This six week course will look at two novels by Thomas Hardy.
Starting with The Mayor of Casterbridge (1866) we will consider concepts including ideas of tradition and modernity, time and history, the urban and the rural and ideas of character – fixed and permanent or fluctuating.
We will then look at Jude the Obscure (1895) and consider concepts including social Darwinism, the woman question, heredity, degeneration, social mobility and sexuality.