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Thomas Hardy Research Paper

1488 Words6 Pages

In his poetry, Thomas Hardy's women are one-dimensional: objects of desire and lust. To what extent is this accurate? Thomas Hardy is known to be a writer of strong female characters, powerful and independent women litter his novels. However, for his poetry, this is not the case, especially in the collection of love poems that tell the story of his first wife, Emma. Hardy and his wife Emma began to grow apart as their marriage progressed, due to her losing the beauty of her youth. After her death he wrote poems which reminisced on the happiness of their courtship back in 1870. If Thomas Hardy's poems are looked out through a feminist's viewpoint, it seems that Thomas's love was more about the objectivity of Emma’s body. As she began to age, …show more content…

It seems that once Hardy is married to Emma, the excitement of their courting has disappeared and the desire for Emma has faded now that she is married to him and ultimately, in Victorian beliefs, belongs to him. Hardy began to leave the family home and attend many balls with the young women that he lusted over. In “We Sat at the Window”, Hardy and Emma “Were irked by the scene, by our own selves”. The connotations of the word “irked” are to irritate and annoy. Emma and Thomas are sitting in each other’s company for a prolonged period of time and yet cannot stand to be near each other. However, when they were courting Thomas would sit with Emma for long periods of time, it could be seen that once Thomas had married her he didn’t have anything to talk to her about. This shows implicitly that the marriage was one based on lust alone as when the sex is taken out of the relationship, they ultimately have nothing in common and nothing to talk about. From a feminist's viewpoint, Hardy is saying that a woman is only useful and beautiful when she is young, as women begin to age they lose their value. This links to the idea stated by P.Barry in Beginning Theory about the “mechanisms of patriarchy that is the cultural ‘mind-set’ in men and women which perpetuated sexual

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