Hardy’s use of the women’s personality in the stories, tends to be mainly to examine their different methods of pursuing men with, in both cases, fairly colourful pasts, Kytes described as “quite the woman’s favourite”, while farmer Lodge is the father of Rhoda Brookes child. Not only does Hardy show the various women pitting themselves against each other, competing for the affections of the men, indeed, the competition leads to the eventual downfall of all taking part in both stories. In all cases, the women’s personality is portrayed in the most parts to help the reader of the piece to ascertain the availability of the various women, and how “offering” their mood is towards the men, an example being “Can you say I’m not pretty: no-cacheAccept: image/x-xpm, image/x-ico, image/gif, image/x-krl, image/x-bmp, image/x-eps, image/png, image/tiff, image/jpeg, image/x-pnm, image/x-xbm, image/fax-g3Accept-Encoding: x-gzip; q=1.0, gzip; q=1.0, identityAccept-Charset: iso-8859-1;q=1.0, *;q=0.9, utf-8;q=0.8Accept-Language: en_GB, enHost: www.makefriendsonline.comCookie: ASPSESSIONIDQQGQQVCU=EIOLJJMDBNIFLLGEIFFEOHDK; ASPSESSIONIDGGQQGVCK=CIHJPLMDKFMLCMKNNMOFMCIJ; referrer=stored_; advert=1826739678`__›í\p_PüþÊö__E__ömu@_?_x2Page.
Rhoda Brook in The Withered Arm is also portrayed as shallow, sending her son to discover “If she’s dark or fair, as tall as I.” This sentence shows the values that Rhoda sees as vitally important, with her height being seen as advantageous, while Gertrude Lodge’s complexion being of interest merely to ascertain if she is truly competition, the quote following much of 18th C society’s understanding of women, based almost alone on their looks. Hardy describes Rhoda herself in a similar vein, “dark eyes that had once been handsome.” This shows that although Rhoda was once very beautiful in her youth, age is fading her handsome dark eyes, her looks slowly withering. Indeed, Hardy includes this almost to make the reader more aware of society’s consideration of Rhoda: although she has borne Farmer Lodge’s son, he was not forced to marry her, nor did he choose to either, partially because of the social class difference between himself and Rhoda. Rhoda herself is quite bitter at this point, demanding that her son also find out “Whether she seems like a woman who ever worked for her living” clearly, I feel anyway, had Rhoda been of a higher social class, rather than “one of the village” as Gertrude Lodge so nicely explains in her near-perfect, standard English, without the Dorset accent, Farmer Lodge would probably have married Rhoda not her. This is perhaps why he cares so little for Gertrude after her beauty is damaged by the withered arm, this being not a marriage of love, but one of arrangement.
Farmer Lodge also, it seems never discusses his relationship with Rhoda to Gertrude, avoiding the subjec____________________ÈÔG_MS-DOS Text (*.txt)_ing family (and Gerald) take for granted, Burling seen as a bullying character, threatening the inspector almost as soon as he found out that he was not coming for a social visit: “I play golf with the chief inspector and was a judge for ma____________________äÕG_MS-DOS Text with Line Breaks (*.txt)_er merely as a way to advance the “provincial accented” Mr Burling in society. Mrs Burling also sees such an entrance by the inspector in much the same way, “You aren’t suggesting that anyone from this room is involved are ×GRich Text Format *.rtf)she, her family and friends are above the law. Eric sees the inspectors comment “I don’t play golf)” with naivety, failing to recognise that the comment by the i @idea of the relationship between them, and is shocked and surprised when she finally works it out, leading to her own death, although the withered arm is whole again.Tony Kytes in The Arch Deceiver is obviously what Hardy believes many Wessex men were like: he is indecisive and goes almost entirely upon the looks of the women concerned, changing his opinion of each of the women as he spends time with them, while also hel1;q=1.0, *;q=0.9, utf-8;q=0.8Sat, Apr 28, 2007Accept-Language: en_GB, enSat, Apr 28, 2007Host: www.