of 12 years to go and try and find her to see what she
looked like. Rhode kept telling the boy the same type of
things so you could tell that the boy had stopped
listening and just kept saying ‘Yes, mother’. After the
boy had been out and spotted the new wife to be he
went back and told his mother. His mother still wanted
to know more so she sent him off again the next day to
find out more information. The boy said ‘She’s very
pretty – very. In fact she’s lovely.’ ‘That is all I want to
hear’ said the mother; this indicated that she was very
jealous of the new woman.
A couple weeks later Rhoda has a dream where the
now named wife, Gertrude, had come into her bedroom
and stood next to Rhoda’s bed, Rhoda had reached out
and grabbed Gertrude’s arm and ‘whirled it backward
to the floor’ The next day Gertrude came to the house
of Rhoda and bought some handmade shoes for her
son. She showed Rhoda a mark that had appeared on
her arm on the same night that Rhoda had the dream;
it was in the exact same place that Rhoda grabbed.
This is where the story starts to get a bit mystical.
When this story was set people believed strongly in
these mystical things happening, so when it did
happen to Gertrude, Rhoda said ‘O, could it be’ this
indicates that Rhoda is starting to believe that maybe
she did really do this and she starts to think that she
could be a Witch. Rhoda then suggests that Gertrude
goes to see Conjuror Trundle who is believed to have
special powers which enables him to find out how
these mystical things happen.
When they arrive at Conjuror Trundle’s they go in
and he states that he has not done anything like this
for along time, but said that he could show Gertrude
who did it but he would not be able to tell them the
name. So he went and fetched a glass tumbler from a
dresser and he filled it with water, then put the white
of an egg into the water, as the egg and water mixed
he held the glass up to the window and told Gertrude
to watch the mixture closely.
Towards the end of ‘The Withered Arm’ the issue of
class slowly fade’s away, as Rhoda who is lower class
had become quite good friends with Gertrude who is
higher class.
In ‘The Distracted Preacher’ there is not really any
indication of issue with class or gender, but if you
were to try and read more into the story you see that
the people who started the smuggling are all men,
eventually the women get involved too. The story starts
with a young person named Mr Richard Stockdale
entering the village.
He had been summoned there to temporarily take
the post of the person who usually leads the village
church. Mr. Stockdale arrives at the village late at
night and the only possible accommodation is to be
found in the house of a widow called Mrs Lizzy
Newberry. He is very astonished when, instead of the
old woman he imagined her to be, Mrs Newberry turns
out to be a very pretty young lady.
Mr Stockdale soon gets fascinated by his
charming landlady and eventually he must admit to
himself that he has fallen in love with her. But at the
same time the young Preacher cannot help noticing
some strange things going on in the house. This, as
well as the fact that Mrs. Newberry would often not
leave her room until early afternoon, begins to
preoccupy the young Preacher. He then, despite his
great respect for this charming lady, demands an
explanation for the things happening in and around
the house.
Eventually Mr Stockdale finds out that Lizzy
Newberry, as well as most of the village’s other
inhabitants are deeply involved in the smuggling
business.
This story has a historical side to it as at the time
it is set is the time when a lot of England’s coasts
where used to smuggle things into the country, this
was around the 18th and 19th century.
The Son’s of Veto is the story that shows the issue
of class most clearly. As Sophie was lower class but
married into a higher-class society, doing this was
seen as wrong, she tried to act as if she was a higher-
class parson but this was not easy as her mannerisms
still occurred many a time.
She had a son named Randolph who was born in
to the higher-class society. He went to a public school
and later in life he trained to be a parson like his
father; he mingled with all upper class people, which
lead him to be embarrassed of his own mother.
He did not like the fact that he had a lower class
background.
After Sophie’s first marriage was over she wanted
to remarry to a man named Sam. Her son would not
allow her to do this because Sam was a lower class
person. In the time period that this story was set
women were to do what the man said, so Sophie
obeyed her son and did not remarry to Sam.
He even made her promise not to marry him;
“Finally taking her before a little cross and
alter………He made her swear that she would not wed
Samuel Hobson.”
Thomas Hardy only gave names to the important
characters within his stories. He wrote about the
people and places that he knew and incidents of his
immediate experiences.
2 Jonathan Hills 10E1
3 Jonathan Hills 10E1
1 Jonathan Hills 10E1
