Social, Historical and Cultural Pressures Revealed in Thomas Hardy's Writing

Social, Historical and Cultural Pressures Revealed in Thomas Hardy's Writing

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset on the second of June 1840; he was

born into the lower class. He was taught to read and write at an early

age making him want to write stories in the future. After he wrote and

got his first short story published he started to rise up the classes

into the higher middle class taking his sense of responsibility over

the rights for women of the era. His stories were based on his

personal experiences as you can tell with all the detail he uses in

his descriptions, one example is when he describes the hanging in the

Withered Arm as he described it to the final details, it's also shown

when he describes the clothes such as the milk maid in the Withered

Arm "in a long white pinafore or 'wropper'." This shows that hardy

knew exactly what the different clothes names were and exactly how

they looked. That quote also showed how the language used has changed

since before reading this story most wouldn't know what a wropper

meant.

Thomas Hardy wrote the kind of stories that were meant to make the

reader upset and feel sorry for the characters, such as: Rhoda,

Gertrude, Phyllis and Sophy. These all have unfortunate incidences in

the three short stories we read. Thomas Hardy was a visionary for

women's rights, so he wrote all of his books about women, some

examples are: 'The Withered Arm', 'The Son's Veto' and 'The Melancholy

Hussar of the German Legion.' These were about ladies outcast and

islanded in their communities. People in those times thought a lot of

things were wrong to do such as marrying out of their class, and

conceiving a bastard child people were also very superstitious

especially the lower classed people; they would rather go to a

conjurer than a doctor.

In 'The withered Arm' Rhoda is an outcast from society as a milkmaid

in this text says.