The Contradictory Ethics Of Love And Marriage Reflected In The Female Characters In Thomas Hardy’s Short Stories

As an English literature master of19th century, Thomas Hardy’s works are in rich genres including novels, poetry and drama among which novels are much more outstanding attracting the world’s attention. The researches on Thomas Hardy’s novels at home and abroad are mainly about the pessimistic idea, narrative method, or the modern thinking of female characters. However, a few people pay attention to his short stories. For this reason they are the works which are worth studying.This thesis aims to broaden the range of Hardy’s research and focus on Hardy’s short stories by studying the contradictory ethics of love and marriage reflected in the female characters. This thesis starts from Victorian social background to analyze Hardy’s ethics of love and marriage. In addition, by analyzing the contradiction in the female characters in his short stories, it tries to explain how female characters represent the contradiction. Then this thesis continues to study the marriage of Thomas Hardy, social background of Victorian age, industrialization and feminism to further study the reasons that cause the contradiction, which gives us a better understanding to Thomas Hardy’s works.