In the first story, “The Withered Arm”, concerns about marriage are presented in a few ways. Firstly, Rhoda and her husband have been divorced for a while, but she still has feelings for her husband. But he has no feelings for her. Secondly, when he gets re-married, Rhoda becomes quite jealous. She wants to know if his new wife is prettier than her, and if he treats his new wife in a different, or better way than he treated Rhoda. So, she uses their son, who her husband left with Rhoda, to go and “spy” on them, to get information on his new wife. To make matters worse, she has a dream about the new wife where she threw her across the room and damaged her arm, and it turned out that it actually injured her. She now feels very guilty and tries to make friends with Gurtrude. Another problem is that their son is accused of arsine and is then executed. Rhoda’s life is now terrible, with her husband re-marrying, and her son dead.
In the second story, “The Son’s Veto” Sophy has problems with her marriage. The reasons for this is that at the beginning of the story, she meets a boy called Sam and he likes her a lot. But then later in the story, she moves to London and gets married to a man called Tyncott. This is fine for Sophy because at this point her relationship and her life are going perfectly, and they have a son, the perfect life. But later on in the story, she meets Sam again and this is where things are turned upside down. She remembers what good times they used to have together and they start seeing each other quite frequently. Tyncott doesn’t like this and his relationship with Sophy hits a rough patch. The problem with Sam and Sophy having any form of relationship together apart from the fact that Sophy is married is that Sophy’s son doesn’t want Sam as his father. But later on in the story, Sophy dies. So the problems with marriage in this story are that Sophy likes two men and jealousy is shown by Tyncott. Also, if marriage problems occur, there are your children to think about; in this case it was Sophy and Tyncott’s son.
In the third story, “Tony Cytes the Arch Deceiver” Tony has problems with his relationship, he isn’t married. He is travelling home in his wagon, when he is asked for a lift by a girl called Unity. So he lets her in the back of the wagon, but later on his way home, he bumps into his fiancé Milly, and so he forces Unity to hide so Milly doesn’t get the impression that something’s going on between Tony and Unity. But again, later in the journey, he bumps into a girl called Hannah. This time Milly has to hide because Hannah has a temper and Hannah thinks that Tony likes her. So she hides. Then, a little later, Tony’s father calls him over from a window. Tony goes and then Milly and Unity meet in the back and start talking. They get out and try to find Tony and then they bump into Hannah. Now there is the problem of all of these three girls being together because they all think that they have “something special” with Tony. But during this conversation, the horse which was driving the wagon runs away, and then the story ends. So the relationship problems here are that three different girls are after one man, and Tony knows they all like him and he doesn’t tell any of the others that he’s engaged and he doesn’t tell his fiancé that two other girls like him. What he should’ve done is told them then there would have been no problem.
So in conclusion, Thomas Hardy presents concerns about marriage and relationships in the three stories by putting the main character in a situation by which there is always going to be a problem. Then, the main character goes about this problem totally the wrong way. The first is jealousy of your ex having a new partner. The thing to do is to talk with your ex but in the story, she does the wrong thing and sends her son to spy on him. The second problem is liking another person as well as your husband/wife. The wrong thing is done again in the story because Sophy goes off with Sam instead of talking with Tyncott first. The final problem in the last story is that Tony has two other girls that like him and he knows. What he needed to do was tell them that he’s engaged and to tell his fiancé that he has other girls after him. He shouldn’t have kept it a secret because they all found out from each other in the end and something bad would have probably happened but the story ended.
