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Books Like A Pair of Blue Eyes
Best books to read after A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy
Readers who love A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy are drawn to its combination of the most autobiographical of his novels (based on his first visit to Cornwall and his courtship of Emma Gifford), the Cornish coastal setting, the extraordinary cliff-hanging chapter in which Henry Knight contemplates geological time, and the investigation of the man who cannot forgive a woman's imperfect past. They want works that deal with the early Hardy, the Victorian investigation of male idealization and its destructive consequences, and the Cornish romantic landscape.
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Far from the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
The companion — Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors. The companion as the fully realized Wessex pastoral: the novel that immediately followed A Pair of Blue Eyes and established Hardy's mature method — the same investigation of the woman and her suitors, but organized with far greater confidence and formal control
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy
The companion — Tess's tragedy. The companion as the fullest statement of the same theme that A Pair of Blue Eyes opens: Angel Clare's rejection of Tess for her imperfect past is Henry Knight's rejection of Elfride raised to its most devastating power
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The Return of the Native
by Thomas Hardy
The companion — Eustacia Vye and Egdon Heath. The companion as the most classical statement of the same tragic investigation: Eustacia Vye is far more fully realized than Elfride Swancourt, and Egdon Heath gives the same passionate woman trapped in the wrong life a landscape that expresses her condition
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Under the Greenwood Tree
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's companion lighter novel — Dick Dewy and Fancy Day. The companion as the lighter and more comic version of the same pastoral-romantic world: Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes are companion early Hardy investigations of rural love and social comedy
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The Woodlanders
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's companion — Giles Winterborne and Grace Melbury. The companion as the quiet and melancholy investigation of the same theme: the woman who is held to an impossible standard by the man who loves her, and the consequences of that standard for both of them
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Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
Brontë's companion — Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester on the Yorkshire moors. The companion investigation of the same romantic-passionate woman in the same wild landscape: both novels are organized around a woman who is loved intensely by a man who cannot initially accept her as she is, and both use the wild coastal or moorland landscape as the expression of their passionate natures
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Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
Brontë's companion — Heathcliff and Cathy on the Yorkshire moors. The companion as the predecessor of the same romantic landscape and the same passionate impossibility: the Cornish coast of A Pair of Blue Eyes and the Yorkshire moors of Wuthering Heights are companion wild landscapes expressing the same excess of passionate feeling
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Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's companion final novel — Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead. The companion as the fullest and most devastating statement of the same investigation: where Henry Knight's demand for impossible purity destroys Elfride, the whole social world's demand for impossible purity destroys Jude and Sue
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