HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0045 5/10/00 "WOMEN IN THE MAYER OF CASTERBRIDGE" ============================================================= From: "sehar/meher" Subject: stictly Mayor-women. Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 15:47:24 +0500 Hi people, i'm new here, so since we're on the female topic...Hardy is quite a feminist in many ways, lets look at Tess or Bathsheba or Eustacia.... however in Mayor of Casterbridge, there seems to be lacking a great deal of woman-power, there is no dynamic woman in the novel. Though Lucetta might be closest to such, the readers do not really like her in the same manner, nor does Hardy take any great pains to make her dearer to the readers. Then there's Elizabeth-Jane, who for no appearant reason, and through no fault of her own, suffers unnecessarily. whaddaya people think? ========== Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 06:14:53 -0700 Subject: Re: stictly Mayor-women. From: "Philip & Andrea Allingham" Elizabeth-Jane Newsome/Henchard/Farfrae is in many ways a conventional Victorian heroine whose conscientious is central to the apparently masculine and male-dominated *May of Casterbridge* (1886). The original *Graphic* illustrations make quite clear that she is by physical similarity her mother's daughter (determined to survive, to better her lot in life) and the foil to the scheming, teasing, "Protean" Lucetta Templeman/La Seur/Farfrae. However, since Elizabeth-Jane is also illegitimate, born out of a common-law relationship (the wife sale that opens the novel), and since she is used by her mother partly as a pawn to lure Michael Henchard back into marriage, Hardy may be using her to undermine the Jane Eyre/self-help model of the proper Victorian heroine, despite her good heart, sympathetic nature, and developing mind. With the marriage question, the divource question, and paid work for women outside thew home, Hardy also uses Elizabeth-Jane to examine what his contemporaries termed "The Woman Question."--Philip Allingham ==========