Sophy Twycott In The Son's Veto as A Victim of Society

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Sophy Twycott In The Son's Veto as A Victim of Society 'The Son's Veto', tells the story of Sophy Twycott, a working class girl who marries an upper-class man, Mr Twycott, a vicar who she was a maid for and they have a child together and moved to London in order to escape gossip. Mr Twycott then dies, paying for the Sons education and preparing a villa for Sophy. Years later Sophy sees Sam Hobson again, the man who she was going to marry years ago but instead chose Mr Twycott after arguing with him. After slipping put a few times with him, they once again decided to marry however Randolph put his foot down and said no. Sophy begged him for eight years until she tragically dies of a broken heart. Thomas Hardy can relate to a number of aspects in the story. He uses his own experiences to create his main character, Sophy. Like Sophy he was from a working class background and married into the Upper class, then moved to London to escape gossip. Like Sophy he experienced Social Class discrimination, and when he married into the Upper class he and his wife had to move to London were there would be less 'prying eyes'. Hardy's intention seems to be to portray Sophy as a victim of a harsh and rigid Victorian society. However, he presents Sophy's character as demonstrating certain weaknesses that may be said to have contributed to her tragic end. Firstly, Sophy is portrayed as weak and indecisive. Her indecisiveness is shown when she changed her mind about marrying Sam just over a mere argument in the first place. This then gave Mr Twycott the chance to realise Sophy's natural beauty, and also feeling that he was responsible for her ... ... middle of paper ... ...rtain feeling for the character he is talking about and usually he uses this style when referring to Sophy and he wants us to feel sorry for her. He does so when he writes "poor thing" after the words "and she had done it all herself". Here he not only wants to give his sympathetic view on how Sophy does her hair all on her own but he wants to appeal to the reader to make them feel in the same way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I conclude that Hardy's portrayal of Sophy as a victim of society is very effective, if you were to briefly read the story you would get the impression that Randolph was responsible for Sophy's death but if you read the story in detail examining all the language and language devices used, it would be easy to see that Sophy was a victim of society.

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