Compare the ways Wilde presents the main female protagonist in The importance of being Earnest with the way Stoppard presents the women in Arcadia.

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Explore the ways Stoppard presents the characters of Thomasina and Hannah in ‘Arcadia’. Compare the ways Wilde presents the main female protagonist in ‘The importance of being Earnest’ with the way Stoppard presents the women in ‘Arcadia’. How far do you agree that Stoppard's presentation is more effective?

Stoppard uses the characters of Hannah and Thomasina to convey the principal theme; the shift from enlightenment to romanticism . The valiant characters of Thomasina and Hannah are depicted as being ambitious, intuitive and act as the vehicle from where Stoppard is allowed to express his views regarding women in the Victorian era. Stoppard believes that women were undervalued in a society from where they achieved so much, and by depicting the likes of Thomasina and Hannah as independent, headstrong women, he is  demanding the rethink of the archetypal view of Victorian women in the modern era.

Hannah Jarvis, in Arcadia encapsulates the enlightenment era; with her emphasis on logical reasoning to reinforce proposed theories and the confrontations between Hannah and Bernard portray the vast differences between the periods of enlightenment and romanticism. Hannah believes in the ideology of romance being a ‘romantic sham’ and challenging Bernard (who firmly embodies the era) as being ‘reckless’ and completely tarnishing his proposed theory as being ‘bollocks’. Hannah further conveys the more pragmatic concept of the enlightenment period in her dress sense - ‘she wears nothing frivolous’, compared to the ‘flamboyant’ Bernard who Hannah believes is entrapped in the ignorance and false portrayals of romance.

Hannah believes in ‘geometry’, ‘reason’ and ‘intellect’ and therefore is represented as a Newtonian in the play; her idyllic world is deterministic (similarly to that of Newtons) both simultaneously  logical and ordered. The relationship between Newton and Hannah is further represented in the fact that ‘Newtons equations go both forward and backwards’ and as Thomasina explained ‘they do not care which way’. The fact that Hannah is a palindromic name, significantly places Hannah in the firm clutches of Newtonian classism.

Parallel to Hannah's investigations is the reoccurring metaphor of the transformation of the garden and hermitage. The alteration of the Sidley Park garden from the ‘ordered’ and uniformed, to the ‘disordered’ and ‘unrefined’, represents Hannah's skepticism regarding romanticism. ‘constructing their fake wilderness..... built a fake hermitage’ - the fact that the Hannah views the renovations of the garden as a ‘wilderness’ suggests that Hannah believes romance is unpredictable and therefore dangerous because it clouds logical judgement which is able to move the world forward. Its almost as if she sees romanticism as a inhibitor for the success of academia. Therefore, Hannah retains the belief that both the hermitage and the garden symbolize ‘the decline from thinking to feeling’; this further reinforcing the idea of the conversion from classical order to romantic chaos.

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Thomasina, like Hannah, is also used to convey the conversion from enlightenment to romanticism. Thomasina at the age of thirteen exhibits an intellect that is well beyond her age, even her time. At the age of thirteen she is familiar with ‘the second law in thermodynamics’ and has ascended from being her tutors ‘sparring partner’ to ultimately surpassing him with intellectual superiority. According to her mother, Thomasina has understanding that ‘exceeds anything that we can offer’ and the fact that Lady Croom explains that Thomasina must marry before she becomes ‘over educated’ suggests that Stoppard portrays Thomasina as the reformer who defies ...

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