The phrase “But would he (the son) tolerate the idea and if not, could she defy him?”, the word defy suggests that she is weak, and that Randolph pushed her around and that Sophy was unable to do anything without he Son’s permission.
When Mr Twycott’s wife died and Mr Twycott reveals that one of the maids would need to leave, Sophy, being un-confident and because of her low self esteem, she offers to be the one that leaves, then one of the other maids would not be upset when they lose their job. She also shows her low self esteem when she says, “He is so much educated and I so little that I do not feel dignified enough to be his mother”, when referring to Randolph. Here she is saying that because of his high education and her poor one she can no longer have the dignity to mother him correctly.
Hardy portrays Sophy as naïve and immature a number of times throughout the story. He shows her naivety when he says, “ The poor girl swore, thinking he would soften”. Here despite the fact he was never going to change his mind over his marriage to Sam Hobson, she naively felt that if she persisted in asking him he would one day, soften. Hardy also portrays her as childlike and immature, he says this in he phrase, “Sophy had been treated like the girl she was in nature though not in years.” Here is just basically saying that her age says that she is an adult but really, naturally she acts like a child. It can be argued that that these weaknesses in her character, contributed to her downfall.
Society and Social expectations affected Sophy’s life greatly. It was because of social expectations that Mr. Twycott and Sophy had to move away from Gaymead, the place that Sophy loved so much, to London, which is a much bigger place, and social expectations are no-where near as high because of the amount of people there are. If the couple stayed in Gaymead they would have been the subject of gossip for the remainder of their lives. Society would have looked down on and isolated and shamed Mr. Twycott, which he did not want, also there would have been a lot of talk about Sophy and Mr. Twycott didn’t think she could bear this as it would have upset her an awful lot, therefore out of care for his wife he moved to grey, dirty and dusty London. The negative tine Hardy uses to describe thus depict his disapproval and intention to show the Twycotts as victims of Society’s prejudice.
Society was very prejudiced against the working class. This is shown when Randolph refuses to let Sophy marry Sam Hobson just because he was a working class man. While Sophy was pleading with him during that eight-year spell before coming to her tragic end, he said he was refusing her permission out of respect for his father. However we know that this was not true. When Sophy first suggested this to him he assumed that she intended to marry another upper class man, and he quite liked that idea and would have agreed to it, until he heard the man was working class. This is said when Hardy says, “The boy thought the idea a very reasonable one” when Randolph first heard of Sophy’s plan, assuming she meant an upper class man. Then when he heard that Sam was a working class man he threw a fit and “went hastily to his own room and fastened the door”. Surely this was Randolph being prejudiced against the working class.
Sophy and Mr. Twycott were forced to move London because of Society’s rigid expectations of interclass Marriages. As in society interclass marriages were seen as wrong when Sophy and Mr Twycott married they were forced to move to London because of the views that society would have had of them, and this also lead to Sophy’s tragic end. If she had been able to stay in Gaymead she would have been around other working class people and therefore she would not as felt as isolated as she did in London. If Sophy had been in Gaymead when Sam asked for her hand in marriage and she was refused permission to by Randolph, it probably would have been more bearable for her because she would have been closer to Sam anyway as well as other working class people who she would be able to associate with, so maybe if societies expectations of interclass marriages had not been so rigid Sophy would not have ended up dying o a broken heart. Also as society was so ‘gossipy’ they had to move to London, if gossip did not spread around at the rate that it did maybe it would have been OK for Sophy and Mr Twycott to stay in Gaymead.
Although Hardy attempts to make the reader believe that Sophy was a victim of society he also portrays Mr Twycott, Sam Hobson, and Randolph as partly responsible in her death.
Mr Twycott, before he died he arranged Randolph’s education and Sophy’s house and left her with some money as he felt he couldn’t trust her. Ironically instead of this making Sophy’s life easier it just led to her downfall, he left her with absolutely no responsibility over her own son which just meant that Randolph was able to gain power over her and “drift further and further away from her” but more importantly it let Sophy with no responsibility over her own life. As everything had already been sorted out for her she had nothing to do but her hair and stare out of the window and this lead to her being lonely, so when she finally met someone to talk to and spend time with and she was refused permission to spend the remainder of her life with him it would have hurt her even more and therefore she would have died of a broken heart.
Hardy also portrays Sam Hobson as partly responsible for Sophy’s death, he appears to the reader to be unintentionally putting pressure on Sophy to persuade Randolph to allow her to marry him. However I believe that Randolph’s character represents social expectations and he was the main reason for Sophy’s tragic end. He was the one who refused to let Sophy marry Sam in the first place, it didn’t matter hw much she wanted it or how much she begged he would not let her, this would have caused her depression in the first place and this would have led to her death.
Throughout the story Hardy is very critical of Victorian education and the Victorian church. He bases most of these criticisms around Randolph. He practically says that when Randolph completed his education, he had changed, says “His education had by this time sufficiently ousted his humanity to keep him quite firm”, here he is basically saying that the education in those days for upper class school children made them so stubborn and cruel that they became almost in-human. Randolph represents the church and if he is stubborn and horrible then this must be how Hardy felt about the Victorian church. He criticises the church when he shows Randolph as abusing his position as a vicar to gain power over his mother, he does this when he makes Sophy swear that she will not marry Sam without his permission, using his ‘Veto’/power to be allowed to do this.
Hardy’s use of language, affects the story in a number of ways. He uses a number of different words to capture his point in the best possible way. He starts off by doing this in the title, by using the word Veto, which means power in modern English. I believe that he has used this word to appeal to people because the title ‘The Son’s Veto’ would be more appealing to the majority of people that the title ‘The Son’s Power’. He also consistently uses a narrative style through out the story, giving his views on each development using his own words. He also does this to appeal to the reader and make them feel a certain feeling for the character he is talking about and usually he uses this style when referring to Sophy and he wants us to feel sorry for her. He does so when he writes “poor thing” after the words “and she had done it all herself”. Here he not only wants to give his sympathetic view on how Sophy does her hair all on her own but he wants to appeal to the reader to make them feel in the same way.
I conclude that Hardy’s portrayal of Sophy as a victim of society is very effective, if you were to briefly read the story you would get the impression that Randolph was responsible for Sophy’s death but if you read the story in detail examining all the language and language devices used, it would be easy to see that Sophy was a victim of society.