Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy

Rosemarie Morgan provides a challenging reading arguing that, contrary to the accepted critical view, Hardy's heroines do seek control over their conduct and their destinies and this reveals itself in rebellious sexuality.

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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.