"A cloud of moral hobgoblins": Gender, Morality and Class in Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles

ThomasHardy'scomplaintsin"CandourinEnglishFiction"(1890)aboutthe stultifyingeffectsofthemoralcodeasappliedtoEnglishfictionviathelending librariesandmagazineswereareactiontotheproblemshehadexperiencedwith publishingTessofthed'Urbervilles.Tesshadbeenchoppedupintopartsinorderto makeitpalatableforpublishinginperiodicals.1Itwasn'tuntilthe1891editionpublishedafter"Candour"-thatHardycouldfinally"piecethetrunkandlimbsof thenoveltogetherandprintitcomplete,asoriginallywritten"(Tessix).