『무명의 주드』에 나타난 토마스 하디의 양면적 여성관

Thomas Hardy's Double Views of Womanhood in Jude the Obscure through Sue's Life

In Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy mainly deals with the life of the late Victorian era's vision of a “new woman.” Sue, who attempted to pursue a more liberal life that is free from the restrictions of a traditional womanhood, experiences two different lifestyles; first an anti-normative lifestyle that challenges social conventions and traditions and then, after experiencing personal tragedy, a conventional lifestyle that bows to socially accepted norms. Through his portrayal of the life of a new woman, Hardy represents sex and marital problems as the underlying cause of social conflict. The conflict Sue experiences likewise is related to these two problems. According to Hardy, Sue confronts the unfair social systems with anti-normative attitude but eventually she has to return to the conventional life in the end. This shows the double-sideness of Hardy's approach to the women problems. Such a double attitude also reveals that Hardy already knows the unfairness and inequality of the Victorian society and also emphasize the limitation of the reform. This article, then, aims to examine how the depiction of the heroine Sue's two contrasting lifestyles in Hardy's Jude the Obscure, first progressive and then a return to the conventional attitude, exposes the unequal social system and Victorian conventions which are restricting the new woman's life and how it is making a case for reforming the social problems.