Analysis Of Thomas Hardy s Candour Essay - 1415 Words

Victorian women had limited opportunities within their patriarchal society. Divided by the public masculine sphere that existed outside the home and the private sphere of femininity they found themselves governed by the ideals of chastity and domesticity. They became subject to the hegemony of their husbands, and found themselves labelled as either a wife or lover but not both. This bifurcation of women into the Madonna-whore complex consolidated the division between the sexes. Towards the end of the era changes for those within this restrictive domain began to occur, these changes gave rise to the New Woman, someone who was free to make her own choices, who could work and eschew marriage and motherhood. Writers began exploring these shifting attitudes in order to understand the consequences of such freedoms. In his essay, Candour in English Fiction, Thomas Hardy suggests one way to achieve realism in a novel is through the â€Å"honest portrayal† (117) of relationships betwe en characters, the success and failures of which need examining in order to achieve believability and excite interest in â€Å"the minds of thoughtful readers† (116). The female characters in Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Bram Stoker’s, Dracula do not always conform to the Victorian norms and this determines the types of relationships they develop with the men who surround them. Within their novels, Hardy and Stoker explore the good and bad aspects of these relationships and the repercussions arising out