Hardy wrote many short stories but The Son’s Veto is harsh in its indignation against class distinction, prejudice and snobbery. The narrator in The Son’s Veto is 3rd person intrusive omniscient which helps give a freedom of style and helps with zeitgeist. It has a complex plot which defies one of the main descriptions of a short story. This complexity is due to flash backs within the narrative. The plot is consistent in linear time but it jumps and leaps in time. During the 19th century marriages, which involved people from two different classes, were called ‘social suicide’, this is an example of societies view during Hardy’s era. The book reflects what was popular when Hardy wrote ‘The Son’s Veto’; in the Victorian period, novels that were academic and written with polysyllabic, complex words and sentences.
There is lack of complicated plot and the narrator in ‘tickets, please’ is 3rd person intrusive omniscient; as with Hardy this allocates freedom in style and helps with zeitgeist. Lawrence became involved with characters in his narratives. There is a lot of metaphors in the text one example of this is the first paragraph; this is constructed just like the tramway system. There is a long flowing sentence of about 12 lines, then two short sentences which act like the terminal where the tram takes a brief break before swooping away onto another sentence/track of about 12 lines.
Both narratives are written in the same narrator, 3rd person intrusive omniscient.
This intrusive narration reflects their views and enables them to make ideas and be didactic through the narrative; ‘(Alas! The commonness of this complaint)’ verifies this.
The two short narratives are written in the same genre; love and marriage although Hardy’s The Son’s Veto is sparing in detail and is based on spiritual love whereas Lawrence’s ‘tickets, please’ is vivid in its description of ‘real love’. Other narratives written by Lawrence were about war, quality of life country values. Both authors became involved with and class values whereas novels inscribed by Hardy were complicated and about loss of class and the narratives and characters.
The language used in The Son’s Veto is ‘textually dense’ and is dense with polysyllabic words. Hardy writes using a factual manner, by doing this he gives the impression he is analyzing everything he writes. Lawrence’s writing however is filled with words more likely to be used in everyday life and when describing things he uses words which are easier to understand, he writes in much more relaxed nature to Hardy.
Hardy doesn’t use stock characters although Sophy could have been the heroine but Hardy cripples her in the text, making her character more realistic. Lawrence doesn’t use blatantly obvious stock characters but John Thomas is made out to be the villain in the beginning but toward the end of the narrative the reader almost feels sorry for John Thomas. Annie is the heroine of the story as she gets revenge for the group of girls.
In The Son’s Veto the role of a woman is indicated through the following statements. She is to have no involvement in financial matters, society believed a woman is not someone to be concerned with finance, and this is shown in the following quotation ’She was left with no control over anything that had been her husbands beyond her modest income.’ In ‘Tickets, please’ the women work for a living ‘This, the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities themselves declare with pride, is entirely conducted by girls...’ (P2).
The woman in The Son’s Veto had to take care of her appearance ‘...wasted hours braiding her beautiful hair’ illustrates this. References in ‘Tickets, please’ to the appearance of the women are as follows ‘In their ugly blue uniform, skirts up to their knees, shapeless old peaked caps on their heads...’ (P5). This seems to suggest society were no longer fixated on a women as a person to be worried about their appearance but to work and earn money.
The woman is seen as the person in charge of housework in The Son’s Veto and this is shown by the ensuing quotation ‘Sophy bought up his meals to him...’ In ‘Tickets, please’ women were still viewed as the persons in charge of housework and cooking; ‘Who handles the teapot?’ shows this.
In The Son’s Veto women were thought to be like children, they had an innocent outlook on life; ‘Throughout the changes Sophy had been treated like the child she was in nature though not in years.’ this quotation confirms this. Women are not thought to be childlike and innocent, the ensuing quote show this ‘She is peremptory, suspicious, and ready to hit first.
A woman was influenced by a man and should be obedient to him ’And if not, could she defy him?’ The previous quotation shows Sophy’s reluctance to disobey her son. Class influenced a woman’s choice for marriage the following quotation verifies this; ‘ Such a lady as ye’ve been so long, you couldn’t be a wife to a man like me.’
Women were not as worried about how men would view them as possibilities for marriage etc.; this is shown here ‘ They push off men at the end of their distance.’ Women were not concerned about sex before marriage the following quotation shows this ‘He flirts with girl conductors in the morning, and walks out with them in the dark night...’ Even so women had relationships that were not based upon sex only ‘Annie wanted to consider him as a person, a man; she wanted to take an intelligent interest in him...’ the previous quotation confirms this.
In ‘Tickets, please’ women were not wary about men and were not as respectful as in The Son’s Veto ‘They fear nobody-and everyone else fears them.’ shows this. ’ Women were not afraid to stand up to men ‘...they all flew at him, slapping him, pinching him, pulling his hair...’ proves this statement.
In conclusion, within the two narratives there are many different aspects of the role of the woman, which are similar and different;
The appearances of the woman were extremely different. The appearance of the women in The son’s Veto is as follows ‘under the black beaver hat surmounted by it’s tuft of feathers.’ whereas in ‘tickets, please’ the women dress differently ‘In their ugly blue uniform, skirts up to their knees, shapeless old peaked caps on their heads...’ (P5). This is because the women in ‘tickets, please’ have to work for a living and wear uniform ‘This, the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities themselves declare with pride, is entirely conducted by girls...’ shows this. In The Son’s Veto the women are not financially independent ‘She was left with no control over anything that had been her husbands beyond her modest income.’
The women from the stories also behave differently. In ‘tickets, please’ the women are described as ‘strange wild creatures’ and the women in The Son’s Veto Is described as a ‘kitten-like flexuous tender creature’ which shows a difference in behavior. This difference of behavior creates a difference in description about their nature in the two narratives. Lawrence describes the girls as ‘fearless young hussies’ and Hardy describes Sophy as a woman that ‘had been treated like the child she was in nature though not in years’.
The women also have different attitudes towards marriage. In ‘tickets, please’ the women are forcing John Thomas to choose a wife ‘...chosen the one your going to marry?’ whereas in The Son’s Veto Sophy has to ask her son if she can remarry ‘ Why mayn’t I say to Sam that I’ll marry him?’. The women also have different ideas of what is ‘proper’ and ‘allowed’ before marriage. In Hardy’s narrative the women hold off the men’s advances ‘And she bade him adieu without allowing him a kiss...’ however in Lawrence’s story the women do not ‘ He flirts with girl conductors in the morning, and walks out with them in the dark night...’.
There are also similarities, both women are shown to do house work and cooking. In The Son’s Veto ‘Sophy bought up his meals to him...’ and John Thomas asks a group of women upon entering ‘ Who handles the teapot?’ The woman also care about their appearance, in The Son’s Veto Hardy writes ‘...wasted hours braiding her beautiful hair.’ and Lawrence writes ‘She dressed herself up and went to the fairground.’
The main points illustrating Lawrence and Hardy’s portrayal of woman in their short stories are the appearance, attitudes towards men and relationships, behaviour, financial status and work in the house. The appearance of the women is different but this could be as Lawrence describes the women when they are in uniform for work. The women have different positions in finance. Both women do work in the house and have similarities in their attitudes towards some aspects of their appearance. The women have different attitudes towards sex and marriage and behave differently and get described differently because of this. It appears that Hardy and Lawrence have portrayed women as they exist and portrayed themselves when they wrote the narratives. Lawrence’s portrayal is apt for the time it was created because as he remained in England during the war due to his weak lungs, he witnessed the social evolution, watching as women became much more independent and powerful during the war. And at times he does seem uneasy about women’s new social role. Lawrence explores many independent female characters, and portrays them all differently but mainly as stronger and more independent: though in effect getting nowhere, at least they are the ones making the decisions, and through this in fact making progress.
