Student Question
What sacrifice did Sophy make for Randolph in "The Son's Veto," and what were its effects?
Quick answer:
Sophy sacrificed her happiness and health for her son Randolph by refusing to marry her old love, Sam Hobson, due to Randolph's shame over her humble background. This decision led to Sophy's declining health and eventual death, leaving Sam lonely and in sorrow. Randolph, influenced by his mother's sacrifice, likely became more entrenched in valuing social status over genuine love, resulting in negative consequences for all involved.
Sophy made one very significant sacrifice for her son Randolph and it had
very sad effects for her and perhaps also for Randolph. After the death of the
Reverend Twycott, Sophy's learned and reclusive husband, and while she was
living as a widow in her own little home across from the parsonage, she
happened upon her old friend Sam Hobson of Gaymead.
As happens in reunions, time soon enough revealed that their loving feelings
for each other still existed as they had almost two decades earlier. The
sacrifice Sophy makes comes when Sam asks her again--with all modesty and
humility due to her position as the widow of a clergyman and a lady--to marry
him and live with him in Gaymead, a village they both love so well.
Sophy is hindered from accepting Sam as a husband because of her son Randolph. He has become fastidious and is ashamed of...
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her humble background. At the same time, he has become covetous of an honored place as a gentleman among the gentlemen with whom he was educated. Sophy sacrifices personal happiness (and a restored bloom of health) in deference to Randolph's sentiments, which he initially expressed by a flood of tears:
by degrees she acquainted him with the whole. The youth's face remained fixed for a moment; then he flushed, leant on the table, and burst into passionate tears. ... [until he] recovered from his paroxysm
The effect for Sophy of this sacrifice was that she faded in health and after four short years was taken to her grave in Gaymead. The effect of Sophy's sacrifice on Sam was great loneliness and deep sorrow. The effect of Sophy's sacrifice on Randolph can only be speculated. Albeit, judging from Hardy's inclusion of a description of Randolph as "a young smooth-shaven priest in a high waistcoat [who] looked black as a cloud at the shop keeper [Sam]," it may be speculated that her sacrifice led to Randolph's becoming entrenched in his wrong-headed evaluation of power and wealth above true-heartedness and earnest love. All in all, yielding to her son's veto seems to have led to very unpleasant effects for all.