Masculine Identity in Hardys Novels :: Biography Biographies Essays

Masculine Identity in Hardys NovelsIn Hardys novels, masculine identity is explored, evolving from the solid, monolithic, elderly role of the mid-1800s, to less typical, nearly feminine styles of humanityhood. With the increasing power of women during the squargond-toe Era, Hardy creates men who are in a state of ambivalency about their sexuality they either reach for the well-worn stereotype of the man-sized man, or they attempt to explore their own complicated emotions, sensitive to the require of the emerging New Woman. though action in Hardys novels centers predominately around the female, deportment is often seen through the eyes of the males in his works. The typical male is often associated with money, power, and prestige, while the realists and chaste men are almost unmasculine in thoughts and action, and oftentimes fall victim to the New Woman. By depicting a man like Henchard, who goes from being an obsessive power seeker to one who is, in a sense, unmanned, Hardy shows readers the male identity which he tends to favor. The state of the economy and the political events of the 1880s and 1890s were unstable, and in their public roles, men began to receive gradually overwhelmed. Their personal lives were even much chaotic, as women began to challenge centenarian ideas with their new, feminist ones. The Woman Question was ubiquitous, and women were gradually given rights that they never before had the Married Womens Property Act, two Matrimonial Causes Acts, and the Maintenance of Wives Act, were three laws which allowed for more equality in marriage. The introduction of birth control literature as well as significantly changed womens attitudes toward their sexuality and matrimonial duties. Federico maintains that as a result of these changes, hullabaloo existed during the era. Men meditated upon their patriarchal inheritance, and by the end of the century, contradictory middle-class attitudes unagitated existed, contributing to the sketc hy construct of Victorian masculinity (Federico 18-19). Southerington has placed nigh of Hardys male character references into one of four categories (although it is important to note that these groupings are permeable, and characters are not confined to any one category) the virile romantic realist and chaste. Though virility in such men as Fitzpiers, Troy, Wildeve, and Alec dUrberville was believed to be the keynote to all that is best and most forcible in the masculine character (according to Grant Allen in the Fortnightly Review, October, 1889), inwardly their egoist self-assurance was steady eroded by perceived threats to their masculinity.