The Son's Veto Reflection

The Son's Veto
By: Thomas Hardy

The Son's Veto is about a crippled woman called Sophy Twycott and most of the story takes place after her husband has passed away. She married her husband; a pastor, out of respect when he proposed and after his passing she was left, a poorly educated widow, to care for his son. Since she was crippled and her son was away at school Sophy spent all her time at home. She would look out the window to pass the time and one day she saw Sam, the man whom she had once loved driving past. Sam who could have been her husband if circumstances had prevailed, had a job around South London where Sophy was staying and their rekindled friendship brought a new sense of meaning into her life. As was to be expected, Sam asked Sophy to marry him but again fate had other plans and though she wanted to, her son would not allow it and eventually Sophy died a widow who was never allowed to remarry.

The Son's Veto is a slightly challenging book since it is based in the past and it uses many unfamiliar words. The events of the story are quite muddled up as it starts in the present and then goes back in time which makes it confusing to see what the story's really about. At first I thought that the story was boring but as I read on it got better. I can't say that I liked the story but it was good in the sense that it left me curious; I couldn't help thinking about the story and trying to figure out what the moral of it was.

The main thing that left me thinking about the book was that Sophy's son wouldn't let her marry the man that she loved. I understand that since her husband died it would be up to his son, Randolph, to care for his mother but I personally do not think that he should have been allowed to control her life as completely as he did. Sophy asked Randolph if she could marry Sam and he wouldn't let her because he was afraid for his social status. This really shocked me because in modern society social status has much less to do with relationships and I don't believe that you can put yourself above someone else just because you have more money. Another reason why I couldn't quite accept that fact that he wouldn't let them marry was because his mother was from the exact same background as Sam. They both came from the same village and grew up together and even though Sophy had married Mr. Twycott it couldn't change her past. Regardless of that, Randolph only visited his mother occasionally, he no longer lived with her and since she was crippled it would have been beneficial for her to live with someone who loved her and could take care of her.

What I hated about the story was how Thomas Hardy, the author, ended it with Sophy dying. I found it cruel that the son would watch his mother getting more and more sick without granting her the one thing that could make her happy. It was almost as though the author was sickeningly teasing readers, structuring the book so that you felt sympathetic for the main character just so that she could die unhappy. This made the story ever so depressing. The ending was very unsatisfying to me as a reader because I felt bad for Sophy and it just didn't seem like a proper resolution. Her life was full of problems: she married a man who she respected but didn't really love, she was crippled, and then, she died alone, without the man she loved. I know that resolution's come in all forms but to me death was such an abrupt way to end the story, though I will admit that the ending did make it more realistic because in life things often end badly. The fact that Sam ended up successful, owning the largest fruit shop in Aldbrickham, gave the story an ironic twist. Unfortunately it was too little too late. It also made the ending even more saddening because the only reason Randolph didn't want his mom to marry Sam was because he thought Sam was too lowly and poor, which he clearly was not.

The moral that I took from the story was the being educated doesn't make a person smarter when it comes to real life situations. Maybe I would understand the circumstance better having lived in the past but the way I see it the son had no right to control his mother's life in the way he did. He was a grown man who didn't even live with her, not to mention that she wasn't even his real mother. Randolph was too busy trying to protect his reputation that he disregarded the happiness of his mother. It infuriates me to think that people would have judged Randolph for who his mother chose to marry, it seems like such a petty thing since there was nothing the matter with Sam anyways, but it was clear that Randolph cared more about the way people saw him than he did about his mother. The Son's Veto is somewhat or a tragedy because a son's ignorance and a mother's inability to stand up for herself result in an upsetting death after a life of suffering.