Delineation of Second Sex in the Early Novels of Victorian Scriber Thomas Hardy

International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VI, Issue IV, April 2019 | ISSN 2321–2705

Delineation of Second Sex in the Early Novels of Victorian Scriber Thomas Hardy

Dr. Vineet Kumar Purohit

Associate Professor, Mahaveer Institute of Engineering and Technology, Jadan, Pali, Rajasthan, India

Abstract— Hardy has been called both a misogynist and radical exponent of women’s freedom and rights. Victorian England had three sections of opinion on woman question (1) conservative patriarchal opinion, which had sexual double standards (2) Liberal Feminist group which agitated for equal rights but later upheld that woman’s true destiny lies in fulfilling the role of wife and mother. It called marriage woman’s highest vocation (3) Mona Caird’s Radical Feminist group. Hardy supported it. 1860’s witnessed the emergence of the so called ‘New Woman’, educated individualistic but still unfulfilled owing to subservience to men. Hardy did not present either metropolitan fashionable women or university educated campaigners, yet they emerge as determined and sophisticated. Hardy presents Susan as an archetypal sufferer. Bathsheba exuding independence, Eustacia as a rebel against cribbed existence. Tess as an interrogative to the conventional idea of chastity, Sue Bridehead as a representative New Woman. Who has awareness of herself raising the question of Woman’s right over her body and senses? He pleads through Fancy Day that women should be educated seriously to develop intellectual and moral qualities. It is a fact Hardy could not openly offend the dominant trend but in a very sophisticated way, he had tried to present an unconventional woman. He is sympathetic towards woman’s spirit of revolt. He felt that aim of marriage is not only sexual gratification or increase of population, but also the happiness of the individual. If marriage does not bring mutual joy, it becomes a social noose and so parting must be sought. Purity is of mind and not of body. A society built on cash nexus and women as commodity cannot give weight to humane qualities. The principle of equality should be the ordinary principle without conceding power or neither privilege on one side nor disability on the other. An attitude of tenderness is of much importance in human relationship than biological lineage.

I. INTRODUCTION

Feminism today is influenced, postulated, popularized, and precipitated by all kinds of thinkers and a distorted vision had been created before people. Earlier it was related to social and political changes but now the movement has extended to literary and cultural fields. It has become an extension of civil rights movement. Feminists have tried to find the basic reason which lies behind the inequality between the two sexes in order to undermine gender identity.

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