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Paushter, Elizabeth

English

2010

MA

My thesis project began when I chose to write on Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd for my fIrst graduate seminar paper in a Critical Theory class. Because Bathsheba always left me feeling uncomfortable-making me wonder if she is strong or weak, domineering or dominated-I thought the novel would lend itself to a feminist reading. Although the course did not specifIcally engage in ecofeminism or ecocriticism, I found myself becoming increasingly interested in how Bathsheba and nature are written as erotic objects for the voyeuristic male characters in the novel. My research soon shifted from a strictly feminist approach to one that questions how the patriarchal dualisms of male/female, culture/nature and self/other work within the novel; the implications of Hardy's language of domination regarding the relationship between woman and nature, man and woman, and man and nature; and the seemingly male perspective on both Bathsheba and nature. I turned to ecocritics like Gaard, Murphy, Garrard, Buell, Glotfelty, and Warren to help me gain insight into these questions, and I found that this one small research project opened up an entire literary, social, and political movement to me.
As I conducted research at the British Library the following summer, in addition to reading all ofHardy's novels, I began asking, what is the pornographic in Hardy's novels? This thesis begins to answer this question. Situating Hardy's novels in a changing social and economic world, I argue that the male gaze from the characters, narrator, and reader in the novels confine and define woman and nature in pornographic spaces. The pornography in the novels works to justify the domination ofwomen, animals, and the earth. By putting place as a critical category alongside gender, I bring to light what past readers and critics have ignored.