Explore Hardy’s representation of women in his collection of short

Explore Hardy’s representation of women in his collection of short

stories The Wessex Tales

Most of Hardy’s short stories, in his book ‘The Wessex Tales’, contain

references to females or contain female characters. This essay will

explore the author’s representation of females in, two of his short

stories, ‘The Distracted Preacher’ and ‘The Sons Veto’. These stories

were chosen because they contain two contrasting but similar female

characters. Hardy presents two women who show great loyalty and no

loyalty to their families, women of different social classes and women

of adventure and passion. The author presents these women differently

from the way women were perceived in that day of age.

In Hardy’s time, 1840 – 1928, women were treated differently from

those today. In the Victorian year’s women were the sex who suffered.

Women were stripped of opportunities. Women’s opportunities depended

on their social status. Women who were of the working class or the

lower class would be looked down upon by the upper class societies.

Women did not have the opportunity to make choices of their own,

instead it was the males choice. The males oppressed women in those

days. Women did not have the opportunity to vote in government

elections, work to earn a living and any earnings their husband’s made

could not be inherited when he died. Women did not have the

opportunity to attend school unless their family could afford it. This

only changed in 1890 when elementary education became free. Women in

these ages were the inferior sex. Although this is how women were

typically treated in the Victorian days, Hardy portrays women in a

different light. For example the women he portrays are not ‘‘normal’’,

they are more in con...

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...revious statement that Lizzy

is very loyal to her family if she will take a bullet for one of her

cousins.

Thomas Hardy’s collection of short stories ‘The Wessex Tales’

represents women in different ways. He represents an incapacitated

lady as a worse person than a woman who smuggles tubs of liquor. Hardy

surprises the reader by the way he represents his females because the

stereotype of a disabled woman does not fit what we read about Sophy.

Hardy also surprises the reader by making them grow close to a

criminal which is not expected either. Hardy represents females as the

oppressed sexes, who are constantly picked on whether it is about

their social class or the decisions they have made in life. Finally, I

think the author represented women who were different from other

females, females who have stories, but he did not represent them

unrealistically.