[hardy-l] RE: Hardy-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 3

[kross3 at alumni.lsu.edu]

Dear Rosemarie,

 

I've just recently subscribed to the forum.  Your note below about the studies on emancipation and the New Woman, drawing comparisons to slavery, interests me very much.  Would you please point me in the right direction regarding these studies with a citation?  I'd be very grateful.

 

Cheers,

 

Kristin
 
> Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 09:48:33 -0500
> To: hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
> From: Rosemarie.morgan at yale.edu
> Subject: RE: [hardy-l] RE: Hardy-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 3
> 
> Just a few thoughts --.
> 
> >"Sue is struggling suggests that life for a New Woman was difficult indeed."
> 
> Some studies on emancipation have shown that for women struggling for 
> liberation and independence, yet whose entire history had been one of 
> dependence and reliance (upon the protection of father, then husband), a 
> protection needed partly due to childbirth & the lack of effective 
> contraception, there is a useful comparison to be made with emancipated 
> slaves. In both cases, confusion, lack of self-esteem, intense anxiety, 
> identity crises and many serious psychological handicaps afflicted both the 
> emancipated post-bellum slave and the nineteenth- twentieth-century woman. 
> Both were expected to hold their own in a world neither had ever 
> experienced before. Most scarcely knew who they were or what they could 
> expect of themselves.
> 
> I found these to be very useful sociological studies.
> 
> 
> >"There is also the argument that to live a life as man and wife without 
> >proper marriage would eventually destroy society "
> 
> Hardy was deeply concerned about Victorian institutionalised matrimony 
> which denied women the right to own their body (let alone their own 
> property) in a world clamouring for equal rights. Double standards existed 
> in the divorce laws (Woodlanders), in property laws (FFMC) and in sexual 
> mores (Tess) and so on. In this respect Hardy adhered closely to John 
> Stuart Mill (worth reading- especially On Liberty)
> 
> >"...Father Time and what he represents. For example, does he literally 
> >represent time, or sign of the times, or even future time? ..."
> 
> If memory serves he was one of those children who had the appearance of a 
> little old man. He certainly had a very rough childhood: posted off by his 
> mother from Australia with a sign round his neck to identify him, to a 
> father he had never met, and a stepmother who, herself, lacked a sense of 
> her own identity (Little Jude asks Sue at one point if he should call her 
> mother). Moreover his new parents were itinerant, without fixed abode, 
> obviously struggling and Little Jude was ostracised by other children for 
> these reasons. Old before his time, I think, may be apt.
> 
> My dime's worth!
> Cheers
> Rosemarie. 
> 
> 
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