The New Woman’s Predicament in The Story of an African Farm and Jude the Obscure

Abstract

Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure explore the shifting condition of women living in fin-de-siècle Victorian England through foregrounding a New Woman character. Despite their apparent affinity, the two authors show noticeable differences in their approaches to the failure of the New Woman character. While Schreiner’s criticism puts more weight on social restrictions and fixed gender roles as the causes of Lyndall’s agony, Hardy underscores human nature as the main reason for Sue’s unsuccessful attempt at liberation. The two authors also differ in their views of social transformation and the possibilities for future progress. In satirizing Victorian society, Schreiner suggests a utopian vision of social progress with her protagonist’s death symbolizing a new beginning. Hardy’s naturalist pessimism portrays his characters ultimately defeated by human nature, leaving no room for a hopeful future. This contrast originates from the two authors’ disparate gender politics and their different worldviews. Yet, by creating a complex, neurotic, and inconsistent heroine, Schreiner and Hardy equally depart from the angel-in-the-house character embodying the Victorian feminine ideal and docile womanhood in the previous realist novels, and produce a new literary model for future generations.