InThe Pursuit of the Well-Beloved(1892) andThe Well-Beloved(1897), Hardy writes two different versions of a strange story set in the weird landscape of Portland.The central figure is a man obsessed both with the search for his ideal woman and with sculpting the perfect figure of a naked Aphrodite. The pursuit finally fixes on three women called Avice Caro grandmother, mother and daughter in a way that mixes tragedy and high farce.
The books were written one before and one after his "last" novel, Jude the Obscure(1895). Both stories are richly ambiguous but the first...

The Language of Gender and Class challenges widely-held assumptions about the study of the Victorian novel. Lucid, multilayered and cogently argued, this volume will provoke debate and encourage students and scholars to rethink their views on ninteenth-century literature.
Examining six novels, Patricia Ingham demonstrates that none of the writers, male or female, easily accept stereotypes of gender and class. The classic figures of Angel and Whore are reassessed and modified. And the result, argues Ingham, is that the treatment of gender by the late nineteenth century is released...

This work examines in detail the widely accepted critical cliche examining the representation of gender always involves investigating the representation of class. Using historical material about class, it re-examines six major Victorian novels. Focusing upon language, the text explores how stereotypes of gender and class encode cultural myths that reinforce the social order. The author argues that none of the novelists considered, either male or female, completely accepts either the stereotyped figures or the authorized story. The figures of the angel and the whore are reassessed and modified...

During and after the Hundred Years War, English rulers struggled with a host of dynastic difficulties, including problems of royal succession, volatile relations with their French cousins, and the consolidation of their colonial ambitions toward the areas of Wales and Scotland. Patricia Ingham brings these precarious historical positions to bear on readings of Arthurian literature in Sovereign Fantasies, a provocative work deeply engaged with postcolonial and gender theory. Ingham argues that late medieval English Arthurian romance has broad cultural ambitions, offering a fantasy of insular...