H05024 THOUGHTS ON SUE BRIDEHEAD- 3/29/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________
From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: Thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: March 29, 2005 6:44:56 AM PST
Dear All,
I am forwarding this posting from a new Forum member.
Betty
From: "Pauline" <pauline.guerin@ntlworld.com>
Subject: thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:20:31 +0100
Hallo
I am new to the Hardy list, so I hope I _m doing this correctly. I am a
postgraduate student currently doing an MA in Victorian Literature and
Culture at Reading University in England.
I am particularly interested in Thomas Hardy novels, and especially in Sue
Bridehead (Jude the Obscure) and her identification with real life New
Women, and wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the subject.
I personally feel that Sue was a reflection of the New Woman, but that
Hardy used her as a vehicle to warn of impending social disaster if she and
women like her were allowed to make multiple marriages, divorce or _live
in sin _. I tend to shy away from the deduction that Hardy was recounting
his woes about his own life and marriage however.
I _d be interested in other people _s views on the subject if that is not
too impertinent of me.
Many thanks indeed
Pauline
Pauline.guerin@ntlworld.com
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: March 29, 2005 8:06:34 AM PST
Pauline - just a thought-- if Sue B is meant to be a "lesson" to free-loving women then is Henchard a "lesson" to ambitious men, or
Giles W a "lesson" to men who hope to marry "up" ?
Incidentally, Sue identifies with J.S. Mill and some other philosophers but I can't recall any identification with the "New Woman" as lauded in the popular press. Hardy writes in the 1895 Preface that "some of the circumstances" were "suggested by the death of a women in the former year." That woman is identified by Dennis Taylor as Tryphena (Hardy's beloved cousin/niece).
Good Luck with the thesis,
Rosemarie
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From: NHardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: March 29, 2005 8:42:02 AM PST
To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu
Reply-To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu
Perhaps I'm a minority in this viewpoint, but I don't believe Sue was meant to be a "New Woman." Sue seems to embrace Arnold's theory expressed in _Culture and Anarchy_ (1869) that society is divided between a duty-bound and very physical "Hebraism" and an artistic, intellectual "Hellenism;" and she attempts to live as a "Hellene." Sue expresses disgust toward Phillotson's belief that Jerusalem is the seat of modern civilization ("There was nothing first-rate about the place. . .as there was about Athens, Rome, and other old cities"), and she despises Christminster for its association with mediaevalism, and, by extension, mediaevalism's emphasis on duty. Sue attempts to live a life that is defined by a "Hellenic" devotion to art and idealism: she wants a sexual relationship that is like the worship of Venus Urania, one where "desire plays, at least, only a secondary part; and she even insists that Jude associate her with the disembodied "spirit" of woman in Shelley's "Epipsychidion." I believe that, if Hardy was warning his readers of anything, it wasn't the dangers of the New Woman--it was the danger of living life in the head and refusing to compromise unobtainable ideals.
Just my thoughts. Best of luck on the thesis!
Paul J. Niemeyer
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From: kgwilson@uottawa.ca
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: March 29, 2005 9:38:57 AM PST
It has always seemed to me that Sue suggests the living of life in the head in ways that go beyond her refusal to compromise unobtainable ideals and that lead directly to the kind of consciousness that Lawrence uses Hermione Roddice to embody, and Rupert Birkin to attack, in Women in Love, seen most particularly in Chapter 3 "Class-Room." I won't bother to quote at any length since much of the chapter is taken up with variations on Birkin's diatribe, which he puts down to Hermione's "will . . . your bullying will," which makes her obsessed with the idea of spontaneity rather than its uncontainable and contingent reality: "You'd be verily deliberately spontaneous -- that's you. Because you want to have everything in your own volition, your deliberate voluntary consciousness."
Interestingly, these are in considerable part the terms that Lawrence ascribed to Sue in his "Study of Thomas Hardy" (written 1914, published in Phoenix, 1936), although he doesn't, as far as I can remember, ever make specifically the Sue/Hermione Roddice connection. In relation to Sue, Lawrence figures that destructive will as being distinctively male: "She was born with the female atrophied in her: she was almost male. Her will was male." He goes on to suggest that for Sue (strangely, as for Tess, Angel Clare, Alec d'Urberville and Arabella) it is not natural to have children since "none of these wished to give of themselves to the lover, none of them wished to mate: they only wanted their own experience. For Jude alone it was natural to have children, and this in spite of himself. Sue wished to identify herself utterly with the male principle."
While I've never found this judgement on Tess or even Angel very convincing, it does seem to me that behind all the Lawrentian attitudinising and gendered essentialism in this essay does lie a quite suggestive sense of Sue's idiosyncratic psychology, and it leads not only directly to Lawrence's own characters but to a fuller sense of Hardy's status as a writer feeling his way towards distinctively modernist characterizations.
Keith Wilson
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: March 29, 2005 11:43:39 AM PST
To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu
Reply-To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu
All very interesting. Also something of a curiosity that Lawrence (being Lawrence) didn't pick up on Sue's bi-sexual predecessors -- notably Charlotte de Stancy and the woman who loves her, the Laodicean Paula Power (appropriate last name given your points about "will". Keith) -- not to mention the lusty Cytherea of fondling-in-bed fame! Shades of woman-loving too in Elizabeth-Jane/Lucetta and Grace/Felice Charmond. Not that there's any clear indication that Sue is bi-sexual (Hardy simply speaks of a weak sexuality) -- just an oddity that Lawrence didn't pursue such aspects as her cousin-love (which is another form of being attracted to your own kind), her physical arousal over the naked Venus and Apollo statuettes and the disturbing effect Arabella has upon her (interesting phrase: "what a meanly sexual emotion this was in her").
I actually find Sue very physical (not primarily cerebral) - repressed sexuality doesn't lack powerful drives despite attempts at self-government by "living in the head." Hardy's characterisation of her anticipates (in part) Dr Marie Stopes's ideas of sexual abstinence by only a few years. I'm trying to remember the name for this form of abstinence but can only think of "Karezza " - I can't find this word anywhere so (sigh) it can't be right.
Cheers,
Rosemarie
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From: pauline.guerin@ntlworld.com
Subject: RE: Thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: March 29, 2005 1:17:33 PM PST
Interesting thoughts, I hadn't given a thought to Sue as being bi-sexual, I believed her reticence towards sex to be more down to the fact that she is more educated and therefore aware of the consequences of sex. I think on that score that she is far less atavistic than Arabella.
Having said that, I do agree with Keith Wilson's thoughts earlier that she aspired to male principles. I'm thinking that this was a part of the anxiety that grew with regard to the New Woman who was apparently seen as androgynous.
Many thanks indeed for this, any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards
Pauline
Pauline.guerin@ntlworld.com
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: RE: Thoughts on Sue Bridehead
Date: March 29, 2005 7:51:12 PM PST
The androgyne is certainly worth pursuing in Hardy. From his early admiration of George Sand -- a living androgyne and possible iinspiration for his characterisation of Eustacia -- (he was reading Sand at the time of writing and she died at the time of his writing ) through to the 1890s Symbolists, especially the Belgian school, the contemporary notion of fusing diverse attributes in one individual was not only culturally valorised but remained a prevailing spiritual ideal. To be detached from passions as well as re-uniting the two sexes in one form (the sexes split by original sin) posited a syncretism that is apparent in many aspects of Hardy's characterisations of women.
Best,
Rosemarie
who was apparently seen as androgynous
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