Of the three characters, Rhoda seems to have the strongest personality and is certainly the most independent. When Farmer Lodge wants no more to do with her and makes this final by marrying Gertrude, Rhoda is upset and jealous but maintains her dignity and makes it quite plain outwardly that she wants nothing to do with him, by keeping her distance. She is not seen making any attempt to win or to please him, unlike the other two characters in their behaviour towards Farmer Lodge and Patrick Maloney respectively. We learn in the first chapter from the gossip in the milking parlour that Farmer Lodge ‘hasn’t spoken to Rhoda for years’ and the implication is that Rhoda has done likewise. Even though Rhoda has in many ways the worst life, she comes through as coping admirably in comparison to the other two, who are either swallowed up, in Mary Maloney’s case, or crushed, in Gertrude’s case, by the circumstances of their lives. Rhoda is a single mother at a time when this would carry tremendous stigma and it has made her a social outcast. Although nobody is shown as being particularly unpleasant to her and some even sympathetic- ’tis hard for she’- the villagers clearly have nothing to do with her – she is alone with her son and has even ‘been slily called a witch since her fall’. She would have been called this because in the 1800’s mistrust and superstition commonly led to single women being made scapegoats for all the ills in the community and identified as witches. A single woman living with just her son, largely isolated from society, and having ‘fallen’ would be a prime target of such gossip. It is clear also that Farmer Lodge does not support either of them financially leaving her life as an uphill struggle against poverty. It is also plain that her life is fairly monotonous – ‘monotonous milking at the dairy’ -, and very hard working with little obvious leisure time, and on the whole the only good thing in it is her relationship with her son. In spite of these tremendous difficulties, Rhoda’s strength of character enables her to pull through, and she shows her independence to the very end where, when Farmer Lodge relents and finally leaves a provision for her in his will, she absolutely refuses to have anything to do with it.
Rhoda is the one out of all the three women who most consistently demonstrates a sense of self-worth, even though she has the least social status. In her relationship with Gertrude, it is obvious she is not overawed by Gertrude’s far higher position in society. Although Rhoda has been brought up in a period of time known for its hierarchical structure, she is able to cut across all society’s conditioning and have a relationship in which she can think of herself as Gertrude’s equal. We learn this partly from the dialogue between the two, but especially when she uses the word ‘friend’ in her mind when referring to Gertrude. This is a fairly radical idea for the time in which the story is set, and is another illustration of her independent mind.
Hardy reinforces this strong and confident image by his physical descriptions of her. For instance, ‘tall’, ‘large frame’, ‘well-defined features’, ‘dark eyes’ are all very positive features suggesting strength and depth of character. Hardy seems to choose these particular features deliberately – they would not have been considered classically beautiful at the time like Gertrude’s ‘perfect’ looks but maybe he uses these images to convey an ‘inner beauty’ that he obviously considers more important. It seems he that he is creating Rhoda to project what he would most admire in a women and perhaps people in general. He is probably also suggesting that there is more than one type of physical beauty than the very narrow interpretation of it prevalent at the time.
In contrast, Gertrude, who is eventually destroyed by her difficulties, is portrayed as physically fragile. She is young – ‘indeed almost a girl’. She is ‘short’ where Rhoda is ‘tall’ and her ‘hair is ‘lightish’ whilst Rhoda’s is ‘dark’. All the images of Gertrude are insubstantial ones, which contrast with the impression of sturdiness conveyed in the images of Rhoda. When Hardy first describes her to the reader, he uses the picture of ‘light under a heap of rose petals’. Along with the suggestion of delicateness, this probably is picking up on the fact that rose petals are exquisitely beautiful but whither quickly. When Rhoda’s son describes Gertrude to his mother, he says ‘her face’ is ‘as comely as a live doll’s’. At that time, this would probably have suggested a porcelain doll and porcelain is obviously easily broken. There is probably also a reference here to the fact that a doll is a toy or a plaything to be cast aside when one has no further use for it. Hardy also describes Gertrude as ‘soft’ in two separate places. In the first description he calls her soft and evanescent, and later on he calls her a ‘soft-cheeked young woman’. Part of the meaning of the word evanescent is transitory or fading. The reader might remember that this had been said about Rhoda - ‘a thin fading woman’ – implying that her relationship with Farmer Lodge is past, and so maybe it is included, along with the rose petals which will die quickly, to give the reader insight as to what is going to happen to Gertrude in the story, ie Gertrude and Farmer Lodge’s relationship will not survive long either. In comparing Rhoda and Gertrude Hardy tells us that ‘there was more of the strength that endures in her (Rhoda’s) well-defined features and large frame than in the soft cheeked young women’ ie. Gertrude.
Gertrude, at the start of the story, shows a certain amount of confidence and independence. Although she is young and inexperienced, Rhoda’s son says she is ‘growed up and her ways be quite a woman’. She uses her own initiative leading to her making her own friends in the form of Rhoda, and doing charitable work of her own accord – ‘she gives away other things to other folks in the meads besides us’, says Rhoda’s son. 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. She is seriously undermined by feeling unattractive. 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 focussed on him. Even her trips to Rhoda’s are no longer just visits but means of finding information. Progressively 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’.
The initial picture that Roald Dahl creates of Mary Maloney is one of a total product of her society’s conditioning. She is a stereotypical middle-class housewife of the mid 20th Century. She exudes respectability. At the start of the story Roald Dahl shows her to the reader as a very ‘tranquil’ woman ‘without anxiety’ and with ‘a slow smiling air’. She has a very complacent life-style with no hard labour – everything is easy – her life is very undemanding, unchallenging. The easiness of her middle class life style is in very stark contrast to Rhoda’s hard life as a working class milkmaid. The thing that is similar about their lives, though, is that they are both routine and mundane. Mary, unlike Rhoda perhaps, is content with this. Roald Dahl demonstrates her satisfaction with this unadventurous lifestyle by using words such as ‘tranquil’, ‘placid’, ‘smiling’, ‘without anxiety’ and ‘blissful’. Mary’s middle class life is unlike Gertrude’s upper class life because Mary does not need to think to do her job as a housewife whereas Gertrude has to use both intelligence and initiative and her work is neither routine nor mundane.
To build up the image of Mary for the reader, Roald Dahl sets the story in a room which clearly demonstrates a well-organised housewife. It is ‘warm and clean’ and all ready for her husband’s return from work. This again reinforces the notion that her life revolves around him because she has everything ready for his return and she in particular is ready and waiting for him.
Mary’s relationship with Patrick and everything about the way they live is very superficial. It is obvious from the dialogue between them that they never argue or show any strong emotions. There is no room for conflict to be expressed. Even when Patrick tells her he is leaving neither of them display any emotion. The conversation takes no more than five minutes, even though this will change their whole lives, because it is simply not discussed, nor does Mary argue with Patrick about it. Roald Dahl brings across the ludicrousness of this when the first thing we hear Mary say following this is – ‘I’ll get the dinner’.
It is interesting that the first time we see Mary use her initiative is when her lifestyle is threatened, and in her shock, she kills her husband. She then starts to think for herself. ‘It was extraordinary now how clear her mind became - all of a sudden, she began thinking very fast’. She is forced to use her intelligence and initiative to escape detection of this crime and to create an alibi. She does this by going to the shops, and then cleverly gets rid of the murder weapon (a leg of lamb) by persuading the detectives who were looking for it, to eat it. We learn she is not afraid of the death penalty, because her whole life has just been destroyed – she thinks to herself that ‘it would be a relief’. She is however deeply concerned to protect her unborn baby. This real love for her child is also new to us in the story. It is the first real emotion that we are told she has. Like Rhoda, rejection seems to have made Mary stronger. At the start, although she appears fairly confident, she demonstrates little sense of her own self worth as she is living solely under and through Patrick. Like Gertrude, her confidence comes from her relationship with her husband, but unlike Gertrude, when this relationship collapses, she gains more confidence and independence.
In the Withered Arm, Rhoda is clearly in a weak position while Gertrude is in a strong position. Thomas Hardy has to show us that this does not mean Rhoda is a weak person and Gertrude a strong person. In fact, the opposite is the case. Apart from making their physical features reflect their true personality, Hardy uses other ways to highlight this. Two of these ways are making comparisons with reference to childbearing and also length of life.
Gertrude dies young after only six years of marriage whereas Rhoda outlives both Gertrude and Farmer Lodge by ‘many long years’. It is clear that she lives to be a very old woman as Hardy describes her with elderly features – ‘her form became bent, and her once abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead’. She is still a survivor to the end even though the only light in her life was extinguished when her son was hung many years earlier.
Part of women’s role as far as society is concerned is to propagate the race, producing children, and, in the 19th Century especially, sons and heirs. Hardy again portrays Rhoda as a success and Gertrude as a failure because Rhoda has a child whereas Gertrude can’t conceive – ‘she had brought him no child’. This also meant that Lodge’s family line would come to an end – ‘he would be the last of a family who had occupied the valley for some 200 years’. In Lamb to the Slaughter, Roald Dahl wishes to underline that Mary is the perfect wife. He does this by including the fact that she already has a baby in her womb and has therefore already done what is expected of her. She is producing a child. In spite of this being a male requirement of the ‘perfect woman’, it is not uncommon for men to get ‘cold feet’ and walk out of the relationship at this point leaving the responsibility of the children solely with the mother. This happens to both Rhoda and Mary and illustrates again how little the problems that women face have changed over the years.
In conclusion, in comparing the two texts and the three women, it seems obvious that society’s notions of the role of woman has not differed that much between the time in history that each story was set. The role of women as child bearers is relevant in both stories, and Mary especially is portrayed as living her life through a man even though Lamb to the Slaughter is set in more modern times. It is unlikely that Mary is financially independent either – Patrick is the wage earner. All three women are in weaker positions than the men, and Rhoda, who has not got a man in her life and is of an inferior class, is a social outcast, but the modern Lamb to the Slaughter shows that in the mid 20th Century the position of woman, although in many ways easier, had worsened in other ways. For example, Mary’s job or function in life is the least important and engaging of all three in my opinion. She is just doing petty jobs to make her husband’s life easier, whereas the other two are actually doing work which contributes properly to society, even though in Rhoda’s case, it is monotonous. It could also be argued that Mary’s life is the most isolated – we are told that she has been alone all day – ‘after the long hours alone in the house’. Even though Rhoda is called the ‘Lorn milkmaid’ and is a loner and a social outcast, she works with people every day, and in this sense, is part of society. Nevertheless, of all the women, Mary seems to achieve the best result for herself. Capitalising on her ‘weakness’ as a woman and using her ‘feminine charm’, she gets away with her crime and goes unpunished. At the end of the story she is giggling over the irony of this and has obviously experienced some kind of liberation, whereas Gertrude dies prematurely from the strain of her experiences, and Rhoda continues to an old age in a physically wearing, monotonous lifestyle.
The reader would also conclude, especially from the Withered Arm, that your life and character are not wholly determined by your position in society. Hardy also illustrates, through the character of Rhoda, that intelligence is not necessarily the product of education, and certainly not, as society has often suggested, only found amongst upper and middle class people. Both Gertrude and Mary are of a much higher social standing than Rhoda and would have been educated whereas Rhoda was almost certainly illiterate. Rhoda, however, is the one who strikes the reader as most true to herself. Hardy, in particular, is also challenging the superficial value judgements of society with reference to image and physical attractiveness.
Both stories therefore show to me in the ways that I have described, that the authors are, to some extent, both standing against the notions of the society of their time. They are challenging what the readers of their particular era think of as normal and showing that these ideas are not necessarily true.
