Rhoda lives with her son, alone and isolated. ‘Their course lay apart from the others, to a lonely spot’. Her small cottage symbolises her: ‘it was built of mud walls, the surface of which had been washed away by many rains into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face visible’. Rhoda was once young and beautiful, but her beauty has been washed away from years of hard work, depression and loss of hope. She is an outcast in society, thought to be a sorceress.
Gertrude is the complete opposite of Rhoda. She is young, beautiful and married to a rich man who loves her beauty. Her husband’s wealth makes her welcomed and accepted amongst the village folk. She seems to be a very nice person, friendly and sincere. It is quite surprising when she befriends Rhoda, for you would expect rich folk to look down on the poor as if they were inferior and worthless. Thomas Hardy is showing rich women in a different view, as they are normally shown as being arrogant, self-centred and treating most of the poor as worthless servants.
Gertrude is very young and is thought of as a young child rather than a woman: ‘beside him sat a woman, many years his junior- almost, indeed, a girl.’ We can see from this that women often married at a young age where as the men were much older. Farmer Lodge treats her like a possession; something to get big headed about and show off. ‘You must be expected to be stared at just at first, my pretty Gertrude.’ He is pleased when she is noticed even when she is in an uncomfortable situation: ‘Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great golden seals hung like a lord’s’.
Their marriage will work on the bases that Gertrude stays beautiful and young as ever. But that does not happen. Gertrude becomes disfigured in the left limb and after half a dozen years, their marriage has lost all life. ‘half-a-dozen years passed away, and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge’s married experience sank into prosiness, and worse.’ Farmer Lodge, knowing that she does not have the same beauty and grace that he wooed her for, has lost interest in her and no longer loves her in the same way. ‘The farmer was usually gloomy and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb’.
Gertrude has also not completed her second role in life: motherhood. ‘moreover, she had bore him no child’. Thomas Hardy, a male Victorian writer, reveals to us that in that society, to make a marriage work there must be children as well as beauty. To us this seems old fashioned and trivial but it is in fact quite often used today. However strong the love between a couple, the marriage may collapse or a partner may stray if there are no children or if one of them changes in appearance for the worse. Therefore, we know that quite often, some things never change whatever the era. Women were supposed to stay beautiful and please their men before 1900 and still do now, although in today’s society that has slightly changed; men have to measure up to their partners and stay handsome and healthy as well.
Rhoda lost all faith in ever being with farmer Lodge again. Gertrude however, did not loose all hope when her marriage began to fail. She continued to try to fix her arm as well as her marriage. That became her sole purpose in life; becoming beautiful again so she could please her husband and win back that lost love. This eagerness to please in the end destroyed her.
In The Withered Arm, Thomas Hardy portrays women as being strong but at the same time weak and vulnerable, eager for love and admiration. Rhoda had to become a stronger person in order to look after herself and her son. She managed to work and survive on her own as a single parent. Nevertheless, she was also weak, without joy, without friends, forever wanting love and admiration from the man that was never hers. We can see that she wants to be acknowledged and perhaps even accepted my Farmer Lodge because she wants to know all about his new wife to see if she is the same as her. ‘You can give her a look, and tell me what she’s like’ . Rhoda may want to see whether Gertrude looks like her, because it may mean to her that farmer lodge was looking for someone that reminded him of Rhoda; which then may mean that he still loves her. Rhoda is also quite angry when Gertrude comes between her and farmer Lodge again: ‘Hussy – to come between us and our child now!’. She also wants her son to be noticed because even though she knows Farmer Lodge never acknowledges him, she just wants to check and see if he possibly has this time. ‘what did he say or do?…Took no notice of you?’
Gertrude was and always had been weak. She needed to be looked after, to be loved. She could not survive on her own but did have the will power and the strength to keep on fighting for a way back into her husband’s heart. In this way, Hardy shows both types of women ; strong and weak but each woman has an aspect of the other. For example Gertrude is weak but also strong like Rhoda because she keeps on trying. Rhoda on the other hand is strong but also weak because she looses hope.
The Withered Arm shows society’s attitudes towards women during the Victorian era and also shows women from the point of view of a man. Thomas Hardy writes the story like an observer and often gives facts: ‘back in those days’ ‘at that time’. He is telling facts and talking from personal knowledge. He’s written the story as if he is watching the characters; in this way it feels like he has power over them, like he is watching over them at a higher level; he is omniscient to all of the events in the story. The word power is often associated with men and in this story men play an important and powerful role in this story; both women’s lives are based around one man: farmer Lodge. Rhoda is a single mother because of her affair with farmer lodge. If it wasn’t for him, she would probably be married and accepted in society. Gertrude is married to Lodge and her whole life is based around him and gaining his love.
In both stories the supernatural occurs by women. In the Withered Arm Rhoda Brook is thought to have caused the supernatural; which she at first does not want to believe. Gertrude also disbelieves in the supernatural but when she has no other choice she turns to the supernatural for help. In Farthing House, Eliza Dolly causes the supernatural. The narrator at first tries not to believe that anything unusual is going on; she tries to rationalize.
The author of Farthing House is a woman wrote the story in the 20th century where society has very much changed. She will have written the story from a different view than hardy. She is after all a woman and would be less likely to portray women in a negative way. She would however be more likely to portray men in a negative way. In Farthing House men play a very minor role but are involved either directly or indirectly. The only male character that actually appears in the story is the old vicar in the graveyard. The cause of Eliza Dolly’s problems is also man; after all he got he pregnant.
In Farthing House, Susan Hill portrays women as being strong and independent, able to do things for themselves. The narrator is a woman who very much admires her aunt Addy because of the type of person she is. She is described as ‘so independent always, so energetic, so much her own person all her life’. This is very different from the way that Thomas Hardy portrays the women in his story. He portrays them as the total opposite, dependent, needy, someone else’s property. Susan Hill connects verbs and words, which suggest power and independence with aunt Addy. She puts her up on a pedestal of love and admiration and makes the reader believe that every wonderful woman should be like her. Addy is not a main character in the story but is still a crucial character because she acts like a device which take the narrator to Farthing house.
The narrator herself is quite independent as well; she travels to Farthing house on her own. In the Withered Arm Gertrude had to sneak away because she did not have her husbands approval. We do not know whether the narrator is married but it sounds like she was free to go and see her aunt and was not sneaking away from anyone. She is able to go places on her own without someone having to accompany her; this is similar to Gertrude who is confident enough to venture out on her own.
Farthing house was written in the 20th century but Eliza Dolly was not from this century. We know this because on her gravestone it tells us that she died in 1902. Things were a lot different in that period and Eliza’s circumstances would have been more like Rhoda’s. She was obviously a single mother abandoned by her lover and supposedly her family as well; which is why she was in a home. There was obviously poor healthcare since she died at a young age (19 years) along with her ‘infant daughter’. The conditions that she was living in musty have been hard.
We do not know if Eliza was forced to live in the home or that she just had no other choice. She may have not been able to go out and work to make a living. This shows that she was quite weak and vulnerable. She may have also been quite depressed because she was obviously a bit of an outcast since she was shunned to a home in the countryside. In this was she is similar to Rhoda’s character. We do however know that she loved her daughter very much because even after her death she is still sadly searching for her. ‘She seemed to be crying…..she moved across the room towards the door and held out her arms as if she was begging someone to give her something.’ The fact that she is now a ghost shows that she had enough strength and determination to stay on in this world after death so that she could find her child. Eliza’s daughter probably died before her because she is searching for her.
In this story, children play an important part. The narrator is writing to her daughter who is pregnant and Eliza Dolly also had a child. For these women children represent vulnerability. Eliza becomes very vulnerable when she has her baby and needs looking after in a home. The narrators daughter is also at a vulnerable stage: ‘You will be prey to enough anxieties and fancies….the time before the birth of a child one is so very vulnerable.’ However a child can also bring great happiness. This is shown through the narrators dream: ‘I dreamed almost at once…..a most happy dream…. the night after you were born, lying in my bed in that blissful, glowing, untouchable state when the whole of the rest of life seems suspended and everything irrelevant except this…. I was simply there…. utterly content.’
In this story the narrator is at times unsure of her facts and changes her ideas: ‘I don’t know whether or not I dreamed that night .’ Four paragraphs later she says: ‘I was wide awake, I am quite sure of that’. She does not seem to have the ultimate power as a narrator as Hardy does in the Withered Arm. She almost seems weak because she is so emotional. Hardy does not show any of his emotion as a narrator throughout the whole story. Susan hill on the other hand often talks about the way she feels and her memories. ‘It has made me vulnerable too’ , ‘I felt something else’, ‘I felt oppressed again by the most profound melancholy of spirit’. This may make her seem weak compared to Hardy who seems in control of his feelings and thoughts.
In conclusion we learn quite a lot about societies attitudes towards women; although these are from the points of view of a man and women so they may be slightly biased. These stories also show how societies attitudes towards women have changed throughout time.