Freedom vs. Immobility Theme Analysis

In “The Son’s Veto,” Sophy’s life is starkly divided between two halves: her early life as a working-class maid, and her later life as a “lady,” after marrying (and then being widowed by) Mr. Twycott. The dividing line between those two halves is her foot injury. Her collapse on the stairs while taking care of Mr. Twycott, incapacitating her for life, is the event that first changes her life irrevocably, making it impossible for her to continue her old lifestyle as a maid and inspiring Mr. Twycott to ask for her hand in marriage. In this way, Sophy’s social mobility, her entrance into a higher social class, is paradoxically accompanied by her physical immobility, a constraint on her freedom which she is never fully able to recover from. This loss of physical mobility parallels the limiting nature of Sophy’s new social status; as she gains the status of a “lady,” she loses the freedom to determine her own path in life.

Sophy’s marriage to Mr. Twycott, paralleling the effects of her physical injury, forces her to give up her earlier freedom and independence. Sophy recognizes that her foot injury will prevent her from continuing her occupation as a parlor-maid, but she responds to this by planning to take on another job. Before Mr. Twycott proposes marriage to her, she hints that she will take up work as a seamstress, a job that will allow her to adapt to the limitations on her physical freedom of movement while maintaining her fundamental independence. But from the moment that Mr. Twycott proposes marriage to Sophy, she seems to lose much of her agency. Because she admires Mr. Twycott so much, she feels as if she has no choice but to accept his proposal. Then, it is Mr. Twycott who decides to move to London and to educate Sophy as a “lady,” apparently leaving Sophy with little say in these decisions that shape her life for the next two decades.

After Mr. Twycott’s death, Sophy’s sense of confinement increases, owing both to her physical inability to walk, as well as the lack of freedom and control she is given over her dead husband’s estate. In her late husband’s will, Sophy is “treated like the child she was in nature though not in years”; she is left with no control over her husband’s estate, owing to his fears that her “inexperience”—in other words, her working-class background—might cause her to manage it badly. Alone in the villa that Mr. Twycott leaves her, while her son Randolph continues his education, Sophy is left with nothing to occupy her time.

Wishing she could escape from the monotony of her life as a widow, Sophy starts to yearn for the freedom and independence of working-class life, even though she knows that it is impossible for her to return to this life, both on account of her injury as well as societal expectations and her duty to her son. In the years following her husband’s death, Sophy develops a habit of looking out from the villa to the country roads leading into London, which become a symbol of the freedom that now seems impossibly out of her reach. Her life becomes “insupportably dreary,” as she is unable to walk anywhere and has no interest in traveling anywhere. She simply sits and watches the country roads, thinking of how she’d like to go back and work in the fields of her old village. Sophy longs for the independence she had enjoyed in her youth, even if it means giving up the social status she’s acquired through marriage; but the daydream is an impossible one on account of her injury, which makes it difficult for her to walk, much less work on a farm.

Sophy’s romantic relationship with Sam gives her a taste of renewed mobility, and her desire to marry Sam hints that, ironically, giving up her status as a “lady” would grant her greater freedom in daily life. Soon after she renews her friendship with Sam, Sophy feels “sorrow […] that she could not accompany her one old friend on foot a little way.” Her physical injury, as well as social propriety, seem to limit her time with Sam to brief conversations as he passes by her house. When he invites her for a ride on his produce wagon, Sophy refuses Sam’s invitation at first, perhaps indicating how accustomed she has become to the limitations imposed on her, both in terms of her physical immobility as well as social expectations. But she quickly changes her mind and, “trembling with excitement,” she seems to suddenly regain some of her mobility, “sidling downstairs by the aid of the handrail,” and Sam lifts her onto the wagon. Her ride with Sam through the city streets, and her renewed intimacy with him, makes her exclaim how happy she is, in contrast to the loneliness she feels in the villa. This brief moment of freedom with Sam suggests that there is nothing inevitable about the limitations imposed by Sophy’s physical injury, and that she might overcome her immobility in some sense through Sam’s care and companionship; but it is the social constraints, embodied in her son’s refusal to allow her to remarry, that place a far greater burden upon her.

Through the apparently paradoxical relationship between physical immobility and social advancement, “The Son’s Veto” suggests the way in which high social status, especially for women, can actually reduce rather than augment one’s freedom.