ABSTRACT
Thomas Hardy spent most of his time at Max Gate after it was finished in 1885, but he continued to keep in touch with the world outside during the years that preceded the publication of Jude. He took numerous trips to the Continent and spent at least a quarter of each year in London, attending receptions and dinners, visiting the art galleries and theaters, reading in the British Museum. There was little more than sporadic support for social protest during the years that followed the writing of The Poor Man and the Lady. Hardy’s quest for positive certainties was rarely rewarded by the discovery of thinkers who recognized the worst and strove for the better. The lower social and cultural station of Giles is in a sense his tragic flaw. Because of this “flaw,” Grace Melbury, who has a wrongheaded faith in aristocratic connections irrespective of the individual’s merit, prefers Fitzpiers for his daughter’s husband.
