Eustacia Vye: Muse-ings on the Unintended Feminist

Chelsea M. Slack

Abstract


Eustacia Vye as a feminist figure is not exactly a new idea – a quick Google search of the topic brings up dozens of articles, blog posts, and essays on the subject. Rather than simply document Eustacia’s feminist traits, this paper seeks to do two things. First, it examines Hardy’s positioning of Eustacia as the other and considers her ensuing treatment by the novel’s other characters through the lens of new wave feminism, specifically the work of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. The second, yet equally important, purpose of this essay is to contemplate how Eustacia, a product of Hardy’s phallocentric discourse, has become a feminist in the first place. Drawing on Heidegger’s being of entities and Irigaray’s teachings on visibility/invisibility of the female other, this article asserts Hardy’s inability to see or access Eustacia’s female being allowed him to unintentionally fashion a feminist character. Such rereading also opens up a vast number of male-created female characters to be analyzed as feminists.


Keywords


Cixous (Helene); Irigaray (Luce); New wave feminism; Intention; The other

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/13445

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