The Depiction of Women in Jude the Obscure and Hard Times

In the novels Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, and Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, the representation of women is based on the societal ideals of the time. Women are depicted as “good” only when they fall in to the Victorian way of life and repress feeling and sexuality. 

The depiction of the good girl versus the depiction of the bad girl in these novels works as a tool in displaying the difference between the strict codes of the Victorian way of life for a woman and the alternative, more progressive, liberated way of life for a woman. Inevitably the novels comment on this structure and present their opinions of it through the text, and ultimately track the development of the role of women in society from Hard Times to their position in Jude the Obscure. 

In Hard Times the two main women each represent a different type of woman within society; Luisa Gradgrind represents industrialism and the rejection of emotion, and Sissy Jupe represents the fancy and imagination. In the novel Sissy is presented as the one who needs to change how she acts, but it is truly Luisa who, in the end, realizes that she was the one who needed to change. 

In Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure the main character Jude has relationships with two females throughout the course of the novel, Arabella and his cousin Sue Bridehead. These women serve to display two different types of women in society by presenting the reader with Arabella, who is extremely sexual, and with Sue, who is more intellectual and plain. Unlike Hard Times, these women are being critiqued by the standards of women’s sexuality, instead of women’s actual role in society.