Textual Construction Of Bathsheba's Image

Thomas Hardy(1840～1928), British poet, novelist. The descriptions of the femalecharacters in Thomas Hardy's novels are controversial, and critics hold different views as to thefemale characters he created. In the nineteenth century, women are defined as obedient andresistant to sexuality. Many writers also describe them as naive and abiding by the socialconventions and moral standards. However, the female characters in Hardy's works areindependent, free and sexually vital. The construction of such unconventional femalecharacters has drawn critics' attention to Hardy's own attitude towards them.Nevertheless, his attitude is not self-evident. His perception of women should bedifferentiated from Oak's. Oak, in his rustic guise of a pastoral shepherd, seems to be the veryembodiment of sincerity, honesty and justice. However, it is exactly his "moral" stance andjudgment that drives Bathsheba into a marriage without love. Between the lines, the authorimplicitly shows his sympathy for such ending.Hardy intends to tell us that the relationship between the two sexes, which is defined bysocial conventions, has ignored the most basic and instinctive attractions between the twoparties. The sexuality revealed by females, their potentials and their possibility to realizethemselves are all repressed by the conventional morality. Thomas Hardy's Bathsheba,although imperfect, glitters with the natural features of a female. She has subverted thetraditional female images in the Victorian society. The target of my thesis is to redefineBathsheba through revealing Hardy's construction of her femininity as opposed to the relevantmale characters, which actually betrays his sympathy and approval. As far as I see, Hardychallenges the Victorian notion that the attitude toward sexuality becomes one of the essentialdefining standards for morality in a woman.This thesis is divided into the following four parts.In the first part, I intend to give an overview of diverse criticisms on Hardy's attitude towomen: some argue that he holds a negative attitude to them while some regard him as havingsympathy for them, and still some others think his attitude ambivalent.In the second part, I will present evidence[s] from the nineteenth-century socio-culturalcontexts in England as well as from the author's personal background to show their impact onHardy's creative sensibility in terms of gender.The third part, with a detailed textual analysis, will be the most important part of this thesis.First of all, I will justify Hardy's attitude from the narrative perspective and try to argue that theauthor's attitude towards Bathsheba is different from Oak's. Then on this sound basis, I will tryto prove that Hardy is approval of Bathsheba through presenting her identification with natureand the male characters's identification with patriarchy. Then Hardy contrasts Bathsheba'sunconventionality with the patriarchal suppression, especially that of Oak, who practicallyserves as the moral watchdog in taming the natural instincts of women.The last part will be a conclusion of Hardy's attitude on women and its continuousinfluences on his later novels and writers.