A Feminist Perspective On Thomas Hardy's Three Novels

Feminism, since it took shape in the 1960s, has developed into a mature theory, in spite of the fact that its development has been full of controversies, changes and even reversals. At present, its influence has expanded across intellectual areas with few exceptions, and one of the reasons for this phenomenon lies in its active assimilation of useful ideas in other theories. Feminism has been drawing upon and adapting a whole spectrum of theoretical paradigms, notably Marxism, psychoanalysis, philosophy and deconstruction. Therefore, feminism still exists full of vitality, despite the fact that many theories have been gradually forgotten because of their own demerits. And feminist literary criticism has become one of the major theories used to analyze a man writer's works.Thomas Hardy, one of the greatest British writers of the 19th century, has been focused on by some critics since the publication of his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. The three novels studied in this thesis, Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, are about love triangle, in which complicated relationships between men and women are most vividly shown to readers. The three novels are generally acknowledged as Hardy's most distinguished works and naturally become many readers' favorites.This thesis, in the light of feminism, studies Hardy's ambivalent attitude towards women in his contradictory writings and reveals the patriarchal ideology reflected in the three above-mentioned novels. It consists of five parts.The first part is an introduction to Hardy's life, his works and the background to the research work.The second part discusses feminist literary criticism, patriarchy and patriarchal ideology and tackles representatives and viewpoints of two feminist camps.The next part is a comprehensive analysis of the three novels. This part is further divided into three sections: Hardy's contradictory writings of women and the patriarchal ideology reflected in the male protagonists and in the author. The first section, on the one hand, discusses Hardy's creation of New Woman and on the other hand exposes his biases against women through his creation of fickle, infirm and tempting women images. The second section emphatically reveals the patriarchal ideology reflected in the male protagonists mainly through analysis of their roles as gazers and sexists and of their discourses. The third section is on the patriarchal ideology reflected in the author.Part four discusses the causes of Hardy's contradictory writings of women.The final conclusion is that Hardy, as a man writer living in the Victorian England dominated by patriarchal ideology, shows prejudices against women in his descriptions of women and in his presentation of heroes' and heroines' discourses, and his attitude towards women is ambivalent. However, his creation of New Woman is progressive in the given times and his great contribution to British literature cannot be ignored. The study of Hardy's ambivalent attitude towards women is not to build a new wall between men and women but to pull down the existing wall to build a society in which men and women live in harmony with one another.