Overview

The women in Thomas Hardy's novels appear to have no control over their conduct or their destiny. In this book, Rosemarie Morgan argues a contrary case. Hardy's women struggle, sometimes winning, often losing, but they are not tame objects to be manipulated. Their resistance emerges in their sexuality, a quality which Hardy was often forced to cloak or disguise. Rosemarie Morgan resurrects Hardy's voluptuous heroines and restores to them the physical, sexual reality which Hardy sees as their birthright, but which the male-dominated world they inhabit seeks to deny them, both within and beyond the novel.

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9780415754972

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Reviews

` the most profound and comprehensive discussion I know of the representation of women and of female sexuality in the novels of Thomas Hardy ... It is a major revisionary study of Hardy's study of female sexuality and of the political and social implications of that treatment.' - J. Hillis Miller, University of California `She is perceptive, not to say exhaustive, in her detection of sexual imagery and metaphor ... her main case is irrefutable and ... shrewdly underlines Hardy's achievement in questioning the traditional portrayal of female sexuality.' - Times Literary Supplement `Dr Morgan has many illuminating insights, especially in her shrewd analysis of Sue's and Jude's weaknesses.' - Contemporary Review `Dr Morgan's book, and particularly her analysis of human relationships in Jude the Obscure ... bear witness to Hardy's importance as a novelist who significantly helped to change the attitudes of later generations.' - Western Gazette `Just as Hardy's novels called for a reassessment and revision of woman's social condition, so the author of this study call for reappraisal of criticism of the novels.' - EMW, Studies on Women Abstracts `... clear and accessible.' - Merryn Williams, Notes and Queries

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Rosemarie Morgan

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