ABSTRACT
In The Well-Beloved, Thomas Hardy creates an artist hero, Jocelyn Pierston, who models his life on Pygmalion, the mythic sculptor who first creates and then marries the ideal female body. Unlike many other Victorian artists who celebrate this myth, Hardy satirizes its objectifying fantasy. Ironically, given his loss of faith, he relies on Protestant denunciations of idolatry to expose Pierston’s worship of female beauty as a willful projection of illusory ideals. Even more ironic, the conclusion adopts the narrative framework of Protestant reformation. Mortified by romantic failure and chastened by illness, the aging artist renounces beauty and finds moderate happiness in a friendly marriage.
