Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-159) and index.
Contents
Ch. 1. The view from the tower: an indiscretion in the life of an heiress and a pair of blue eyes -- ch. 2. "Woman's prescriptive infirmity": Far from the madding crowd as patriarchal comedy --ch. 3. The failure of male vision in the hand of Ethelberta and a Laodicean -- ch. 4. "Antagonistic words": the mayor of Casterbridge as patriarchal tragedy -- ch. 5. Patriarchal tragicomedy: self-denial and masculine heroism in The Woodlanders -- ch. 6. Male words and women writers: "An imaginative woman, ""On the western circuit," and "The fiddler of the reels" -- ch. 7. Internalizing the ideology: Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the obscure.