S1, Guided Reading

Mrs. Baddouri

‘The Son’s Veto’ (1894) by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born on the 2nd of June, 1840 in Dorset, England. His father
worked as a stonemason. Jemima, his mother, educated him. After finishing his
studies at Mr Last’s Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester, he could not
afford university education because of his family’s social position. At the age of
sixteen, he started learning architecture. In 1862, he attended the King’s College
in London. The Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural
Association awarded him prizes.

Sophy’s uneasiness in London in his short story ‘The Son’s Veto’ reflects Hardy’s
state of mind when he had been in England. Being the victim of class
consciousness in London, he began to feel his social inferiority, the same
inferiority that Sophy feels. Social reform became the writer’s point of interest
then.

Writing poems was Hardy’s focal point in his career as a writer and he thus
considered himself primarily a poet. His success as a novelist came first with ‘Far
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from the Madding Crowd (1874), ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and ‘Tess of
d’Urbervilles (1891) and so on. The 1950s gave him recognition as a good poet.
He criticized the Victorian society a lot being a novelist, a poet and a short story
writer.

‘The Son’s Veto’’ (1894) depicts Hardy’s disapproval of the 19 th century society
which stands on hollow social rules and mores. The short story shows the writer’s
belief in criticizing social constraints of the Victorian period which give more
importance to rules at the detriment of happiness. Sophy’s death at the end,
reveals how her son Randolph, a representative of the higher class, condemns his
mother to die slowly in pain and sorrow bearing the title of a lady, rather than
allowing her to marry Sam, the shopkeeper.

In ‘Two on a Tower’, Hardy presented a love story transcending the barriers of

social class to defeat societal pressures and conformity in order to make his
thoughts clear on his society.

Summary of ‘The Son’s Veto’

Sophy is in love with Sam, a gardener working at Aldbrickham, near her village
Gaymead. She is nineteen and works as a parlour-maid at the reverend Twycott’s
place. After the death of the reverend’s first wife, Sophy takes care of the man and
becomes quite close to him. She had once announced to the reverend that she
wanted to get married to Sam, but later she declared that she had fought with him.

While serving Mr. Twycott, Sophy becomes lame during an accident in his house
and then the master of the house, who has developed a tender feeling for her,
proposes Sophy to marry him. Having a great respect for him, she accepts the
proposal despite that she ‘did not exactly love him’. The couple moves to London
and Sophy does not like the ‘dusty house in a long, straight street’ there. She
continues to live there somehow and gives birth to a son named Randolph.

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 Randolph is very conscious of his social background and of his status in society.
He is given the best education in a prestigious school and he always corrects the
grammatical mistakes of his poor mother who has not totally transformed into a
lady. Mr Twycott who was much older than his wife Sophy has died leaving her to
face ‘depression and nervousness’ on her wheel chair. Randolph continues his
studies and pays occasional visits to his mother whom he does not find cultured up
to the level of their status in society. Sophy is very lonely and misses her village a
lot.

One day, Sophy, who spends her day looking at people in the street, sees Sam, her
old lover. She calls him and he comes to talk to her. Thence, they start meeting
and their old love is revived. Sophy feels a new happiness and Sam even takes her
with him secretly for unusual drives. Consequently, Sam proposes Sophy to marry
him and come to settle with him in the county-town of their native place. Though
she is happy, her son becomes the reason for her hesitation.

After watching for a suitable occasion to tell Randolph about Sam’s proposal,
Sophy finally succeeds when he comes in her suburban residence. Thinking that
his mother wants to get married to a gentleman, Randolph accepts but later he
refuses on learning that a shopkeeper wants to marry her.

Sophy is heartbroken to hear her son saying that he will be degraded ‘in the eyes of
all the gentlemen of England, but she continues to wait. She thinks that Randolph
will change his mind. Sticking too much to his background, Randolph never
agrees. After four years of pining and pain, Sophy dies and her funeral proceeds to
her village Gaymead in the presence of her son and Sam.

Critical analysis

The Victorian age to which Hardy belonged, gave women the label of being ‘weak
and helpless, fragile delicate flowers incapable of making decisions beyond
selecting menu and ensuring their many children to be taught moral values’.
Sophy, the main character of the play is indeed the depiction of such a woman.
She is ‘weak and helpless’ as she has to wait for her son to allow her to get married

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again. The way in which her hair is done at the beginning is symbolical as all
Victorian women needed to be presented with fake charming looks in the society,
‘but that they should be all demolished regularly at bedtime’.

Three themes that repeat themselves in most of Hardy’s work are marriage, social
class and education. With modest social origins, the writer had not been able to
adopt the traditional upper class education and later his two marriages could not
make him happy. Marriage, the social class and education also become the major
forces in Sophy’s life that drive her to her tragic end.

The Victorian era is described as ‘a hypocritical period when relationships were

quite artificial’. Mr. Twycott’s relationship with Sophy is also quite artificial. For
Twycott there is no reason such as love for Sophy that makes him take her for his
wife. It is just that he suddenly realises that he will be left alone without her
service and ironically she is the ideal Victorian ‘fragile’ woman, ‘What a kitten-
like, flexuous, tender creature she was!’.

Despite that she ‘did not exactly love him’, Sophy cannot refuse Twycott’s request
to marry her. Her handicap also seems to be part of her helplessness. On top of
that Sam also had a quarrel with her. Her marriage is somehow not a happy one as
her love for Sam becomes appealing to her after her husband’s death. It is for her
an opportunity to be happy, but unfortunately she cannot achieve what she wants.

Sophy is marginalized by her son who cannot tolerate her inability to match his
social standards. Her physical and emotional alienation from the kind of life she is
supposed to lead show her uneasiness and unhappiness. Though she is still quite
young and beautiful, she is denied the right to live life on her own terms and
conditions. Her son is not hers as he is married to the social rules and mores.
Sophy is physically condemned to stay on the wheel-chair and emotionally she is
condemned to stay in her unpleasant house in London. Her tragedy lies in the fact
that she has failed to become Lady Twycott in her mind and soul. She has
remained the innocent girl of nineteen who used to live in the village of Gaymead.

Gaymead haunts her thoughts even more after the death of her husband. The only
solace for her becomes to think about ‘the village in which she had been born, and
whither she would have gone back-O how gladly!-even to work in the fields’. This
fact underlines her detachment with her life as a lady. The materialistic comforts

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in her house cannot give her happiness. Her state is worsened with her inability to
sleep at night because of lack of exercise. She has even no interest in travelling.
Alienation is seen in her life as there is no access to social life outside her house
and she lacks interest in things that people of her class usually do, for instance
‘going for drives’ or other social activities.

The life of Sophy remains miserable mostly because of her wrong decision, that of
marrying Mr. Twycott. She regrets her marriage as she has thinks of Sam , ‘She
had occasionally thought of him, and wondered if life in a cottage with him would
have been happier a lot than the life she had accepted’. At this point, Hardy raises
the issue of happiness and money. Despite having wealth and social status, Sophy
is not happy and thinks that life with an ordinary man like Sam in a cottage could
have been better. Loneliness is all what she gets in the city. Her decision to marry
Sam is her opposition to conventional norms which her son Randolph represents.

The hollow belief of the upper social class is depicted in Randolph’s education.
His status has to be maintained and safeguarded at the cost of his mother’s
happiness. Sophy can be allowed to marry on a gentleman but not Sam, ‘A
miserable boor!. For him the society to which he belongs is above fundamental
human rights. Education has ironically failed to fill compassion in his heart.
Genuine feelings are crushed under the pretext of keeping titles given by the
society. His mother’s mistakes in grammar and her origin can only make a
gentleman like him ‘blush’. The son’s veto is deeply rooted in his educational and
social background. Randolph cannot give any comfort to his mother and only
compels her to face loneliness and helplessness.

Hardy’s attempt to fight belief in social constraints and embrace happiness is also
seen through Sophy’s attempt to convince her son. However, she has been wrong
in not rebelling and waiting to convince Randolph. Happiness is every human’s
fundamental right and she could have fought for it instead of begging for it every
time for years from her son. Sophy is forced to bear the title of lady Twycott till
her death. She is mutilated under its burden and she pines to be otherwise, ‘No, I
am not a lady’.

Her husband’s death somehow relieves her from its pain and burden as she returns
to her old nature to the contempt of her son. She would have achieved success if

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she would have rebelled by listening to Sam who tells her right at the beginning
that ‘It is not you who are the child, but he’. Thus, Sophy is the authority being the
mother but unfortunately she lets the authority in the hands of her merciless son
who represents the rules of the highest class in the society.

The death of Sophy is the only way out as only then is she allowed to return back
to her village Gaymead. Unable to attain the happiness she has longed for, she
gives up her life in the process and becomes more miserable before her death.