Portrayal of a Modern Woman in Thomas Hardy's Major Novels

Thomas Hardy’s major novels, Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, and The Return of the Native, illustrate female heroines who sabotage the constraining standards of Victorian society for women. This article sights to study Hardy’s portrayal of Bathsheba Everdene, Sue Bridehead, and Eustacia Vye as forerunner manifestations of feminist values, each one of them struggling with the contradiction between personal autonomy and the societal constraints dictated by a patriarchal force. Bathsheba’s refusal of traditional female roles, exemplified by her management of a farm, epitomizes the ample fight for female independence in a male-dominated society. In contrast, Sue Bridehead, through her dismissal of traditional marriage and her journey for intellectual and emotional self-reliance, personifies the conflict between individual freedom and the expectations of Victorian morality. Eustacia Vye, immersed in a feverish want to flee the limits of rural life and claim control over her destiny, exposes the tragic limits of female agency in a society that repudiates female full self-governance. Through these characters, Hardy not only anticipates the concerns of modern feminist movement but also pictures women as complex, multi-layered figures whose resilience in the encounter with societal oppression showcases their pursuance of self-governance. This study contends that Hardy’s works provide the groundwork for feminist discourse in English literature, offering a vicissitude of female subjectivity and the societal forces embody it.