Abjection and degeneration in Thomas Hardy's "Barbara of the House of Grebe"

From a Victorian perspective, Barbara's permanent passivity after Uplandtowers humiliates her can be seen not just as symptomatic of neurasthenia, but as the result of her forbidden onanistic pleasure in Edmond's statue. Seen so, her passivity comes from the "turbulence" of ambivalence created by the broken statue: she recalls her guilt over her rejection of the newly maimed Edmond; in addition, the defaced statue triggers her forbidden desire for Edmond simultaneously with her old, contradictory repugnance. Such conflicts that reflect class battles drive Barbara temporarily mad. Despite her degenerationist fear of the lower class, Barbara also suffers from paralyzing self-hatred because she desires one of its members. She finds a refuge from her searing conflicts in the numbness of neurasthenia. However, Hardy shows that Barbara's neurasthenia is caused less by her "degenerate" desire for Edmond than by the Earl's vengeful prodding of her opposing feelings.

Barbara's frequent, failed pregnancies suggest her new, abject status as a disgraced wife. Uplandtowers turns "the once radiant and passionate Barbara into a sickly woman condemned to a cowed life of repeated, unsuccessful pregnancies" (Wing 1987, 88). That all but one of Barbara's eleven babies dies bolsters Hardy's critique of her second marriage as debased. She is now the vehicle of feminine fluids and transformative powers that take her over in the name of patriarchal succession. As Edmond was disfigured as a result of being exiled due to class prejudices, so Barbara is disfigured by gender prejudices that compel her to become a monster of thwarted fertility.

Not only Barbara, but all women may be associated with death because of their "messy" childbearing capabilities (Kristeva 1982, 54). Through repeated bereavement Barbara dramatizes that association, mocking the Earl's attempts to create a dynasty that would make his name last. "Blood" loses again, as it did when Barbara chose Edmond over Uplandtowers. As the artist who tries to memorialize Edmond's beauty for all time through his statue fails, so the Earl fails to gain immortality through continuing his family name; Barbara unintentionally revenges herself upon Uplandtowers by producing a living daughter and dead sons. When Uplandtowers dies, his estate goes to a distant male relative, in another example of gender prejudices stealing from a womanthis time, from Barbara's daughter.

The drama of inheritance by "blood" is played out through the Earl's degenerate sexual pleasures. As well as voyeuristic pleasure, Uplandtowers gains a sadistic sexual pleasure directly from Barbara that is suggested by the number and frequency of her pregnancies. In reflecting upon his sexual satisfaction at Barbara's sufferings, we might consider Kristeva's contention that "The erotization of abjection . . . is an attempt at stopping the hemorrhage: a threshold before death, a halt or a respite?" (Kristeva 1982, 55). Through making Barbara an erotic object of abjection, Uplandtowers can draw thrillingly close to death while denying its threat. Unlike Barbara, whose contorted facial expressions, Gothic screams, fainting spells, and epileptic fits express her fears, Uplandtowers hides his feelings in the style of the stereotypical male aristocrat; we can only speculate that the fear of death motivates his displacement of the abject onto his wife and her dead husband. The Earl's coldness suggests that his fears are in fact so great that they have frozen him. His sexual relationship with Barbara is one of loathing that expresses his fear of sexuality's link with death.