The state of the economy and the political events of the 1880s and 1890s were unstable, and in their public roles, men began to feel gradually overwhelmed. Their personal lives were even more chaotic, as women began to challenge "old ideas" with their new, feminist ones. The "Woman Question" was ubiquitous, and women were gradually given rights that they never before had; the Married Women's Property Act, two Matrimonial Causes Acts, and the Maintenance of Wives Act, were three laws which allowed for more equality in marriage. The introduction of birth control literature also significantly changed women's attitudes toward their sexuality and matrimonial duties. Federico maintains that as a result of these changes, ferment existed during the era. "Men meditated upon their patriarchal inheritance, and by the end of the century, contradictory middle-class attitudes still existed, contributing to the sketchy construct of Victorian masculinity" (Federico 18-19).
Southerington has placed some of Hardy's male characters into one of four categories (although it is important to note that these groupings are permeable, and characters are not confined to any one category): the virile; romantic; realist; and chaste. Though virility in such men as Fitzpiers, Troy, Wildeve, and Alec d'Urberville was believed to be the "keynote to all that is best and most forcible in the masculine character" (according to Grant Allen in the Fortnightly Review, October, 1889), inwardly their egoist self-assurance was steadily eroded by perceived threats to their masculinity. These men are sexually appealing, luring women to them, yet Hardy rarely allows these seducers to ultimately win. Romantics, such as Steven Smith, are idealists, fantasizing about the woman of their dreams; realis ts, like Gabriel Oak, recognize the presence of the New Woman; and the chaste man, typified by such characters as Oak, Clym, Winterbourne, Jude, and Angel, is the man to whom Hardy extends the most sympathy. These are the men most affected by the New Wo man, often falling victim to her increasing power and status in society (Southerington 55).
Woman is no longer the victim when involved with chaste, saintly men; rather, she is in control and is often one of the several sources from which man derives his misery. Hardy regrets the domination of sex in man because it makes him fall prey to the fateful lure of the woman. Frequently in his novels, Hardy centers the action around a woman character, while simultaneously causing the reader's sympathies to lie with a man under her domination. For example, in Far From the Madding Crowd , action centers around Bathsheba, but sympathies lie with Oak; in The Woodlanders Giles commands our sympathies, but Grace Melbury is the center of attention.
These men, victimized by alluring women, are in the process of self-invention, just as women of the same period are in the process of becoming liberated. The male characters are structured in ambivalence and struggle to establish a genuine identity beyond the confines of patriarchal roles. They wish to explore their own complicated feelings, but society makes it unacceptable for men to express any great emotion: "If Jude had been a woman, he must have screamed under the nervous tension which he was now undergoing. But that relief being denied to his virility, he clenched his teeth in misery" (Jude the Obscure chap. II).
The Mayor of Casterbridge is considered the fullest nineteenth- century portrait of man's inner life--his rebellion, suffering, loneliness, jealousy, and despair. Henchard is a power-hungry fiend who auctions off his wife and daughter, severs all bonds with the female community, and reenters the world alone. He devotes his whole life to the male community, defining relationships in terms of wealth, honor, paternity, and legal contract. In Elaine Showalter's article, "The Unmanning of the Mayor of Casterbridge," she describes Henchard's unmanning process, and the way in which he transforms from one who defends himself against intimacy, to one who eventually crosses over to his long repressed feminine side and is forced to discover his own capacity to love. This surrender opens him up to an understanding of human need measured in feeling rather than property. By telling the story of a man whose heroic will is tamed, Hardy gives a great deal of insight in the types of men he favors - the chaste male, who is able to abandon his "savage male defiance" for love and sensitivity.
Hardy portrays masculinity in states of ambivalence. The masculine situations or identities manifested in men's virility or chastity, in their sexual fantasies and in social reality, document and comment on the tension experienced by many Victorian men in the last two decades of the nineteenth century (Federico 21). The typical male is defined by money, power, and prestige, while the newly emerging male is more feminine in thought and often falls victim to his female counterparts. These sensitive men, like Oak, Clym, Winterbourne, and Henchard at the end of The Mayor of Casterbridge , are the ones ultimately rewarded. Hardy respects the male who is able to explore his own emotions, who is more concerned with feeling than power.
Higonnet, Margaret R. The Sense of Sex: Feminist Perspectives on Hardy. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Southerington, F.R. Hardy's Vision of Man. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.
Wright, T.R. Hardy and the Erotic. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.