This book re-examines the critical debate regarding Hardy's attitude to women: apologist or misogynist? With the help of manuscript evidence and references to Hardy's autobiography, letters, literary notebooks, marginalia, and the letters of his wives, this book combines a biographical approach with a feminist reading. Significant space is devoted to the 'minor' novels, the short stories, and to Hardy's real life literary relations with his contemporary women writers, his protégées and his two 'scribbling' wives, to balance the hitherto exclusive focus on the 'major' novels.

This classic novel tells the story of how the poor rural couple John and Joan Durbeyfield become convinced that they are descended from the ancient family of d'Urbervilles. They encourage their innocent daughter Tess to cement a connection with the d'Urberville family, including their unprincipled son Alec, with tragic consequences. "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," as Hardy subtitled the novel, represented a direct challenge to conventional Victorian notions of sexuality and femininity. This is a revised, updated, and expanded Broadview edition that highlights a feminist interpretation of the novel in an extensive introduction. The range of historical appendices (including contemporary articles, letters, maps, news stories, and reviews) will greatly enhance a reader's understanding of the text.

Was Thomas Hardy a misogynist or a subscriber to the feminist cause? Ambivalence in Hardy' explores Hardy's complex and deeply ambivalent attitude to women, both in his fiction and in his life. While his sympathy for wronged and exploited women is forcefully expressed, his writings also reveal his fears, uncertainties, reservations and tensions - the natural inheritance of patriarchal ideology and a predominantly male literary tradition. The author analyses one 'minor' and one 'major' text from each of the three decades of Hardy's career as a prose fiction writer. The 1870s are represented by The Hand of Ethelberta' and The Return of the Native', the 1880s by Two on a Tower' and The Woodlanders', and the 1890s by Hardy's short stories and Jude the Obscure'. Generous references to Hardy's letters, disguised autobiography, literary notebooks, marginalia and the letters of his two wives seek to blend a biographical approach with a feminist reading. Parallelisms between Hardy's fiction and that of contemporary feminist writers are explored, suggesting mutual literary influence. His relations with women writers - particularly his prot g es and 'scribbling' wives - are discussed in unprecedented detail. Ambivalence in Hardy' significantly contributes to and challenges the field of Hardy studies.

Examining a wide range of historical, artistic, literary, and theoretical works, Galia Ofek shows how changing patterns of power relations between women and patriarchy are rendered anew when viewed through the lens of Victorian hair codes and imagery during the second half of the nineteenth century. Her innovative study reveals the Victorians' well-developed awareness of fetishism and their cognizance of hair's symbolic resonance and commercial value.

The first full-length study of sensationalist and melodramatic elements in Hardy's novels uses six of his texts to demonstrate the ways in which Hardy uses the melodramatic mode to advance his critique of established Victorian cultural beliefs through the employment of non-realistic plot devices and sensational 'excess.'

Palgrave Advances in Thomas Hardy Studies explores the key issues in the ongoing and lively debate about Thomas Hardy's work as a novelist and poet. In twelve newly-commissioned essays, distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic review, take issue with and take forward the most recent and significant research on Thomas Hardy.