Compare the ways in which male and female characters are played in Hardy’s short stories
Thomas hardy was born in 1840’s, in a village near Dorchester where women in most places are seen as weak and venerable, like in the short story ‘Old Mrs Chundle’, where Mrs Chundle always troubles the new curate. It is not until after the World War 1 when woman did most jobs what men can, for example war factories to make tanks and guns for the war, women not only did the dangerous work they also took a lot of responsibility taking after the family during the war, and that is when they gained their rights to be equal with men after the world war. Although Thomas Hardy’s short story seems sexist, he isn’t, it was just how things were in 1840’s, and the life style was very different from what it is now.
‘The withered arm’ often mentions the beauty of Gertrude, describing Gertrude in all sorts of attractive ways like “Beside him sat a women, many years his junior-almost, indeed, a girl. Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality-soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.” And there were not a lot of description of Farmer lodge, but the story shows that “Farmer Lodge” has abandoned his ex-lover; “Rhoda brooks”, with his son. In ‘Old Mrs Chundle’ the curate tries to be helpful to Mrs Chundle but Mrs Chundle seems very troublesome, for example, when the curate tries to interest Mrs Chundle by inserting a sound-tube fixed running up inside the pulpit with its upper end opening in a bell-mouth just beside the book-board, the sound will travel directly down from the pulpit to the book-board and Mrs Chundle will hear from then on. But once when Mrs Chundle seated where the end of the sound-tube is fixed, Mrs Chundle seems to give the Curate trouble, “It was a fine frosty morning in early winter, and he had not got far with his sermon when he came conscious of a steam rising from the bell-mouth of the tube, obviously caused by Mrs Chundle’s breathing at the lower end.” And the story goes on with the curate thinking of the breath of Mrs Chundle. “You will perceive that it naturally suggests three points for consideration- (“It’s not onions: its peppermint,” he said to himself)” Namely, mankind in its unregenerate state- (“And cider”)”. And in ‘Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver’ each of the women are described more and more beautifully, as Tony Kytes is on his way back to the village, and he meets three of the women in which Tony Kytes is in love in, but “Tony” wants to marry three of them but they are all jealous of each other’s looks. At the end of the story two of the women leave “Tony” as they are no longer interested in Tony any more, except for Milly who stayed behind crying. “So there at last were left Milly and Tony By themselves, she crying in watery streams, and Tony looking like a tree struck by lightning.”
