Both stories end with the love between the main characters falling apart, this may have been because Hardy himself had a very discontented and complicated marriage. In ‘The Withered Arm’ Gertrude falls in love with Farmer Lodge, however we are led to believe that Farmer Lodge had only married Gertrude because she was young and beautiful. We come to this conclusion that this is the case because Farmer Lodge is described as ‘an actor’, conveying to us that he may have deceived Gertrude and played on her naivety. We are also told that Rhoda herself was once young and beautiful and that as her beauty faded her relationship with Lodge may have as well. Lodge most likely left Rhoda as she began to prematurely age as the result of a long, hard working life. As the state of Gertrude’s arm takes a turn for the worst, Lodge’s interest in his wife begins to decline, even though Gertrude still loves Lodge. Gertrude’s attempts to cure her arm, in order to restore her husband ever lessening love for her, lead her down the path of witch-like medicines, spells and hexes, finally concluding in her destruction.
Throughout most of ‘The Melancholy Hussar’ Phyllis is engaged to a young man whom she has no feelings for, but who is well respected and of a higher social standing than herself. However when a troop of foreign soldiers arrives she falls for a young soldier named Matthaus Tina, they meet across a stone boundary everyday and eventually Phyllis agrees to elope with Matthaus. On the night they are to run away Phyllis catches sight of her fiancé Humphrey Gould and decides that it is her duty to stay and feels it is the right thing to do. Later she discovers that Humphrey Gould has been unfaithful to her and had already married another young woman whom he had fallen in love with. Matthaus and his friend are found and shot for desertion, and Phyllis is left alone again.
‘The Withered Arm’ is a slow moving, unexciting story to begin with but is rapidly accelerated by many ironic coincidences and a jump of six years. Thus allowing for character development, which would normally not be possible in a short story such as this. The many coincidences not only accelerate the story but also make it more intriguing whilst almost unnoticeably bringing the main characters together for a dramatic ending. There is one main coincidence in ‘The Melancholy Hussar’ that turns the tide of the whole story. As Phyllis is about to escape the life she loathes so much and go to live with the man she loves, she is taken aback by the sound of her fiancé’s voice and lacks the courage at the critical moment to carry on and is bound to her duty by her conscience and feeling of guilt. This prevents her from escaping with Matthaus and she is only to discover that her faith in Humphrey Gould is misplaced, as he is already married. This leaves us wondering of what might have happened had Phyllis joined Matthaus and Cristoph. Whether had she gone with them would they have been shot, or could she have saved them?
In both stories the women are restricted and isolated. Rhoda is isolated by choice and lives away from Farmer Lodge and the other workers. She does not converse with any of the workers or Lodge. As a result of this isolation, Rhoda is seen locally as a witch; this only separates her further from the others. Phyllis is isolated not out of her own choice but because of her farther; who wishes for a quiet life away from others, “If her social condition was twilight, his was darkness. Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while her twilight oppressed her.” Telling us that she was isolated yet could see and dreamt of the outside world; he was almost completely blind to the world around him. Twilight occurs before imminent darkness, she is almost doomed to a life of loneliness. “Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while her twilight oppressed her.” Conveying to us that he enjoyed his isolation from others and had no wish to communicate with the rest of the world, whilst she was restricted by her father and wanted to break away from an eternity in the social shadow. Gertrude’s life is restricted because of her withered arm and she spends most of her married life searching for a cure. I believe that Hardy is sympathetic towards the women of this time as they were caged by social convention. A virgin was considered pure and respectable whilst a women who was not a virgin was considered a whore and unclean. The social ladder played a huge part in women’s lives, as they were not permitted to marry anyone supposedly below them, as this was seen as disrespectful towards their family. When Humphrey Gould asked Phyllis to marry him, she would have been expected to accept as he was of a higher social standing and his family were well known and respected. Out of all the women in the stories I feel that Phyllis represents the plight women the best. She is proposed to by a man she barely knows and certainly does not love, and accepts his offer to escape the life she is confined to. She is not permitted to marry the man she loves because of his social standing and because her farther would not approve.
