Thomas Hardy’s Women

Thomas Hardy had two wives. His first marriage to Emma Gifford began romantically, but soured into separate lives within the same house. Up in her attic, Emma wrote a diary called ‘What I think of my Husband’, which Thomas found after she died (he burned it). He then began to repent his treatment of her, visited the places they had once roamed together and wrote love poetry of extraordinary power to his dead wife. Needless to say, wife number 2, Florence Dugdale, was not impressed and wanted love poems addresses to herself. She went through married life feeling she was competing with Emma’s ghost.

But these are not the only intriguing women in Hardy’s life. His dominating mother adored him, he had a close relationship with his two sisters, he fell in love with a cousin, and his roving eye meant he was frequently attracted to pretty society women and actresses taking the roles of his heroines in theatrical versions of his books.

Paula Byrne’s fascinating new book Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses discusses them all. It’s sort of a biography, but told through the lens of the women who mattered to the great novelist and poet. I didn’t want to put it down. I have recently visited Max Gate, the home Hardy (who trained as an architect) designed for himself, and had seen the attic where Emma spent most of her time and which came to appeal more and more to Florence as her marriage also soured. I had seen the grave in the little pet cemetery of the ferocious terrier Wessex, a dog who sank his teeth into more distinguished literary legs than any other dog. Wessex was a substitute child to Hardy and his second wife. I loved all the social detail Paula Byrne provided and felt the book was insightful and did justice to women who did not always find Thomas Hardy an easy man to know.