Queen Of Night Under The Bondage Of Tradition--A Feminist Reading Of Eustacia

The great British writer, Thomas Hardy created a series of vivid and influential female characters which well represented the women images in the nineteenth century. Eustacia, the heroine of The Return of the Native, has received various criticisms. For example, Saturday Reviewer sees Eustacia as "a wayward and impulsive woman". Albert J. Guerard thinks that Eustacia is "the first of Hardy's irresponsible and mildly neurotic hedonists." Havelock Ellis holds the view that "[s]uperficially she was timid; it was beneath that timidity that her stronger and more rebellious spirit dwelt." This thesis attempts to find Hardy's real perceptions of women as well as the root cause of Eustacia's tragedy.The thesis is structured in five parts. The Introduction gives a survey of Hardy's life, career, and current studies of The Return of the Native. Since the publication of the novel in 1878, it has attracted the attention of different critical theories, and critics have interpreted this work on various levels- its characters, environment, tragedy, plot, writing style and so on. This part traces the interpretive history of The Return of the Native from various perspectives in the hope that it can equip my present feminist reading of the text with a rich and broad critical background.Chapter One is devoted to a discussion of some key concepts of feminist criticism, Hardy's perception of woman, and the female characters created by him. It points out that Hardy creates "real", flesh-and-blood heroines. This part is to cast a critical glance on the bias-based accusation of Hardy as a "misogynist" and argue that The Return of the Native can be fruitfully approached from a feminist perspective.Chapter Two analyzes the background of the story: Egdon Heath in the Victorian Age, discusses Eustacia's desires for passion and better life, and her mischief and misery brought by the cruel society. It also traces the dynamical process of Eustacia's disillusions.Chapter Three sets out to explore the unreality of Eustacia's aspirations and the real cause of her inevitable misfortune. Eustacia yearns for passionate love, happy life and independence, but the reality makes her disillusioned in the end. Her destiny shows that woman's social and economic condition in the Victorian Age is the main obstacle to woman's self-fulfillment.The thesis concludes that Eustacia, a rebellious, ambitious and passionate girl, is incompatible with the Victorian society. Her aspirations, so out of tune with her surroundings, are doomed to failure. Eustacia's tragedy is a tragedy of woman, a tragedy of the Age; without the change of woman's status, Eustacia's tragic fate is unavoidable. From Hardy's representation of Eustacia's fate, we can see that he perceives women as female models who are active, assertive, self-determined and unconventional, and are unorthodox by Victorian standards of femininity. However, owing to the limitations of his time, Hardy cannot realize the cause of women's predicament, nor can he find a way out for them. This is the real reason why his heroines cannot avoid a tragic fate.