Desiree was scared of Armand because of the quote; ‘when he frowned she trembled, but loved him!’ even though she was scared of him, she still loved him. From this quote we see that Armand is the dominant male and how Désirée fears him.
Near the end of the short story we find out that Désirée’s baby is of a mixed-race and Désirée asks Armand ‘look at our child. What does it mean? Tell me.’ He did not respond to her straight away and so she repeated again ‘Tell me what it means!’ and she was getting desperate to know what it meant. He answered her eventually by saying, ‘It means, that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.’ Désirée becomes frightened as she thinks Armand won’t love her as much, this becomes apparent when she asks him whether she should leave or not and he replies ‘Yes, go.’ And ‘Yes, I want you to go.’ At the end of the short story Armand discovers a letter, and throughout his life, he had demonstrated great dislike of coloured people. When, in actual fact, he himself was coloured!
In “The Withered Arm”, by Thomas Hardy there are two main female roles: Gertrude Lodge and Rhoda Brooks. Gertrude, at the start of the story, shows a certain amount of confidence and independence. Rhoda's son says about Gertrude she is ‘growed up, and her ways be quite a woman’s’. She takes her responsibilities seriously and her role as Farmer Lodge's wife is an important one in the village. At that time, it was common for the landlord's wife to take care of the parishioners and Gertrude seems to fulfil this function competently. This side of Gertrude changes though, when Farmer Lodge starts to lose interest in her when she gets the withered arm. Here we see the effects of the value judgements of society, which dictates that a woman is defined by her appearance and most especially by her ability to be physically attractive to men. Gertrude starts to lose emotional independence. Feeling that she has become unattractive to Farmer Lodge, - ‘he loves me less’ - she becomes obsessed with getting rid of the withered arm and therefore winning back his love. Her thoughts and actions now revolve around him. It seems that she is still acting independently because she has not suddenly started consulting him over everything she does but everything she does is more focused on him. Even her trips to Rhoda's are no longer just visits but means of finding information. Gradually she changes, due to this stress, from a person whose 'voice was so indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender' to 'an irritable superstitious woman'.
While Rhoda Brooks seems like an independent character that fends for herself, but you find out that throughout the short story she has been mistreated by Farmer Lodge for quite some time. Rhoda appears really jealous and bitter of Gertrude and strives to find a way in which she is better than Gertrude, Farmer Lodge’s new young wife. But nearer the middle of the short story the two rivals have become friends.
Hardy seems to be very sympathetic towards women, especially since he wrote it in the nineteenth century. His views of women are displayed throughout the short story as he portrays women to be inferior to men, and the fact that they had no rights, were not allowed to speak out and were treated unfairly, particularly by men. Women were expected to be child-bearers. This is shown when Hardy writes about Gertrude's negative characteristics: ‘She had brought him no child’. Hardy sees this as a reason why Gertrude's marriage is falling apart and why farmer Lodge doesn't love her anymore. In the text women are portrayed as if they were only objects of beauty. This is made clear when Gertrude arrives in the village and Farmer Lodge tells her ‘you must expect to be stared at, just at first’. The villagers would stare at her beauty without caring about how this made her feel. Women are weak and helpless in the story. Gertrude has trouble with her stereotypical weakness when she wants to go to town: ‘There was no animal … that could be considered a lady's mount’. This shows that women are so much weaker than men that they cannot ride the same horses. Conjurer Trendle believes Gertrude will have trouble carrying out his instructions because he says they are ‘hard to carry out, and especially for a woman’. Women's' subservience to men is also shown in the text. Gertrude fears Farmer Lodge so much that ‘the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word’.
Overall in both, Chopin’s “Désirée’s Baby” and Hardy’s “The Withered Arm”, they portray women as the inferior role, almost as if they are only there for the men to do with, as they please, like an ornament. Women are not treated as well as they should have been or with the respect that they deserve.
Considering they were both written in the nineteenth century and it was unusual for men to stick up or be sympathetic towards women. Hardy seemed really sympathetic towards them and was always saying how hard women’s life and role actually was, he seemed to almost understand how women feel and how they ought to be treated. Chopin, almost did the same, as she was also sympathetic towards women, but she as she was a woman herself, most people found it strange about her style of writing and found it unrealistic. She was a feminist trying to improve the women’s role in society. But in both of the short stories, the women play both parts, as inferior to men but also as the strongest character mentally, as they usually came out on top of the men.
