Women in Victorian Society: A Study of Women Characters in Thomas Hardy’s Novels

This paper tries to discover Thomas Hardy's feminist outlook in his novels like The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far From the Madding Crowd, and Jude the Obscure etc. by discussing the characterization of the major female characters in these novels and the author's criticism of patriarchal hegemony and the attitude towards accepted ideas of marriage. In the Victorian society, women were treated as second sex. They became the victim of patriarchal hegemony. Patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of the property. Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men. The main aim of feminism is to deny the fact where male controls the female.To bring equal status between the male and the female, we need a transformation in both the genders. Gender is a socially constructed definition of women and men. It is not the same as sex (biological characteristics of women and men) and it is not the same as women. Gender is determined by the conception of tasks, functions, and roles attributed to women and men in society and in public and private life. The male has to reduce repression, maltreatment, wife – selling, wife – beating, sexual harassment towards women