Hardy's Female Figures And The Evolution Of His View On Love And Marriage

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is unique. He gained, and has kept, fame both as a poet and as an author. Yet he started his career as an architect. His novels and poems are now known and loved throughout the world, yet he was born, grew up and lived most of his long life in a provincial backwater. When he died, he was known for his fatalistic views of life and for being an agnostic; and yet the young Hardy wanted to be a vicar. He longed to be educated at one of the great universities; although failing his ambition he is now one of the world's most studied authors. His blend of nostalgic longing for a simpler past, together with a philosophical view of the world, shows us unique insights into the human nature. He managed in all more than 70 years of writing novels, short stories, poems and the occasional theatrical exploit. And his creative output is amazing in the world.Hardy is so unique that people intends to study him with unique methods. This thesis attempts to analyze the female figures in his novels. It is well known that most of Hardy's stories end as a tragedy. He is a master of portraying female images, and his glittering tragic female figures have kept their artistic charm till now. For example, Tess sacrifices her happiness for the sake of her family responsibility. Eustacia is implicated by her character, and Sue is compelled by the environment. Facing reality, these three female protagonists make efforts to convert their destiny and chase the satisfying love and marriage on their own. However, the harsh social and environmental surroundings ruin their ideal. They express the feeling from the bottom of Hardy's heart. It matters toanalyze Hardy's female figures in depth, for it can lead to an inquiry into his view of love and marriage.In the Introduction, the evolution of Hardy's view on love and marriage is briefly introduced, and two major problems are presented: one answers the question why to categorize Hardy's female figures into a certain mode, the other is to answer the question why to study Hardy from the point of view of these female images. The solution of these two problems applies a basis for the direct explication in the text.In the first chapter, according to the analysis of his female figure's feature, these women can be grouped into three types, namely the characters of Soul, Flesh and Soul-Flesh. These three types are generalized into a mode and named as the natural mode of passion, and this nomenclature can act as a reference to the evolution of Hardy's view on love and marriage.The second chapter of this thesis ranges widely to track of the evolution of Hardy's view on love and marriage. In the long span of his writing during the early 1870's, Hardy sings the praises of pastoral love because of his zeal to the simple country life. Far from the Madding Crowd depicts the ideal Wessex love life. Bathsheba, the leading female character, keeps pursuing her ideal, but gets married with a man to whom she cannot show her true love. This inexplicit fixed position for Bathsheba is also the exhibition of Hardy's mental contradiction on reality.From the end of the 1870's to the middle of the 1880's, the patriarchal society in Wessex was shaken unexpectedly, and many love and marriage tragedies were played out on the stage of life. As an austere author of realism, Hardy always details the certainty of these tragedies faithfully. Eustacia in The Return of the Native is a much more disputed figure. As a representative of Soul-Flesh, the contradiction between her longing for the freedom of the metropolitan life and the restraint by the environment around her is exactly Hardy's understanding of the contradiction between the traditionalpatriarchal society and the brand new capitalist class.In the late 1890's, with the development of the new industrial society, Hardy finds that the marriage of the new capitalist class changes from the former, maybe more advanced view, to the present, possibly more backward consciousness. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, Hardy mercilessly condemns the sin t...