Hardy, Thomas

Clym Yeobright, tired of Paris city life, returns to Egdon Heath to open a school. There he marries a pleasure-loving girl and tragedy follows.

Presents Thomas Hardy's novel about a young woman who attempts to restore her family's fortunes, is seduced by a heartless aristocrat, and is punished by society's double standards when she gets a chance at real love.

Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but he is rebuffed, and trapped in a loveless marriage. He falls in love with his unconventional cousin Sue Bridehead, and their refusal to marry when free to do so confirms their rejection of and by the world around them. The shocking fate that overtakes them is an indictment of a rigid and uncaring society.

A young woman finds herself the victim of fate and of forces beyond her control in nineteenth-century England.

Bathsheba Everdene is courted by three men: an adventurer, a young farmer who becomes bailiff of the farm she inherits, and a neighboring farmer.