Tess And Sue: New Victorian Women In Hardy's Novels

Thomas Hardy, a magnificent English novelist in the nineteenth century, was famous for his novels of character and environment, but once notorious for his writing about fallen women who acted against the Victorian social morality. Suffering from the fierce disapproval and condemnation from critics on the publication of Tess of the D'Urbevilles and Jude the Obscure, he gave up novel-writing and turned to poetry. From the last few decades of the last century, a considerable revival of interest in Thomas Hardy's works has taken place. At both critical and popular levels of appreciation, his novels now enjoy the attention they so fully merit.Illuminated by the feminism interpretations on Hardy's works, the author write this paper to study Hardy's new ideas on woman question in the Victorian society and to reinterpret his two heroines—Tess and Sue, by comparing these two heroines with the traditional proper ladies of the Victorian era.In the nineteenth-century Britain, women did not have the equal opportunities for education and employment, compared with men. They were often cast outside the center of politics and economy, and constrained at home. Victorian patriarchy promoted the cult of true womanhood, which idealized women into what was called "the Angel in the House"—a concept that still influences patriarchal thinking today. The angel, who fulfilled her patriarchal gender role in every way, was characterized as fragile, submissive and sexually pure. Her proper sphere was the home; she would not venture beyond that sphere because to do so would be considered unwomanly. Women who had these characteristics were idealized and considered worthy of every form of men's protection. Women in that era had no self, no individuality, and what they should do was try their best to fulfill the innate and holy roles at home, to be subordinate to men, and to obey their orders.This paper tries to analyze Hardy's two heroines—Tess and Sue by comparing them with the traditional perfect women of the Victorian era, to illustrate their modern ideas and progressive behaviors, to demonstrate that they were new women of their period.