Women play victims in Thomas Hardy’s short stories, roles that were

Women play victims in Thomas Hardy’s short stories, roles that were

typical of Victorian women in general

“Women play victims in Thomas Hardy’s short stories, roles that were

typical of Victorian women in general” Discuss with references at

least three of Hardy’s short stories

Thomas Hardy in his short stories “The Withered Arm”, “Tony Kytes, the

Arch Deceiver” and the Winters and the Palmleys” presents his readers

with a series of unsettling visions of the relations between men and

women, women mainly coming worse off. For example Rhoda of “The

Withered Arm”, the poor outcast milkmaid, not even respected by her

own son, or pretty Harriet Palmley, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, evil

due to her education, therefore not a victim, but instead a horrible

person. Gertrude also, a good, obedient, “rosy cheeked titsy-totsy

little body enough” until she gets her arm withered from a curse that

drives her to desperation to find a cure for the “disfigurement”. All

these women, due to the fact that they’re female, all ended off worse

off and in the course of this essay I am going to analyse whether his

female characters were victims or merely women of their time.

Hardy’s stories, mainly set 50 years before they were written, are set

mostly in the 1830’s period of Victorian Britain, when women were

considered lower than men and didn’t usually get any rights or

education, especially in the rural areas such as Wessex, where Hardy's

“Wessex Tales” where set. Women were also oppressed in the way of not

being allowed high place jobs, the vote and certainly not a place in

Parliament or anything that might change Britain in any way, which was

quite ironic considering Britain was being ruled by Queen Victoria, a

women h...

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...herself. The other two, Unity and Hannah are in the same

boat in the way that they both want to steal Tony away from Milly but

when it comes to Tony actually asking them to marry him they both

refuse out of pride. They are not victims but women of their time, so

they do not gain my pity, as that’s just the way it was. As for the

male characters such as Lodge, who dies peacefully of old age, leaving

most of his money to a reformatory for boys after being the main

victimiser and Tony Kytes also, after humiliating Milly totally and

having a happy ending is unfair considering what happened to all the

women. I think Hardy does exaggerate the victimisation of the women

and praise the men in his stories and I do feel sympathy for the

majority of the women but as for the rights, characters and education

of all the women, that’s them just being women of their time.