Acts of Looking in Hardy: The Entangled Oppression of Women and Animals

 ‘What are my books but one plea against “man’s inhumanity to man” – to woman – and to the lower animals?’

In present-day usage, the term inhumane – used to describe an act that is without compassion for the suffering of others – is commonly applied not only to how humans treat one another, but to how we treat animals. A proposal to bomb defenseless civilians is often deemed “inhumane” by our press; so, too, is the neglect of a cat, dog, or other domestic animals.

Thomas Hardy’s rhetorical declaration of purpose anticipates our present-day concept of “inhumanity”, and encapsulates the central concerns of this paper. Hardy borrows ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ from Robert Burns, but conspicuously extends the remit of those deserving compassion to include ‘woman’ and ‘animals’. This exposes both the limited scope of the original statement, and the anthropocentrism of the word itself. Implied in the word ‘inhumane’ is that kindness, morality, compassion and feeling are qualities that pertain exclusively to being human. The word, even as it is used to condemn acts of cruelty toward animals, reifies human superiority, which – paradoxically – is often the very justification for cruelty. In Hardy's question, too, Shanta Dutta observed a ‘hierarchical placing’ in the descending order of ‘man’,‘woman’, and the ‘lower animals’ suggesting an implication that: ‘woman occupies an intermediary position in the evolutionary ladder – not as lowly as the animals, but not yet quite as exalted as man’ (207). 

 The influence of Darwinism on Hardy’s works and his personal interest in animals has often been critically considered, whilst his brilliant and flawed heroines have been repeatedly scrutinised through the lens of feminism. It is perhaps obvious that these two discourses cannot avoid overlapping with and being implicated in one another when one considers one of the conclusions of nineteenth-century natural science: that ‘man has ultimately become superior to women’ (Darwin 328). For, whilst contemporary biology was (seemingly) providing scientific basis for systems of patriarchy it was simultaneously, in bringing to light the evolutionary process, situating humans among the animals. Whilst they may appear as two distinct fields of enquiry, the parallels between animal rights and feminism bind them together into one ethical issue. Carol Adams, feminist, scientist and animal rights advocate, has observed numerous ‘connections between sexism and speciesism’ and writes in her recent work that ‘exploitation of women and animals derives from the same patriarchal mentality’ (Adams 206). Ethical debates in the nineteenth century further connected science, animal welfare and feminism, with Hamilton noting how ‘in its time, anti-vivisection was seen by its opponents to be almost egregiously female as a population’ (14).  Lynda Birke argues this stemmed from the ‘clear parallels in the ways that women and animals were treated by science’, women were ‘viewed as holding childlike opinions about animals … [as] close kin to the animals themselves [and] they saw symbols of their own suffering in animal victims’ (Birke 34; Adams 13).                                                   

This essay brings Hardy’s representation of the animal kingdom into direct discussion with his portrayal of women and explores specifically the acts of looking and voyeurism that can be traced throughout Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure. Looking holds a central position in feminist criticism. Mulvey’s male gaze, and Foucault’s panopticism are just two examples of the extensive literature that associates behaviours of looking with power, possession and status. This offers an interesting platform from which to read genderpower dynamics in Hardy and the voyeurism of his characters has often been called to attention: ‘Troy looks with erotic mastery’, ‘Boldwood’s voyeurism … [is] characterised by obsession’, Bathsheba blushes under the rays of Gabriel’s ‘male vision’ and Jude ‘lets his eyes rest [on Sue]’ (Grossman 623; 621; Hardy, “Jude” 253). In order to explore effectively Hardy’s representation of ‘man … woman … and the lower animals’ however, I wish to highlight key scenes of looking in his novels where the presence of animals adds a greater layer of meaning.                                                                                                                                  

One example is the episode in Far from the Madding Crowd in which Fanny Robin, exhausted and vulnerable, encounters a dog. It is a scene that exhibits and subverts the typical man-woman-animal dynamic: ‘In her reclining position she looked up to him just as in earlier times she had, when standing, looked up to a man’ (Hardy 216-217). The elevated level of the dog is emphasised twice in the passage – ‘at least two feet higher’; ‘she looked up to him’ – and is directly associated with woman’s archetypal position beneath man: ‘just as in earlier times she had, when standing, looked up to a man’.  The ‘hierarchal placing’ observed by Dutta is thus reversed; we see the ‘lower’ animal elevated to man’s position above woman. Extending the reading further, I propose that Hardy’s use of past tense is indicative not only of a raising of station but of a substitution; the animal becomes ‘just as’ man ‘had’ been and so effectively replaces him. As this passage progresses the shifting of physical and metaphysical levels continues:

The ultimate and saddest singularity of woman's effort and invention was reached when … she rose to a stooping posture, and, resting her two little arms upon the shoulders of the dog, leant firmly thereon, and murmured stimulating words. (Hardy 254)

Note rather than ‘the woman’s’ effort’ the collective ‘woman’s effort’; Fanny becomes representative of all women in this scene. Likewise, the narration earlier pictured the dog as ‘the ideal embodiment of canine greatness—a generalization from what was common to all’, thus Hardy gives us a larger framework of woman- and animal-kind that exceeds Fanny Robin’s immediate situation (Hardy 254). In her role as representative of woman, Fanny Robin rises ‘to a stooping posture’ and, in so doing, establishes her position as not higher than but on the same level as the dog. This is emphasised in their physical positions as Fanny rests ‘her two little arms upon the shoulders of the dog’, essentially becoming an extension of the animal. Hardy is quick to reiterate the mutual dependence of the pair, as Fanny is physically supported by the animal she in turn offers the dog ‘stimulating words’. Hardy also, in the words of Phillip Mallett, blurs ‘the distinction between human and animal kinds’ on a more personal level in this episode; the dog is ‘ascribe[d] moral qualities’, he is in genuine ‘distress’ for Fanny (Mallett 28; Hardy 254).                                                           

Fanny Robin’s experience of looking and being looked at by an animal stands in contrast to Gabriel Oak’s. Oak, often and fittingly presented by critics as sympathetic and feeling toward his animal charges, nonetheless, is made uncomfortable by any ‘resemblance’ between animal and man:

His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in which Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at the dog. However, he continued to watch through the hedge for her regular coming…’ [my emphasis]  (Hardy 20)

Both Fanny Robin and Oak recognise animal’s affinity to man, yet whilst Fanny accepts and facilitates this connection, Oak resolutely rejects it, ‘[he] would not look at the dog’. But is it his resemblance to the expression of his dog that Oak feels to be ‘lowering’? Or that the resemblance indicates Oak’s position in relation to Bathsheba is subservient and therefore ‘lowering’ to man’s archetypal position above woman? In ‘continu[ing] to watch through the hedge for [Bathsheba’s] regular coming’, Oak assumes a voyeuristic position of power over Bathsheba as he surveys her from his concealed position. However, in refusing to ‘look at the dog’ Oak is ascribing some of this power to the animal; he cannot meet its gaze without being forced to re-assess his own superiority.                                                                                        

The episode of pig slaughter in Jude the Obscure has often been cited as the scene in which stereotypical gender roles, in their reversal, are most heavily subverted. Jude’s sympathy for his ‘fellow-mortal’ contrast strongly against Arabella’s economical and unsentimental ‘pigs must be killed’ approach (Hardy, “Jude” 50; 49). Jude’s sensibility in this passage is unreserved, ‘poor creature’, ‘it’s a hateful business’, ‘a creature I have fed with my own hands’, and brands him, in Arabella’s terms, ‘a tender-hearted fool’ (Hardy, “Jude” 48;49). Despite Arabella’s competency for the job, she ‘was brought up to it’ and bid to ‘do it [her]self’, Jude’s emphatic response ‘Of course you shan't do it’ demonstrates how stereotypical male and female roles are strictly followed, even where  reality does not correspond to or facilitate these roles (Hardy, “Jude” 48). As well as questioning gender roles, this scene depicts one of the most intense interactions of looking that occurs between animal and woman. The dying pig releases a ‘shriek of agony’ with ‘his glazing eyes riveting themselves on Arabella’ (Hardy, “Jude” 49).  The use of the word ‘riveting’ has an enthralling quality leaving the reader in no doubt that the pig’s eyes are not resting on Arabella through coincidence; there is intention, and an unavoidable connection. Hardy reiterates this in the ‘eloquently keen reproach of [the] creature recognizing … the treachery of those who had seemed his only friends’ (Hardy, “Jude” 49).  It is Jude who ‘plunged in the knife’ and it is Jude we understand who has been the greater ‘friend’ to the animal, and so it is he who has perhaps committed the greatest treachery, and yet it is Arabella who comes under the reproachful gaze of the pig (Hardy, “Jude” 48). The pig’s ‘keen reproach’ is reserved not for the sex that inflicted the pain but for the sex who should share it (Hardy, “Jude” 49). This connection is strengthened in consequence of Hardy’s association of Arabella’s character with pigs throughout the text. Her father is a pig farmer, when Jude first meets her she is surrounded by pig parts and, then later, we see her in the sty amongst the pigs themselves. Following Jude’s ‘gaze’, as his eyes move ‘from her eyes to her mouth, thence to her bosom, and to her full naked arms, wet, mottled with the chill of the water’ his assessment of her reads like an assessment of animal flesh, of ‘full’ ‘mottled’ arms, ‘bosom’ and ‘perfect teeth’, indeed he concludes that she is ‘a complete and substantial female animal’ (Hardy “Jude” 28; 26). Critics have found this association of Arabella with pigs as ‘debasing’ and ‘derogatory’ (Harding 98; 100). Harding writes ‘that Hardy is making hierarchical distinctions in his association of Arabella with pigs is made apparent in comments that he made to William Archer about the aims of his writing’, like Dutta he reads Hardy’s ‘plea’ in a hierarchical light (100). To further his argument, he notes that Hardy ‘originally call[ed] Arabella "a complete and substantial female human," [before] revising "human" to "animal”’ (Harding 100). Although this appears to affirm the nineteenth century doctrine of male superiority, I argue that by encouraging the reader to, alongside Jude, sympathise with the pig’s suffering, and by simultaneously drawing parallels between the pig and Arabella, Hardy is in fact protesting against, at the very least the consequences of, that doctrine.                                                                                                                                       

That Hardy has situated this re-evaluation of gender roles within a discourse on the suffering of animals makes both subjects more compelling.  In Arabella’s statement ‘pigs must be killed’ she is merely upholding the accepted cultural doctrine of the time, but this ‘must’ serves to reminds the reader of the similar unwritten laws imposed on women: women must marry and bear children, they must be submissive and gentle, they must ultimately be weaker and less intelligent than man (Hardy, “Jude” 49). In portraying Arabella as a practical, economical and unsentimental female, Hardy not only critiques this generalisation of woman but revises the detrimental association of the animal rights movement with the sentimental, hysterical, irrational female. The ingrained masculine and feminine ideals of the Victorian are also readable in Jude’s feelings of emasculation: he is ‘dissatisfied with himself as a man at what he had done’, that being to end an animals suffering quickly as opposed to dragging it out to ‘eight or ten minutes dying’ (Hardy, “Jude” 50; 48). However, Jude quickly goes on to note the ‘lack of common sense’ in this kind of gendered thinking, for ‘the deed … amounted to the same thing’ whether he had done it in a manly, economical or a sentimental, “womanly” fashion (Hardy, “Jude” 50). The key note in this episode however is the line that follows: ‘the white snow, stained with the blood of his fellow-mortal, wore an illogical look to him as a lover of justice’ (Hardy, “Jude” 50). It is a sentence free of sex or species discrimination, Jude looks at the animal as a ‘fellow-mortal’ and defines himself not as man or woman but as ‘a lover of justice’. In terming the rights of animals as a matter of ‘justice’, Hardy writes into a stance that, a century later, would be taken by ethical writers such as Thomas Regan and Peter Singer. For example, Regan wrote ‘reason-not sentiment, not emotion, reason compels us to recognize the equal inherent value of … animals and … their equal right to be treated with respect’, whilst Singer spoke of the detrimental ‘portrayal of those who protest against cruelty to animals as sentimental, emotional ‘animal lovers’’ and how it has meant ‘excluding the entire issue … from serious political and moral discussion’ (Donovan 351; Singer 11). Thus we see how in one passage Hardy has subverted a) the stereotypical image of woman as sentimental and emotional b) the stereotypical image of the animal rights campaigner as the sentimental female and c) the prevailing notion of animals as non-sentient beings.                                                                                                                          

The shearing scene in Far from the Madding Crowd is one of the most loaded passages in terms of voyeurism and female-male-animal dynamics, with woman watching man watching animal. Hardy describes Bathsheba ‘looking on’ as Gabriel shears a ‘frightened ewe’ in language that is undeniably evocative of male sexual dominance (Hardy 137). Gabriel ‘drag[s] the frightened ewe’, ‘fling[s] it over upon its back’, he ‘[opens] up the neck and collar’ and in a fluid sensual movement ‘gradually [runs] the shears line after line round her dew-lap, thence about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail’ (Hardy 137). The scene cannot help but read as a male undressing a helpless female and this does not go unnoticed by Bathsheba, who empathises with the ewe: ‘"She blushes at the insult," murmured Bathsheba’ (Hardy 137). The narrator goes on to describe the ‘pink flush’ that arises on the ewe’s body as ‘enviable, for its delicacy’, even by ‘queens’ and ‘[that it] would have been creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world’ (Hardy 137).

Bathsheba’s moment of solidarity with the ewe juxtaposed against this commentary works to highlight the patriarchal structures at play. The reader’s attention is called away from the ‘insult’ that Bathsheba is seeing and fact that the ewe is ‘frightened’ to appreciate the ‘delicacy’ of its blush, projecting female social obligations such as modesty and shame onto an animal whilst framing the effects of mistreatment as ‘enviable’, ‘creditable’, and ultimately as applicable to ‘any woman in the world’; suggesting mistreatment and ‘insult’ to be the inevitable “lot” of women (Hardy 137). Furthermore, that Eithne Henson reads ‘unmistakeable rape images’ in the shearing of the ewe is an association which speaks as strongly to the objectification of animals as it does of women (Henson 137). The oppression of animal bodies in farming systems is one that ties strongly to feminism in the problematic normalisation of rape culture; with the sex of an animal and its capacity to breed determining how that body is manipulated in the farming industry.                                                                                        

In terms of power structures this passage is complex. The power Bathsheba appears to gain from her elevated position as Gabriel’s employer and supervisor is diminished in the double entendre of Hardy’s word choice as she is described as ‘his mistress quietly looking on’ (Hardy 137). Whilst it indicates her position as his professional superior, read amongst the sexualised content of the scene, combined with the possessive pronoun ‘his’ and the passive stance Bathsheba occupies ‘quietly looking on’, Bathsheba, if momentarily, inhabits the alternative definition of ‘mistress’, that of the “kept woman”.  Linda Shire argues that because Bathsheba is occupying the typically male role of voyeur, ‘her eyes critically regarding’ Gabriel, Hardy has disrupted the ‘alignment of gazing with male power’ (Hardy 137; Shire 167). And yet, her looking is not concealed but public and the subject is filled with ‘a luxury of content by having her over him’ (Hardy 137). In a reversal of the “gaze” dynamic, it is the subject of the gaze that is drawing ‘bliss’ from the process as opposed to the one watching (Hardy 137). The ewe, under what one might call the doubled gaze of Bathsheba and Gabriel, surfaces from Oak’s shears ‘a clean sleek creature’ (Hardy 137):

—how perfectly like Aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be realized—looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft cloud. (Hardy 137)

Once again the animal is described in anthropomorphic terms ‘looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment’ yet it also exceeds this human form in being likened to a deity. The ‘frightened ewe’ that was flung on its back just a paragraph before is now imaged as Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love. On the one hand this could be interpreted as Hardy’s attempt to justify, glorify even, male debasement of woman and beast – the sheep is transformed to deity only after its ordeal with man. It also reiterates, however, the intrinsic link between women and animals in the novel, as Bathsheba too is likened to deity, to a ‘haughty goddess’ by Troy, and tacitly to ‘Diana’ by herself (Hardy 345; 260). This last reference is significant in that Diana is described as independent of man, she is ‘sufficient to herself’ (Hardy 260). Even Aphrodite, with her closer association to male-female dynamics, can, as deity, be considered as above men, as above all human-kind. Likening both animals and women to deities could therefore be considered a challenge to patriarchal practices from Hardy; in spite of, or even because of, their debasing treatment by man, he uses imagery that presents them in positions of ultimate power.                                                                        

NNNOverall, the importance in reading Hardy’s representations of animals and women alongside one another should not be overlooked. Feminist criticism has often drawn upon the significance of looking and voyeurism in Hardy and the gender-power dynamics implicit in the respective gazes of his male and female characters. I argue that expanding this focus to include the equally significant acts of looking between humans and animals exposes layers of meaning that contribute greatly to feminist perspectives and further reveal Hardy’s strong sympathy with the animal rights movement. Indeed, this sympathy has equally been recognised outside of his novels, from his strong stance against vivisection, blood sports, and inhumane slaughtering methods to his poem composed specifically for the RSPCA (Ferguson 18; Sherman 306). Through a nuanced language of looking, I propose that Hardy perceptively aligns the struggles of women with the ethical issue of animal rights and in doing so reveals not a misogynistic association of women with the “lower animals” as beneath man but an empathetic understanding of the unjust position of animals and women in society despite their equal status to man. Hardy directly challenges stereotypical gender roles by presenting his main characters, Jude and Arabella in Jude the Obscure and Gabriel and Bathsheba in Far from the Madding Crowd, with ‘qualities opposite those by which culture would define them [their sex]’, and using episodes of looking to emphasise this subversion of traditional gender roles (Shire 166). In doing so, he challenges the concept that animal rights is an issue solely restricted to the female sex; and so paves the way for both animal and women’s rights – in consequence of his intrinsic linking of the two – to become an issue for anyone who is a ‘lover of justice’. In light of these ideas, I would agree that Hardy’s hierarchal placing of ‘man’, ‘woman’ and ‘the lower animals’ was intentional – it is a hierarchy that reflects the patriarchal systems of his time also evident in his novels. However, far more than merely recognising it exists, I argue that Hardy openly challenges it and calls on his reader to do the same.

PLEASE NOTE: Acts of Looking in Hardy: The Entangled Oppression of Women and Animals by Annabelle May Hawkes is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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