Double Standards.

double standard: a rule or principle applied more strictly to some people than others (including oneself). -- The Concise Oxford Dictionary –

I hate double standards.
To me, the phrase is synonymous with hypocrisy, something I despise with a passion.
In my experience of literature I have never encountered a more poignant and mournful example of hypocritical double-standardism than in Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbervilles. I have read so many of his books I cannot recount them, but this one remains my favorite. Hardy himself thought it his finest novel, and Tess the most deeply felt character he ever created. I consider Hardy to be one of the best writers that ever lived, not only for his prose, but his poetry as well.
Hardy, a thoroughgoing fatalist, really ratchets things up here with Tess.
In the early portion of the book, young Tess Durbeyfield is seduced by the wily and worldly-wise Alec D’Urberville. He is portrayed as a spoiled, high class snob, void of conscience and morals. Into his web the hapless Tess falls.
Tess is de-flowered and impregnated in the encounter, and she chooses to leave the D’Urberville mansion,but of course, must do so as a “fallen” woman. After all, she lives in Hardy’s Victorian Wessex.
[I pause at this point to note that Hardy subtitled this novel “A Pure Woman” and while detailing the taboo and social stigma of Tess’s predicament, he seeks at every remove to exonerate her of her “sins” and present her as a veritable moral lighthouse casting its light upon a sea of floundering depravity.]
Tess’s baby dies, and she is cast out to fend for herself. Even her own kith and kin have rejected her. She is hired as a milkmaid on a large dairy farm and it is here that Hardy places his protagonist as well as her future husband in their most troublesome and disturbing moral and social dilemna.
For it is here that she meets the man Angel Clare and the two fall in love.
The proper courtship ensues, but Tess knows in her heart that she must tell Angel about her past. Feeling that the moral sin she has experienced will surely drive him from her, she hesitates in her revelation. The question she and the reader must ponder is this: Would Angel accept her even though she is not accepted by society?
There is much more to this story than I am re-telling here, especially the issue of an unread confessional letter that Tess mistakenly assumes Angel has read... but I want to focus on the double-standardisms.
I will zip ahead now to their wedding night, whereupon Angel Clare feels profoundly moved upon to share with Tess his own past moral lapses. He tells Tess of how he has been around the block a few times, utterly unaware that she too sort of knows the neighborhood. (so to say).
So Tess readily forgives him and he accepts her forgiveness easily, saying “Then we will dismiss it at once and forever!”
Tess is “almost glad” at his lapse because she thinks it is the same as hers and that he will forgive her outright. Plus, she thinks he has already read her confessional letter to him anyway.
Big mistake.
Tess now tells her own dark secret....
Her confession destroys Angel’s idea of the pure, virginal maiden, and as a result, he cannot see, let alone appreciate, the vital, loving Tess before him. His rejection is immediate. Apparently, what has been so good for the gander is NOT good for the goose!
She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess’s countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air: “Tess – say it is not true! No, it is not true!”
Her words “Then you will not forgive me?” are among the saddest (for me) in literature.
He does not. The idiot does not.
As Angel watches Tess’s coach slowly move up the hill, he hopes that she will look back at him. Too devestated to move, she does not look out. Guilt-ridden, she submits to his anger.
For those of you that are keeping score here... now Tess’s situation is even worse. She is married but not really married. She is abandoned. She returns home to Marlott in this sort of annulled limbo, where she is promptly shunned by friends and neighbors and her own family. Her social and economic status decline with the temporary jobs she takes.
Hardy is exposing the hypocrisy of his time by pointing out that a man could divorce his wife for committing adultery; however, a woman could not divorce her husband for it.
Double standard!
And Tess has not even committed adultery, technically speaking.
The truth is, she was essentially raped by Alec D’Urberville in her youth!
It’s enough to make you want to throw the book at the wall!
And it gets worse.
Alec D’Urberville returns to rescue her, this time not as a spoiled young man, but as a preacher. He claims to have received a calling from God to preach to sinners. He pretends to realize the errors of his ways (with Tess) and asks her to forgive him. She confesses to him about their child and her (unofficially annulled) marriage to Angel. [Meanwhile, Angel has left the continent, literally.]
Her seduction by Alec is slow and methodical and he haunts her until she agrees to marry him. He does this by convincing her that Angel is gone forever.
What do you think?
Will Angel come to his senses and return to Tess?
When, and if, he does, what will happen?
In case you have never read this masterpiece of fiction, I am not going to say any more.... for those of you who think I have spoiled the book for you, let me just say, there is much more that takes place. Stuff that you would never imagine, from what I have revealed here.
Not since Desdemona’s strangled head was set down lifeless on its pillow has anything so tragic in its unnecessariness happened to a heroine.
But my point in recounting the aforementioned is just to take an example from literature of the kind of double standardism that the world can do without.

The whole wretched mess of it makes me think of the following, more modernish fable on a similar theme. Only this time, the man gets it in the end! (so to say).

A man escapes from prison where he has been for 15 years. He breaks into a house to look for money and guns and finds a young couple in bed. He orders the guy out of bed and ties him to a chair. While tying the girl to the bed, he gets on top of her, kisses her neck, then goes up into the bathroom.
While he's in there, the husband tells the wife:
"Listen, this guy's an escaped convict, look at his clothes! He probably spent lots of time in jail and hasn't seen a woman in years...I saw how he kissed your neck. If he wants sex, don't resist, don't complain. Do whatever he tells you. Satisfy him no matter how much he nauseates you. This guy is probably dangerous. If he gets angry, he'll kill us. Be strong, honey. I love you."
To which the wife responds:
"He wasn't kissing my neck. He was whispering in my ear. He told me he was gay, thought you were cute, and asked if we had any Vaseline.
I told him it was in the bathroom. Be strong honey, I love you, too!"

After all, what’s good for the goose...... well, you know the rest of it, right?