The Narrator's Attitude Towards Female Protagonists in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (Victorian Women).

The present study is concerned with illuminating six female protagonists in Hardy's novels (Fancy Day, Bathsheba Everdene, Eustacia Vye, Grace Melbury, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Sue Bridehead) by analyzing the narrator's attitude towards them, and tracing the change this attitude takes as Hardy's career progresses. The narrator's attitude is discussed with reference to such elements in the narrative as his distance from the character, his distribution of point of view, his direct analysis of certain scenes, and the images he employs in describing his heroine. This study demonstrates that the narrator's attitude towards the female protagonists composes a coherent, imaginative journey, which starts with the narrator's naive repetitions of stereotypical opinions about women, then gradually grows in its depth and insight into the female character, until it culminates in the matured, individualized vision of a sophisticated narrator who closely presents what a woman feels, rather than depicting her from the perspective of a detached observer. Thus, in the early phase of Hardy's career, the narrator poses as a juvenile, amused observer, st and ing far from his heroine and watching the veneer of her character, her coquetries and her "feminine" mannerisms. Here, the female appears as an attractive presence, an object of desire and a beautiful sight rendered from the outside. In the later phase, Hardy's narrator is no longer a youthful, blithe character, but an old, mature, philosophical observer. He is still interested in the female as a fascinating, mysterious presence, yet he attempts to look closer at her by delving more deeply into her mind; she is no longer merely a beautiful object, but a human being facing life and trying to fathom its meaning.Ph.D.British and Irish literatureUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160428/1/8502936.pd