Women play victims in Thomas Hardy’s short stories, roles that were Ess

Women play victims in Thomas Hardys short stories, roles that were typical of Victorian women in generalWomen play victims in Thomas Hardys short stories, roles that weretypical of Victorian women in general Discuss with references atleast three of Hardys short storiesThomas Hardy in his short stories The Withered Arm, Tony Kytes, theArch Deceiver and the Winters and the Palmleys presents his readerswith a series of unsettling visions of the relations between men andwomen, women mainly coming worse off. For example Rhoda of TheWithered Arm, the poor go forthcast milkmaid, not even respected by herown son, or pretty Harriet Palmley, the wolf in sheeps clothing, evildue to her education, therefore not a victim, but instead a unworthyperson. Gertrude excessively, a good, obedient, rosy cheeked titsy-totsylittle body enough until she gets her arm withered from a curse thatdrives her to desperation to find a cure for the disfigurement. in allthese women, due to the fact that theyre female, all ended off worseoff and in the course of this essay I am going to consider whether hisfemale characters were victims or merely women of their time.Hardys stories, mainly set 50 years before they were written, are setmostly in the 1830s period of Victorian Britain, when women wereconsidered lower than men and didnt usually get any rights oreducation, especially in the rural areas such as Wessex, where HardysWessex Tales where set. Women were also oppressed in the way of notbeing allowed high place jobs, the vote and certainly not a place inParliament or anything that might change Britain in any way, which wasquite ironic considering Britain was being ruled by Queen Victoria, awomen h... ...herself. The other two, Unity and Hannah are in the sameboat in the way that they both want to steal Tony away from Milly butwhen it comes to Tony actually asking them to marry him they bothrefuse out of pride. They are not victims but women of their time, sothey do not gain my pity, a s thats just the way it was. As for themale characters such as Lodge, who dies peacefully of old age, leavingmost of his money to a reformatory for boys after being the mainvictimiser and Tony Kytes also, after humiliating Milly totally andhaving a happy ending is unfair considering what happened to all thewomen. I think Hardy does exaggerate the victimisation of the womenand praise the men in his stories and I do odour sympathy for themajority of the women but as for the rights, characters and educationof all the women, thats them just being women of their time.