Much of nineteenth-century British literature reflects the Victorian perception of women as sedentary creatures who occupy positions subordinate to men. The figure of the governess seems to have been a staple in Victorian novels, most famously portrayed in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). Contrarily, Thomas Hardy fashioned his narratives “around a strong, independent, charismatic woman at the same time that he painted weak, ineffectual men” (Sprechman 5), and his short story “The Distracted Preacher” (1888) exemplifying this tendency. In effort to address women’s poor place in Victorian society, Hardy reverses the male and female gender roles, embodying Lizzy Newberry with “some of the qualities traditionally associated with male heroes” (11).

Along with writers such as Jane Austen and George Eliot, Hardy strove to change the established views of women and create a respectable place for women in literature (Sprechman 4). Prior to such writers, “the typical heroine was shown to be submissive, uncomplaining, and obedient; a woman who was servant to her husband, and nurse to her children” (3). Often called the “angel of the house,” women were characterized as ethereal, but simultaneously expected to maintain a servile position. Victorians justified this idea of women as “obedient and expected only to marry, bear children and live in subordination to a husband” (Wojtczak) with current theories of the time regarding gender and sexuality, which followed a bifurcated model created by theorists such as Herbert Spencer and Patrick Geddes. Classified as having a katabolic nature, theorists considered men as active agents who expended energy while women preserved energy due to their anabolic nature to nurture. According to this model, since men only concern themselves with the act of conception, while women must carry, birth and care for children, men have more extraneous energy. Following this logic, the woman “had to stay at home in order to conserve her energy, while the man could and needed to go out and hunt or forage” (Lee).

Women’s status in society and their depiction in literature began to change due to revision of laws concerning women’s labor, education, marriage and divorce. Several union-like institutions for women were established, such as the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution (1848) “to provide assistance to ladies connected with the teaching profession” (Charities Direct) and the Association for the Aid of Milliners and Dressmakers (1843). Forwarding women’s education, two colleges were established. In 1848, a group of tutors at King’s College, London established Queen’s College, London for women interested in the teaching profession (Spartacus Educational) and in 1849 Elizabeth Jesser Reid, a social reformer, founded Bedford College for Women (Royal Holloway). Regarding women’s rights in marriage, the Child Custody Act of 1839 granted women the right of custody of their children aged less than seven and in 1757 the Matrimonial Causes Act allowed a legally separated woman to keep what she earns.

Literature also played an important role in shaping women’s new identity in society. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote The Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), the first great feminist document, arguing the rational quality of women. A proliferation of female writers appeared, such as Jane Austen and the Brontës, and women began to consider writing as a career. Margaret Fuller’s Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845) acted as a major inspiration for the American feminist movement, emphasizing the hypocrisy of men who campaigned for the abolition of slavery while supporting laws that allowed women to remain servants to their husbands. The Subjection of Women (1869) by John Stuart Mill introduced the idea of the “New Woman” who “was a kind of intellectual, who had a career and could choose to put her energies into professional rather than matrimonial achievement” (Sprechman 4).

Hardy’s character Lizzy Newberry embodies the characteristics of the “New Woman” and directly challenges the idea of women accepting a passive role in society. Rather than burdened with the task of raising children, Lizzy has no children nor a husband as a “widow-woman, who had got no husband, because he was dead” (Hardy 22). When Lizzy refers to her husband as her “first husband” she reveals that she “had thought pretty frequently of a second” (27); however, Lizzy remains unmarried despite the fact that she could very easily marry her cousin Owlett, “who has spoken to [her] about matrimony, every now and then” (32).

Unlike most Victorian women whose position depended “largely on the accomplishment of an advantageous marriage” (Sprechman 8), Lizzy fashions “an independent existence based on [her] own accomplishments” (8). When Stockdale refuses to marry her because of the clash of their professions, Lizzy even suggests that she has “got this large house; why can’t you marry me, and live here with us, and not be a Methodist preacher any more?” (Hardy 65). Her suggestion that her future husband give up his occupation to marry her, and implication that she support the family with her income, radically contradicts the social structure of the time, in which women had little or no financial power. Instead of staying home to conserve her energy for childbearing and rearing, Lizzy acts as the dynamic agent journeying into the night to kindle fires along the countryside in effort to elude the Preventive-guard. On her smuggling adventures Lizzy becomes “absorbed in [the] dark…as if she had become a part of it” (41). Always ready for action, she “cannot rest indoors. [because] Something is happening, and I must know what” (61).

Rather than presenting Stockdale as the katabolic man who “needed to go out and hunt or forage” (Lee) the text defines Stockdale in relation to his activities in Lizzy’s home. When he arrives at Lizzy’s house, “As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps scudding away like mice” (Hardy 22). Stockdale feels comfortable in the home setting, as he sits down, “not objecting to his experience of the room thus far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell” (23). When placed in an outdoor setting as he secretly follows Lizzy on one of her smuggling runs, Stockdale does not act as confidently as does in the home because he “had never taken any extensive walks in this direction” (41), “twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and descents” (42) as he runs to overtake Lizzy. Stockdale behaves as the more passive figure, integrating into the home setting more easily than the nightly ventures “as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful escapades” (45).

The Victorian model that attempted to explain the male and female natures as katabolic and anabolic served to justify men’s tendencies to indiscreetly copulate with many women, because as “slaves to their katabolic purposes and sexual appetite, [they] could not really be blamed” (Lee). This description of men’s inability to control their libidos seems vaguely reminiscent of Freud’s id, functioning to “gratify…instincts for pleasure without regard for social convention, legal ethics, or moral restraint” (Guerin et al. 130). While characterizing males as the moral agents (Lee), Victorian society expected women, not men, to behave in exact accordance to social standards, much like the superego acts as the “repository of conscience and pride” (Guerin et al. 130) and moral restrictions.

Rather than behaving like the id, Stockdale “as the son of highly respectable parents” (Hardy 25) performs the function of the superego, moralizing to Lizzy about the dishonesty of her smuggling. Lizzy exemplifies more of the id’s tendencies, advocating smuggling as something that “Everyone [enjoys] who tries it” (45). Her ability to blend into the darkness also suggests a connection with the id since darkness tends to represent many of the same concepts such as “chaos, mystery, [and] the unknown” (Guerin et al. 161). She remains very active at night, surprising Stockdale when he “was not in the least anticipating Mrs. Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before” (Hardy 24). Night cloaks the incidence in which Stockdale first spies “The personage [who] wore the clothes which Lizzy had been brushing, … [whose] outline and gait suggested to the minister that the wearer was Lizzy herself,” (40) as “he felt his way upstairs without a light” (40) after his candle flickered then “suddenly declined and went out” (40). The scene reveals a connection between darkness and Lizzy’s second identity; Stockdale’s candle had to extinguish before she could emerge in her other form.

Her relationship with the outdoors also augments her representation as the id since a “place of wild, untamed passions and terrors, has the attributes of the Freudian id” (Guerin et al. 142) while “the village, as a place of social and moral order…is analogous to Freud’s superego” (142). Stockdale further exmeplifies the superego because of his close ties to the town. Lizzy displays a dual personality acting as a smuggler along the coast at night but as “fine…young woman” (Hardy 23) in the town during the day with her actions reflecting her ability to function in compliance with the superego. She tries to nurture Stockdale back to health noticing that he “sneezed twice again this morning…and must let [her] make a posset” (30-31).

The episode in which Lizzy leads Stockdale to the church at night to take from her store of contraband liquor explores the Victorian ideas of equating a woman’s worth with “her chastity and appearance of complete innocence, for…Once led astray, she was the fallen woman, and nothing could reconcile that till she died” (Lee). The scene has distinct sexual undertones as Lizzy tells Stockdale to “Take the tub between [his] knees, and squeeze the heads” (Hardy 27) while she conveys mouthfuls of water into the barrel by “putting her pretty lips to the hole” (27). Rather than characterizing her as a chaste Victorian lady, Lizzy “is regarded as a highly sexual being, [though] she cannot be dismissed as a prostitute or a fallen woman” (Cunningham 14). Without even considering Mrs. Newberry to be a woman of low morals, Stockdale sits in his room sipping brandy after returning from his escapade and he “longed for the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again” (Hardy 28).

While most of the story supports the different social order in which Lizzy and Stockdale reverse gender roles, the ending represents a return to that patriarchal structure that the rest of the story challenges. After several years, Stockdale returns to Nether-Moynton to find that Lizzy has ceased smuggling liquor and they marry. After the marriage, Stockdale “took her away from her old haunts to the home he had made for himself” (Hardy 69); this move from Nether-Moynton signifies that Stockdale must remove her from that world that could support the alternate social order to a place which “he had made for himself” that support a normative, patriarchal order. In Stockdale’s world, Lizzy “studied her duties as a minister’s wife with praiseworthy assiduity” (69) and even writes her story of smuggling as a didactic essay, published as “The Repentent Villagers” after Stockdale makes “some corrections and [puts] in a few powerful sentences of his own” (69). The note added in 1912 to the end of the story importantly suggests that Hardy ended the story in this manner to please the readers of popular magazines. In the ending which “would have been preferred by the writer” (69), Lizzy does not marry Stockdale – “much to her credit in the author’s opinion - [and instead] stuck to Jim the smuggler” (69). The different social structures supported by the two culminations give the author’s preference in endings its gravity. Lizzy’s marriage to Owlett would reinforce Lizzy’s ability to function in the male role because he exists in the social order which supports her role reversal. Hardy’s preference of this ending indicates that perhaps the story intends to promote that social order.

Though neither masculinizing Lizzy nor feminizing Stockdale, the text suggests certain reversals of the Victorian perspectives of male and female gender roles. The text also contains some scenes of cross-dressing, including a comical situation in which Owlett and his men dress in women’s clothing (Hardy 62-63) to steal the tubs of liquor from the guard, as well as Lizzy’s dressing in her husband clothes to make her smuggling runs (40). Perhaps Hardy included these situations to mirror the confusion about gender roles that occurred during and after this time period.