What does The Sons Veto tell us about attitudes towards social class in the Nineteenth century?

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Sakina OxleyStudent No. 100273931

English Assignment 3

Short Stories

Sakina Oxley

100273931


What does The Son’s Veto tell us about attitudes towards social class in the

Nineteenth century?

        Hardy uses the theme of social class in many of his novels and short stories and often details a character’s movement; either up or down the social ladder and the problems which may ensue. ‘The Son’s Veto’ was written in 1891 and tells the story of Sophy, a parlour maid who marries her respectable employer, the Reverend Twycott, and is faced with a life very different from her previous existence in the rural Wessex village of Gaymead. The story gives us a keen indication of the differences between members of the richer and poorer classes of nineteenth century society and also their attitudes towards each other. Hardy addresses attitudes towards social class through the marriage of Sophy to Reverend Twycott, through Randolph’s character and treatment of his mother and through Sophy’s relationship with her former sweetheart, Sam.

The reader is first introduced to Sophy via a detailed description of her hair. Hardy makes a lengthy comment about the intricacy of the style and through this is describing the elaborate fashions among society ladies of the time. He then reveals that despite the complicated nature of the style, she has to do her hair herself as “poor thing. She had no maid.” At this early stage in the story, the idea that the reader should feel sorry for Sophy because of her social background and lack of education is introduced as the ability to style her hair “was almost the only accomplishment she could boast of.”(1)  Sophy struggles with her life in upper class society and as hard as she tries, often reveals her working class background through her words or actions and this has resulted in her never being fully integrated into respectable society and her having few friends; “but she still held confused ideas on the use of ‘was’ and ‘were,’ which did not beget a respect for her among the few acquaintances she made.”(3)

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The descriptions of the circumstances surrounding Sophy’s marriage to Reverend Twycott give a great deal of information about how the issue of class was viewed in the nineteenth century. It is shown how the upper classes were held in high esteem by Sophy’s unwillingness to turn down Twycott’s proposal: “She hardly dared refuse a personage so reverend and august in her eyes.”(3) They married at a private ceremony “which hardly a soul knew of” (3) because Twycott knew that to marry a person of such a lower social standing to himself would be “social suicide” (3) and would cause scandal in Gaymead. Their union ...

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