It’s a man’s world

The Well-Beloved
By Thomas Hardy


Jocelyn Pearston at 20 is in search of the perfect muse. He has found a new one nearly every week. When he returns to the island of his youth, he is reacquainted with his young neighbour Avice and becomes obsessed with her. When she refuses to meet him at night, he takes up with young Marcia and breaks her heart when he refuses to marry her.

At 40, he falls for Avice’s orphaned daughter because he finds her likeness too compelling. He disdains her intransigent heart. He vows to take her away and make her his own muse alone. But she is secretly married to another.

At 60, he returns to the island, to visit the recently widowed Avice II, and rather than finally take up with her, of course he falls instead for her daughter, Avice III. The granddaughter of Avice I.

When it seems he could redeem himself by marrying the widowed Marcia, also from his youth, he is abhorred by her 60 year old form. Finally he realises that he too is old and unattractive. In the final pages, the old bachelor relents, marries Marcia, & they settle on the island.

There is so much hypocrisy in the behaviour of protagonist, Jocelyn.
He is allowed to find a muse in woman after woman. He is allowed to see them as something to possess and mold to his will.
He is allowed, despite his age, to prey upon successively younger generations of women from the same family.
And yet the women, who wish to follow their hearts, the same way, are judged as aberrant and immoral.
It was the same for dear Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
I’d love to know the reason for Hardy’s mysogynistic view of women but alas there is not much written about his personal views. He is possibly just a creature of his 19th Century time.

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