Disintegration Of The Image Of Unconventional Women

Thomas Hardy (1840—1928) is the last greatest writer in the British Victorian age. During his life time, he produced fourteen novels, four collections of short stories, eight volumes of poems and two epic-dramas. As a writer who wrote with great understanding of women, he created in his Wessex novels a galaxy of fascinating women characters, including Bathsheba in Far From the Madding Crowd, Eustacia in The Return of the Native, Tess in Tess of the D'urbervilles and Sue in Jude the Obscure, who try to seek a freer and more independent life, and challenge and protest against the traditional values and moral standards in Victorian age. Among them, Bathsheba and Sue are the two who articulate the most audible voice against this male-dominated society.Yet in his fiction Hardy has involuntarily disintegrated the image of these two unconventional"New Women", as he cannot surpass the male writing tradition in his adoption of old plot designs and in his employment of old allusions and images. This thesis is aimed to disclose that Hardy's failure to present outright"New Women"arising from his being confined by male cultural values and that male writing tradition leads to the two heroines'ending up traditional meek women.The thesis is composed of four chapters. Chapter One is an introduction to Hardy's life and fictional achievements. Chapter Two is concerned with the analysis of the unconventionality of the heroines in the two novels followed by a survey of feminist criticism and the advancement of the theme of the thesis. Chapters Three and Four respectively demonstrate the theme from two aspects, namely, plot construction and characterization as featured by a male perspective and abundant allusions and images in the fiction.