THE THOMAS HARDY ASSOCIATION
LINKS
| A 160 |
DIRECTOR: ROBERT SCHWEIK
© 2000-2004
SEXUALITY IN DARWIN, HARDY, AND BEAUVOIR
DESCRIPTION:
Address: http://www.bus.baruch.cuny.edu/critical/
Contact: Contact: Unidentified
Date: 01/0/04
Do not be daunted by the fact that the opening page identifies this as an accounting conference! From the opening page, select from the column on the left "Archive 1996-2000," then "CPA 99 Conference Papers," and, from those, the essay by David Garlock titled titled "Endangered Genders: Sexuality and the Individual in Darwin, Hardy and Beauvoir."
This extensive scholarly essay by David Garlock includes citations to 17 other works. The essay was published in a slightly modified form in Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction Volume 27, New York: AMS Press, 1998, and now distributed as e-text for a conference at Baruch College, CUNY, New York, USA. The essay is copyrighted, and the author requests that no additional copies be made without written permission.
COMMENT:
The thesis of the article is that in Jude the Obscure there is a rejection of traditional gender roles in several of the main characters--Arabella's characteristics are in some respects masculine; Sue and Jude are androgynous mirror-images of one another. "For Darwin and Hardy, all classificatory systems are illusory" and "for Hardy's gender-transcendent protagonists, all classification designs are illusory" as well, and he portrays them as "only unique, separate and aspiring individuals."