is taken for granted that womens sight is determined in the main by the distracted gaze, their tendency to take the appearance for the essence expressed by Christopher Julian in relation to Ethelberta Thats the nature of women--------they take the form for the essence. This perception appears in The Mayor of Casterbridge as an authorial observation when Lucetta Templeman refuses to notice the impoverished Henchard because he appeared far from attractive to a womans eye, ruled as that is so largely by the superfices of things. Similarly when Giles Winterborne meets Grace Melbury on her return from school she is perceived as manifesting the same weakness and Giles wryly observes to himself that external phenomena such as clothes or appearance may have great influence upon feminine opinion of a mans worth, so frequently founded on non-essentials. Through the observations of author and characters we are clearly given to understand that women perceive the real as the apparent through the operation of the distracted gaze so that a womans knowledge of people or the world appears to be merely the awareness of the effects of the impressions made by the things she looks at. But these observations are made in the context of women who have been, in one way or another, socially displaced and in different ways artificially transformed into ladies. They are all in a sense acting a part and, most importantly, because of the role they have assumed or been forced to assume are perceived in different ways. The servants daughter, Ethelberta Chickerel, is about to marry Lord Mountclere to benefit her brothers and sisters; the once poor Lucetta Templeman has just been elevated, as the attractive consort of Donald Farfrae, to the position of first lady of Casterbridge; Grace Melbur y has just returned from finishing school where she has been transformed from wood merchants daughter to a finished lady. Clearly every female character is different...
