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

Uplandtowers and us, Hardy suggests that reading, as a form of mental art collection, may be seen as perverted. The Earl's voyeurism is part of what makes him a moral degenerate, and so we may be as well, in as unacknowledged a sense as he.

In her classic study of film, Laura Mulvey argues that the voyeurism associated with the sadistic male gaze often creates a narrative of punishment and forgiveness for the heroine (Mulvey 1989, 22). Hardy critiques that stereotypical narrative through ruining Barbara rather than saving her.

In an essay deriving from Mulvey's ideas, Judith Mitchell contends that Hardy's novels involve a classic melodrama plot of women torn between two inappropriate men; such plots are *protests against the cultural marginalization of the female" (Mitchell 1993, 185). *Barbara" can be seen in this light to a certain extent, as both Edmond and Uplandtowers are problematic husbands in different ways. However, Edmond becomes problematic due to Barbara's classism rather than his own flaws.

11 The shifting significance of Barbara's gender and class illustrates the discourse of positionality. As described by Susan Stanford Friedman in 1996, this discourse suggests that, depending upon a character's situation, either gender or class may be the more salient attribute.

12 A Group of Noble Dames is the only collection of short stories that Hardy wrote for a periodical. The Graphic was shocked by Hardy's frank treatment of wife abuse, childbirth, adultery and the dynastic rule of aristocrats; Hardy resented the fact that the magazine forced him to bowdlerize several of his stories, including "Barbara" (Seymour-Smith 1994, 393; Wing 1987, 77).

The critical reception of "Barbara" and its collection was less than enthusiastic, until in recent decades Brady (1982), Wing (1987), Ebbatson (1993), and Marroni (1994) delved deeply into the story's dense meanings. For example, Hardy's fellow novelist George Gissing found the story "coarse," while T.S. Eliot found "Barbara" written "solely to provide a satisfaction for some morbid emotion" (Seymour-Smith 1994, 393).

13 Paradoxically, Hardy enjoyed consorting with the titled and was obsessed with his own family's decayed gentility (Wing 1987, 93).

14 Ursula LeGuin's modern science fiction story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," deals with a similar theme of a child who, like Edmond, is seen by his society as a symbol of all that is revolting and degenerate. The child becomes a scapegoat whose abjection enables the happiness of the rest of the people of Omelas, as the abjection of the working class enabled the triumphant joys of the aristocracy in Barbara's England, and as that of third-world workers enables first-world prosperity today.

WORKS CITED

Arata, Stephen. 1996. Fictions of loss in the Victorian fin de siecle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Baudrillard, Jean. 1979. Seduction. New York: St. Martin's Press. Berger, John. 1972 Ways of seeing. New York: Penguin.

Brady, Kristin. 1982. The short stories of Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin's Press. Ebbatson, Roger. 1993. Hardy: The margin of the unexpressed. Sheffield: Sheffield