Penny Boumelha, Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form

Abstract

‘His interest in the Suffrage Cause is nil, in spite of “Tess” ’, wrote the first Mrs Thomas Hardy in 1894, ‘and his opinions on the woman question not in her favour — He understands only the women he invents—the others not at all’.1 Emma had become very interested in feminism during the sad later years of her marriage. According to her nephew she was a ‘believer in the virtues and qualities of women in general’,2 and this was partly why she objected to Jude the Obscure. She had a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women and she took part in a suffrage procession in 1907. Biography is a dangerous tool for the critic, but perhaps it is worth pointing out that the woman closest to Hardy felt threatened by his views on marriage. It is certainly worth noting that the infant feminist movement did not share them; ‘feminist writers of the 1880s and 1890s demanded self-control for men, rather than license for themselves’.3 To a modern feminist, though, like Penny Boumelha, Hardy’s criticisms of marriage prove him to be a radical.