ABSTRACT
The world of freedom and action Hardy’s greater heroines would shape for themselves disintegrates as rapidly as the manmade world superimposes upon them its own curbing shape. With the advent of adulthood and a fully awakened sexual consciousness, every exploratory move towards self-discovery, self-realisation and sexual understanding, meets with obstruction in a male-dominated world intent upon highranking the docile woman over the daring, the meek over the assertive, the compliant over the selfdetermining, the submissive over the dynamic. There is no area of exploration, whether occupational, sexual or merely developmental, that does not, eventually, conflict with the dominant male will to dispossess woman of autonomy, identity, purpose and power. This becomes an increasingly important part of Hardy’s critique-from Henry Knight’s nullification of Elfride’s needs and desires to Sue Bridehead’s fight against the tyranny of man-made institutions. He would have had no hesitation at all in joining with J.S.Mill who argued for a liberated world in which
each individual will prove his or her capacities in the only way in which capacities can be proved-by trial; and the world will have the benefit of the best faculties of all its inhabitants.1
