Thomas Hardy's Women

Thomas Hardy was always fascinated by women. While in his life his relationships were often fraught and unhappy, through the heroines of his novels we can see into his soul. These fictional characters, usually drawn in part or whole from women he knew, garnered our sympathy as they entered the difficult world into which Hardy cast them. In this respect, he was ahead of his time in challenging traditional attitudes to the plight of women in such questions as marriage, divorce, feminism, incest and lesbianism. Throughout his time, Hardy nurtured close female friends, though at the expense of his two often neglected and humiliated, long-suffering wives. This book assesses the influence of Hardy's closest female friends and family on his life and his work and looks at how his response to them moulded his creative genius.