courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the
past summer-time”
Tess never listens her mother advice.
And she despite her mother’s advice. Tess has to tell the truth. She wrote to
Angel, but the letter she slipped under his door was thrust under the carpet,
and he did not see it.
Angels’s love was so ideal and that
his Victorianism so engrained that he could not compromise when Tess urged him
to forgive her.
“Forgive
me as you are forgiven! I forgive you, Angel’
O Tess,
forgiveness dose not apply to the case! You were one person, now you are another,
My God- how cal forgiveness meet such a grotesque- prestidigitation as that {…}
I repeat, the women I have been loving is not you. Another woman in your
shape.”
His
idealized Tess was ‘dead’ and separation followed almost inevitably.’ Where a
woman of the world might have provided, Tess accepted his decision ‘as her
deserts’ she ‘sought not her’ own, was not provoked. Though no evil of his
treatment of her’
‘Once victim,
always victim’
“Justice was done
and the president of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase had ended his sport
with Tess”
Hardy’s
giving sub-title
“A Pure Woman”, to Tess aroused great controversy among Victorians.
To Hardy, it had nothing to do with purity in the narrow moral sense. Purity is
of the spirit, and with a spiritual reference. She is not almost but absolutely
pure. Whether morality is of mind or of the hard or both there cannot be two reputable
opinions about Tess’s morals.
“She has an
attribute which caused D’Urberville’s eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was
luxuriousness of aspect, a fullness of growth, which made her appear more of a
woman than she really was.”
(2.) The Return of the Native:-
Ø Eustacia Vye:-
A
girl of nineteen, she lived with her grandfather captain Vye at Mistover Knap.
She
was the daughter of a cordite band master at Badmouth, and well educated. When
her parents died she was live in Eldon, and dreaming of a glamorous life at
Budmouth or else where.
“Eustacia Vye was the raw
material of a divinity}
She has the passions and
instincts which make a model goddess that is those which make not quite make a
model woman. To see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain
darkness enough to from its shadow. She has pagan eyes, full of nocturnal
mysteries. Her moods recalled lotus-eaters her motions the ebb and flow of the
sea her voice, the viola. To be loved to madness such was her great desire.”
Hear Hardy portrayal beauty of woman
and also her desire. The darkness in which she is introduced on rainbarrow is
in harmony with her lot. The telescope and hour gloss which she often carried
suggest ‘The desire of something a far’ Clym’s return from Paris was like a man
caring from heaven.
“A young and claver man was coming
into that lonely heath from, of all contrasting place in the world, Paris. It
was like a man coming from heaven.”
When he spoke to her, her perfervid
imagination produced ‘a cycle of visions’. The captain suggested that reading had
filled her head with much ‘romantic-non-sense’.
“If Miss Eustacia had less romantic
nonsense in her head it would be better for her”
She wanted “life music poetry,
passions, war and all the beating of pulsing that is going on in the great
arteries of the world.” In a moment of tragic decision, shortly before her
death.
“Still in death the expression
of her finely carved mouth was pleasant external rigidity had seized upon it in
momentary transition between fervor and resignation”
Eustacia fails to understand, dose not
even try to understand that her own frantic quest for the homeland after
heart’s desire live.
(3)The Mayer of Casterbridge:-
Ø Elizabeth- Jane
Elizabeth Jane was the child of
Michael Henchard and Susan, when Henchard sold his wife at Weydon- Priors. She
took Elizabeth -Jane with her and emigrated to Canada with Newson. The child
died three months after the sale. She is a part of the tragic irony of the
story, and also he did not discover that she was Newson’s daughter until after
Susan’s death.
“Appeared as a
well-formed young woman of eighteen, completely possessed of that ephemeral
precious essence youth, which is itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or
contour”
She was almost look-like of her
mother, Susan. Hardy writes:
“A glance was sufficient to
inform the eye that this was Susan Henchard’s
Grown-up daughter
her former spring-like specialties were transferred so dexterously by time to
the second figure, her child-
She was devoted to mother and showed a
strong respectable complex.
This revolution of her mind on her
first appearance in the novel, particularly the last sentence in the passage quire
above, agrees well with her conclusive feeling much quoted to illustrate
Hardy’s thought.
“Happiness
is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain”
And
also Elizabeth Jane also says..
“She has a more
important narrative function, dependent on her being placed naturally at the
center of a web of characters, Susan, Henchard, Farfrae and Lucetta.”
In this novel we can sys that woman
not thickening beyond is limited but at that time mad do what ever they do in
his life. And also man use woman as a object in his life.
(4)Two on a Tower;
Ø Lady Viviette Constantine:-
Viviette
is a refined Eustacia with incoherent aspirations. She scarcely attracts us at
first but succeeds eventually in winning our sympathy. She had unhappy married
to Sir Blount Constantine.
“There
was an appearance visits her of confidence on lady Constantine’s face. She wore
a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and being –the only person in the spacious apartment
she looked small and isolated the soft dark eyes large, and melancholy by
circumstances for more than by quality were the natural indices of a warm and
affectionate, perhaps slightly voluptuous temperament languishinf for what of
something to do, childish or suffer Clinical correlation & further
evaluation.”
In
this novel we see that Viviette is not happy with her married life. And also
she was live alone in the society. Now women are suffer in the softy Hardy
produce her with this character.
(5)The Well Beloved
Ø The Three Avice
(I)
Avice caro- the first
grand mother.
(II)
Anne Avice – the
second, mother.
(III)
Avice Pierston- The
third.
The pursuit of the well Beloved
and The Well Beloved, the central figure,
Jocelyn-Pierston
is men obsessed both with the search for his ideal woman and with sculpting the
perfect figure of a naked Aphrodite.
The first of the three Avices with who
Pierston through he was in love, was a girl of seventeen or eighteen with brown
hair and bright hazed eyes.
Avice the second was a washer woman a
daughter of.
“I have loved fifteen a ready!
She tells him laughing and when he asked with a sinking heart, Am I one of them?
She ponders critically before she replies. “You was; for a week”.
He is not discouraged, he takes her to
London and for
short time she was his servant in Landon, where he proposed to her only to
discover that she was secretly married at home.
“My mother’s, and my grand
mother’s” said she, looking at him no longer as a possible husband, but as
strange possiblised relic in human from and were you my great grandmother’ s
too?”
In this novel Hardy portrayal how
woman is a change ignition but the. His can’ thickening meet a weal beloved in
his life. May be he fail to see a thing in his life that’s why three jometion
he can’t surch his beloved.
Conclusion
A possible conclusion to be drawn from
the forgoing facts is that Hardy’s heroines are characterized by a yielding to
circumstances that is limited by the play of incident. They are never quite
bad. These qualities in them which saves them from ever being very bad. They
have an instinctive self-respect, and instinctive purity.
Hardy as woman character sees a life
of society and also such thing to in thus society. And also see an uncommon
woman. Beautiful and nature see also seas woman in society and also camper to
nature and woman also. How both effect each other.
