Sophy should have married against her sons wishes because if he doesn’t have respect for his mother then his mother shouldn’t respect him. This story picks out that the son is mean and cruel to his mother and he cares about himself more than his mother. Sophy should have married because she would have shown her son that she’s in control of her own life. She doesn’t marry again though because Hardy wants her to come across has a caring mother.
My first impressions of Randolph were that he was not entirely at fault for being far superior to his mother. First of all he appears to be an innocent young boy but then he corrects his mother harshly and is almost angry at his mom.
“Has dear mother not have”
He sounds daunting and cunning but it was his environment and the people around him who made him like that. For instance he goes to a school which is only available for rich kids and he picks up a lot there like grammar. Also at this point he sounds a bit immature and rude has he is talking and eating at the same time:
“Surreptitious attempt to eat a cake”
Hardy opens the story with a very detailed description of Sophy’s hair. He wants you’re to consider how beautiful this ladies face is going to be if her hair is beautiful. When she turns round it looks like she’s been depressed and sad. It makes us feel sorry for her. It also makes us wonder what she’s been through to make her have an air of sadness around her. This gets us interested in the story. Hardy is using a technique which refers to half way through out the story so after the reader has read it, then it makes sense.
Hardy makes us feel that the son doesn’t care about his mother. He cares more about himself and the way he’s going to look in society. which is embarrassing ( that his mother is going to marry a low class) Society issues is a piece of evidence that makes this story was set 100 years ago. He’s so much different in contrast to his father because his father was more considerate and thoughtful yet Randolph comes across has immature.
“It will degrade me in the eyes of all the gentlemen of England”
There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the mother loves her son but the most obvious is that she doesn’t marry again. She’s afraid of what will happen to her son even though she knows her son doesn’t care about her. Also she never broke her sons promise and goes to school to drop him off.
In the early part of the story Sophy is described has happy and cheerful but when her husband dies she’s described has lonely and almost dying
“Poor women” “seldom seen” “confined”
Hardy’s opinion of makes us think that the mother would have been happy if she married it makes us wonder if she would have lived longer.
“How happy would things have been?”
Hardy approves of her getting remarried but doesn’t narrate it that way: if he narrates it that way then it makes this story less interesting.
Hardy uses complex long sentences and he even adds clauses to clauses. In the 19th centaury the prose was almost always difficult. This shows that Hardy was using a technique of the 19th centaury so this story was probably set at that time. With the technique you can produce labyrinthine sentences which you can add more detail and force the reader to pay attention otherwise they would get lost. The vocabulary Hardy uses are mostly words that have fallen out of use Hardy is trying to remind people of them e.g.
“Wrought” which is another term for made. This can also be used as an element of extended metaphors like:
“Performance” which is like showing off her hair but he doesn’t use the same word more than once for showing this. This is called elegant variation.
Hardy is using a theme which is how little power people have over their own lives for example Sophy – the son, her job and moving to London all impacted her life. They also and made half of the choices for her.
To conclude this essay Hardy wants us to believe that the son has the bad image and the mother has the good image. He got the outcome he wanted because the mother loves a son who doesn’t care about anyone. That impacted the reader a lot as well as me.
