In this short story by Thomas Hardy, John Lackland hears the story of Tony narrated by Mr Burton who tells of three women’s relationships to Tony, the main character.

I have found some quite different female attitudes towards men in this story. First of all Milly, who was a typical Victorian woman. In general misogynism was common in those days and she accepted the humble role as a woman in the society she was living in and did not complain about the indecisive judgement of Tony over the other women. She had huge faith in him; for example, under the sack-bags of his wagon she told Unity that "But what Tony says to other women is all mere wind, and no concern to me". Also she did not mind becoming his last choice later on because she wanted to believe that Tony did not really mean what he said to the other women. I personally think that with her idea of marriage she had no choice in this situation. One reason is that she was living in a small town in Wessex and presumably everyone had heard about her relationship with Tony. If she couldn’t have married Tony she would have found it difficult to marry any other man. This reason could related to one of the Hardy’s novels "Tess of the d’Urbervilles", published in 1891 because woman in his time were supposed to have a pure image before getting married.

Secondly; Hannah Jolliver and Unity Sallet, were different from Milly.
They both liked Tony and showed their emotion through positive acts because he was popular with the women. They were waiting to meet Tony and tried to appeal to him with their beauty and compared to Milly because they had heard that Tony was just about to become engaged to Milly. It was more like jealousy than true love for Tony Kytes and they did not like to be left out by him. All they wanted to prove to themselves was that their lives should not be dominated by Tony. So when Tony asked to marry them they could refuse his request. The words of his proposal revealed the status of marriage in that time i.e. "I’ve asked Hannah to be mine". Woman is not the possession of man. However Hannah’s refusal was a lot stronger than Unity’s one. Hannah said to Tony " Never- I would sooner marry no-nobody at all!". It can be quite a shocking comment in that time because it showed the concept of women being "Anti-Marriage". Nowadays it would not be a problem but in those times it would be socially unacceptable for a woman not to be married by a certain age. Maybe this is the reflection of my Oriental mentality about marriage. For instance many of Korean females getting married by in their early twenties, because it considered as appropriate period for given birth to their offspring and as women get older they became less popular than while they were young. Beyond this Tony was having different thoughts over their refusal. He thought he was the victim of the situation he was in that time with other people involved . However this is due to a different reason. Before twenty century women did not have a right to vote in England. I personally think the author of

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