The motivation of Thomas Hardy’s heroines: Development of the personal conscience

144 Pages·06.858 MB·English

by  Fossum, Robert H

THE MOTIVATION OP THOMAS HARDY* S HEROINES
DEVELOPMENT OP THE PERSONAL CONSCIENCE
A The si s.
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of English
The University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
by
Robert H. Fossum
June 1950
UMI Number: EP44264
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This thesis, written by
ROBERT H« POSSUM
under the guidance of hxa.... Faculty Committee,
and approved by all its members, has been
presented to and accepted by the Council on
Graduate Study and Research in partial fulfill­
ment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Date... JOHN 4950
Faculty Committee
Chairman
TABLE OP CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION . . ..................................
^1. DESPERATE REMEDIES: CYTHEREA GRAYE ........... 1
Ktl. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE: FANCY D A Y ...... 6
A PAIR OF BLUE EYES: ELFRIDE SWANCOURT . . . . 10
Kv. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD: BATHSHEBA
EVERDENE................................ 18
V. THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA: ETHELBERTA
PETHERWIN ................. 32
L-Vl. THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE: EUSTACIA VYE . . . . 35
VII. THE TRUMPET-MAJOR: ANNE GARLAND.......... 46
VIII. A LAODICEAN: PAULA POWER ................... 50.
IX. TWO ON A TOWER: VIVIETTE, LADY CONSTANTINE . . 55
tiff. THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE: ELIZABETH-JANE
HENCHARD, SUSAN HENCHARD, LUCETTA LE
SUEUR . . . . . ................. . . . . . 61
PEI. THE WOODLANDERS: GRACE M E L B U R Y ........... 67
iZLI. TESS OF THE D 1URBERVILLES: TESS
DURBEYFIELD ................................ 77
XIII. THE WELL-BELOVED: AVICE C A R O ............. 92
XXV. JUDE THE OBSCURE: SUE BRIDEKEAD........... 97
XV. CONCLUSION ..................................... , 113
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................... 120
INTRODUCTION
literary scholars and critics have
devoted an unusual amount of time to the study of Thomas
Hardy, Hardly a year passes in which at least one new
study of the Victorian novelist does not appear. To the
casual reader, the reasons for this interest are often not
too apparent. Hardy’s technique is often clumsy, his lang­
uage cumbersome and out-dated, his plots by now trite. But
one aspect of his novels remains consistently alive and interest­
ing: his study of character.
to use E. M. Forster’s
term, round.^ f They come to life, and are as real and human
today as they were in Hardy’s own time. Edwin Muir says
this is accomplished because
He (jiard£f strips his figures of fashion, of period,
of everything which distinguishes human beings of
one time from human beings of another. He gives
them|the emotions which have always moved mankind --
those few passions, fears, and hopes which are un­
iversal. He makes them feel a grief which is grief
in itself, the grief which human beings know even
For a discussion of nround” and ^flat” characters,
see E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel.
after they have ceased to be conscious of them­
selves and in which they seem to become a part
of the general suffering of life.2
^Although Clive Holland insists that Hardy's men far
excel! his women in lifelikeness and vitality,3 most critics
agree that Hardy's heroines are among the greatest in all
literature. And, according to Henry Duff in, t?the touchstone
of a novelist's power, and the rock upon which he most fre­
quently splits, is his handling of women.”4 Although
several of the novels ostensibly center around the character
of a man, even in such works as The Mayor of Casterbridge
and\ Jude the Obscureythe heroines are drawn with more care,
with more[insight into personality and actions.‘ Only in his
last novels does Hardy begin to show an insight into the
depths of male character as acute as he had into female
nature from the beginning*
Hardy was exposed early in life to the psychology
of women. When he was a small boy in the village of Dor­
chester, the young girls of the village employed him to
,z:___________________
Edwin Muir, ”The Hovels of Mr. Hardy,” The Literary
Review, '%tQ02f June 7, 1924.
[S<3X-Clive Holland, Thomas Hardy, 0./M., p. 264.
Henry G. Duffin, Thomas Hardy; A Study of the
Hovels, p. 130
1
V
copy their love letters for them. The experience was to
prove valuable to the author of the Wessex novels, for it
'rV
enabled him to look into the heart of young womanhood and
see the forces that motivate the sex. He saw them clearly,
and came to know ’’the wealth of meaning in a woman's acts:
meaning not to be^come at by any brutal impatience of
meditation, or by the laziness of hasty ”5
e p ig ra m .
^ ""^Hardy's philosophy of fiction also ledHalwr inevit­
ably /to a'study of feminine psychology. JEn-'his essay on
’’Candour in English Fiction” he says:""
Life being a physiological'fact, its honest portrayal
must be largely concerned with. • .the relations of
the sexes, and the 'substitution for such catastrophes
as favor the false coloring best expressed by the
regulation finish that 'they married and were happy
ever ^after,1 of catastrophes based upon sexual re­
lationship as it is.6
^ ^ Inasmuch as women are generally more affected by
the relations between the sexes, Hardy's concern with their
problems is understandable.
^ Despite his concern, however, Hardy did not flatter
ionel Johnson, The Art of Thomas Hardy, p. 200. ^
Thomas Hardy, Life and Art, p. 125.
or idealize his heroines. He does not represent them as
marvels of intellectual splendor, in queenly dominion over
the society in which they move. They are fickle, wayward,
and lacking in that ^statue sqt*e) and goddess-like dignity
that women generally wish to have regarded as the character­
istic! garment of their sex.”7 They are capricious, swayed
by pa^sjionjate and conflicting motives, and they ”change
their minds oftener than they change their clothes.”®
, '(
jyUardy’s women are lovable despite their perversity.
Their creator found it practically impossible to depict a
woman unsympathetically. |ln fact, Mrs. Louise Chandler, who
was a close friend of Hardy, says that she "knows no man wrho
liked women better, and there is nothing that a woman could
do tia t would seem wrong to him.”9
Any careful study of the heroines will reveal that
they are an inherent sisterhood. Their universal perversity
and capriciousness have already been noted. They all have
a love of the unattainable. Prom the simple, rural Fancy
Mmle Macdonell, Thomas Hardy, p. 99. ^
William Phelps, Essays on Modern Movelists, p. 48«v/
Ernest Brennecke, The Life of Thomas Hardy, p. 257.
vli
Day to ji the intellectual Sue Bri dehead, Hardy’s women long
for the remote, the indifferent, the beyond-reach. Usually
it is for a man who is, for some reason, unattainable;
occasionally, as is the case with Sue, it is for an ideal;
in one instance it is for an environment that is beyond
reach.
"^Trhe most striking instance of their similarity, how-
ever, is to be found in their captivation. Hardy felt that
one of the purposes of fiction was to reveal the motives of
the characters by a careful selection of relevant event s.
Therefore, his chief means of female characterization in the
novels is psychological^analysis.In practically all cases,
ha shows his women to be motivated by emotion rather than
intelledt* This is not true of his men. J. G. Southworth
notes:
Much of the misunderstanding between the sexes in
Jlife as in his poems and in his novels arises
from a difference of motivation in the actions of
each. A man is capable of a detachment to his
problem that permits an objectivity which can
eliminate or simplify its difficulties. Just be­
cause a woman is incapable of this intellectual
^ ^For a more detailed discussion of this theory
see Hardy’s essay on rtThe Science of Fiction” (Life and Art).
H - This statement is based on M. J. Loveless’ thesis,
Thomas Hardy’s Methods of Characterizing Women as Developed
in His Novels, pp. 39-40.
viii
approach she needlessly complicates her life. This,
does not mean, of cour se, that there are not exceptions
in both sexes, nor does it mean that in something that
does not touch her emotions closely a woman is' in­
capable of using her intellect. . . . But the norm of
women is more emotionally motivated than the norm of
men.
^j/The most universal emotion by which his heroines are
motivated is love. In his early novels, Hardy places special
emphasis on the love motive. Primarily an old-fashioned
novelist, he has no scorn for the hackneyed motive. To
Hardy, love is basically woman’s whole existence. Harsh
as' his conception of that existence is, he? sees his heroines
as imagining that they \ivill find happiness by love in some
form or other. It is not love in the erotic sense alone,
^however. True, Hardy envisages his women as a symbol of
the Life Force, the W i l l - t o - Liv eBu t their desire for
love is not bound up completely with the sex instinct. It
is often concerned with some ambitious desire. The heroines
consistently crave the love of a man with superior qualities.
They are never able to satisfy ^themselves with equality;
J./G. Southworth, The Poetry of Thomas Hardy
pp. 72-75,
For a full discussion of this point, see Ernest
Brennec&e ’ s Thomas Hardy1 s Universe: A—St-udy—of—a—-Poet-’ s
Mind. ~