Both James Joyce's Eveline and Thomas Hardy's Son's Veto express the negative effects that service has on an individual's life. While Joyce uses an intimate obligation, a promise to a dying mother, Hardy's story addresses a larger cultural restriction created by social class systems. This article will explore the contempt felt by both authors towards an individual's obligation to serve others. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Both stories contain some sort of numbing. The Son's Veto centers on a woman, Sophy, who, while dutifully serving the vicar, Mr. Twycott, injures her ankle and has her mobility limited throughout her life. “As she was forbidden to walk and busy herself, and indeed could not do so, it became her duty to go away” (616). His injury is not discussed with compassion at first. It's his duty to leave. Hardy's language describes service to the home prior to consideration of such social compassion as requiring some form of worker's compensation. The novel's connection between the service and its negative effects foreshadows the later paralysis of her ability to marry for joy due to her son's desires. Even in her first marriage, Sophy is unable to express agency due to her servile position. "'No, Sophy; lame or no lame, I cannot let you go. You must never leave me again'" (616). It is not his choice to get married; alas, he gets married anyway. Not because marriage would help her financial situation, but rather because she "had a respect for him that amounted almost to veneration" (Broadview, p. 616). Sophy's respect comes from her position as an inferior. As a service class, it was crippled. Joyce constructs the character of Eveline similarly to Hardy's Sophy. The collection in which it appears, Dubliners, highlights Joyce's conception of Dublin as a place of paralysis. Yet, even in the story's introduction, Eveline appears as a girl whose decision-making abilities have been crippled. There was a time when he could play in the fields but "then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses on it" (20). Even when the field was still present, his father interrupted the games by chasing them with his plum stick. His inability to make decisions combines with his father's physical threat in this scene where service to the economy has trampled the individual's enjoyment of the land. Furthermore, Eveline's action is limited by the needs of her family. His mother died and his father began drinking heavily. Her behavior forces her to "always give her entire salary, seven shillings" to feed the family (21). Even then, when Eveline has abandoned any possibility of using her money for her own advancement, she has to argue with her father and, only at the last minute, rush out on a Saturday evening to do the shopping for the family. He had an economic handicap, just like Sophy with her ankle. Significantly, Sophy's ankle is not the least of her problems. When her husband dies, her son refuses to let her marry an old acquaintance, Sam, because of the cultural stain it would place on him as a "gentleman." He forces her to swear to God and states, “I owe it to my father” (621). Not only does he prevent her from marrying a man who cares for her, but Randolph also manages to become paralyzed himself. He, the priest, who by position should be a beacon of light, appears "black as a cloud" at his mother's funeral (621). His final appearance symbolizes the darkness he pushed into his soul. He lost his father and.