Social Class vs. Human Flourishing Theme Analysis

The distinctions of social class—and the accompanying invisible rules that govern how people within each class are expected to act—shape the lives of each character within “The Son’s Veto.” Mr. Twycott, an Anglican parson, must uproot his life to avoid potential societal scorn for marrying Sophy, his former servant. After her marriage to Mr. Twycott, Sophy must confront a complex set of social expectations that she is unprepared to meet, making her isolated and miserable. Later, after Sophy is widowed, her relationship with her youthful love interest, Sam, cannot be fulfilled without violating the invisible yet unavoidable barriers of social class. Sophy’s son Randolph eventually loses all his human feelings and sympathy for his own mother in his obsessive desire to be seen as a gentleman, sacrificing her happiness to his social ambition. Through its depiction of these three characters, “The Son’s Veto” suggests that social class can serve as a limitation on human potential, and in some circumstances can even destroy the natural bonds of human relationships.

At first, Mr. Twycott’s marriage to Sophy suggests that he has overcome some of the limitations of social expectations, yet he is ultimately quite constrained by them—even willing to uproot his entire life simply to escape from the possibility of social censure. He leaves behind his parish in Gaymead to move to London in an attempt to escape the scrutiny of everyone who knew Sophy had once been his maid. His willingness to “abandon their pretty country home […] for a narrow dusty house in a long, straight street” suggests that, because of the constraints imposed by social expectations, Sophy and Mr. Twycott’s marriage will not thrive. Although Mr. Twycott has great affection for Sophy, he is not content to simply accept her as she is, with all her “deficiencies” in upper-class manners. He invests in her education, trying to erase the traces of her working-class roots and turn her into a proper lady. At some level, then, Mr. Twycott is anxious to fit his new wife into the mold of upper-class society, suggesting he is still self-conscious about having married a rural, working-class woman.

Unlike Mr. Twycott, Sophy seems relatively immune from concern over her social status—but because of her son’s desire for social propriety, she is ultimately constrained by these expectations more than any other character. As a young woman, Sophy is content with her working-class lifestyle, marrying Mr. Twycott only because of her respect for him rather than a desire for social advancement. Although this marriage propels her upwards in English society, it scarcely seems to make her any happier. Unable to fully shed the traces of her humble origins (especially her working-class speech), she is disrespected by other members of her husband’s social circle and—most painfully for her—even disdained by her own son for failing to fulfill their social expectations. This is evident from the beginning of the story, when Randolph rebukes her “with an impatient fastidiousness” when she makes a minor grammatical mistake. The trivial nature of Sophy’s perceived “deficiencies” highlights the pettiness of the society that judges her so harshly for them, while ignoring all the positive aspects of her character. Later, in widowhood, Sophy rekindles her romantic interest in Sam, the man she once almost married, and their relationship comes to embody her hopes of regaining her lost happiness. Sophy does not truly care about how society would perceive her remarriage to Sam, but she does care about its effect on her relationship with her son; and Randolph, afraid of how the marriage would affect his own social standing, makes her swear not to marry Sam. Sophy’s dilemma, caught between Sam and her son, suggests that she is sacrificing her happiness to a set of arbitrary social conventions.

Randolph, out of all the characters in the story, is most in bondage to the constraints imposed by social expectations, valuing his social status even above his relationship with his mother. By sacrificing her happiness to his social ambitions, he also damages his own humanity. Randolph adopts these social expectations out of his own desire for advancement and his preoccupation with the glamorous world of London high society. As he grows older, he limits his interests more and more narrowly to a “population of a few thousand wealthy and titled people.” Randolph’s lack of interest in the world outside of elite society causes him to “drift further and further away” from Sophy and, implicitly, from his humanity. The ultimate outcome of Randolph’s single-minded desire for social advancement is his growing cruelty towards his mother, especially his refusal to let her marry Sam. He seems to scarcely notice the love that his mother has for him, focusing instead on the “infinitesimal sins” that have stemmed from her social origins. When Sophy tells him of her desire to remarry, he seemingly does not even consider her hopes for happiness, caring only about the social status of his prospective father-in-law. The narrator notes that “his education had by this time sufficiently ousted his humanity to keep him quite firm,” suggesting that Sophy’s happiness is not the only casualty of Randolph’s obsession with social status; he has also given up some of his own humanity in the process, forever forgoing the possibility of a loving relationship with his mother.

Mr. Twycott, Sophy, and Randolph are all constrained in different ways by the expectations of class distinctions. Sometimes, as with Mr. Twycott and Randolph, these expectations are internalized by the characters themselves, who are blind to the ways in which they are limiting their own happiness and human potential; and sometimes, as in Sophy’s case, the expectations are imposed wholly from without, but are equally unavoidable and crushing in their effects. Through its depiction of these three storylines, “The Son’s Veto” suggests that conformity to social conventions can limit our potential to achieve true happiness or develop fulfilling relationships with other human beings.