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Thomas Hardy's Unmen and Othered Men

Thomas Hardy's Unmen and Othered Men
Thomas Hardy's Unmen and Othered Men
A majority of critics and readers seem to base their readings of Thomas Hardy's characters, both male and female, on a hetero-normative construction of nineteenth-century masculinity. However I argue that Hardy's novels can profitably be read as delineating specific liminal masculinities that can be designated as 'other' using concepts of gender originating in nineteenth-century biological and psychological discourses. In this way Hardy's novels embody a form of resistance that transcends contemporaneous societal conventions. He employs certain characters as agencies of anxiety and discomfort in order to demonstrate to his readership that the 'other' may in fact perform the function of a unifying principle within the confines of the text. Rather than be banished to the margins for their perceived 'anomalies', figures such as the Unman and the Other are integral to their respective communities, not in spite of their liminality, but because of it.
Thomas Hardy, masculinity, unman, uncanny, liminality, other
2517-7850
114-132
Hayes, Tracy
898d1ef0-762f-4194-aa79-b282417f4d16
Hayes, Tracy
898d1ef0-762f-4194-aa79-b282417f4d16

Hayes, Tracy (2020) Thomas Hardy's Unmen and Othered Men. Romance, Revolution and Reform, (2), 114-132.

Record type: Article

Abstract

A majority of critics and readers seem to base their readings of Thomas Hardy's characters, both male and female, on a hetero-normative construction of nineteenth-century masculinity. However I argue that Hardy's novels can profitably be read as delineating specific liminal masculinities that can be designated as 'other' using concepts of gender originating in nineteenth-century biological and psychological discourses. In this way Hardy's novels embody a form of resistance that transcends contemporaneous societal conventions. He employs certain characters as agencies of anxiety and discomfort in order to demonstrate to his readership that the 'other' may in fact perform the function of a unifying principle within the confines of the text. Rather than be banished to the margins for their perceived 'anomalies', figures such as the Unman and the Other are integral to their respective communities, not in spite of their liminality, but because of it.

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Published date: January 2020
Keywords: Thomas Hardy, masculinity, unman, uncanny, liminality, other

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 438285
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/438285
ISSN: 2517-7850
PURE UUID: 757af588-3ef7-4569-a9a6-fe84c282deb7

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Date deposited: 04 Mar 2020 17:33
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 06:59

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Contributors

Author: Tracy Hayes

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