Decline of the Goddess Nature, Culture, and Women in Thomas Hardy's Fiction

This timely book treats Hardy's recurring use of one of the major informing myths of Western culturethat of a collision between a solar god and an earth goddess. Stave uses a chronological examination of Hardy's Wessex novels to highlight the author's evolving consciousness of the connections among patriarchy, Christianity, sexism, and classism. From the gentle affirmation of Far From the Madding Crowd to the grim Jude the Obscure, Stave paints a world in which the goddess figures die out, displaced by messianic gods, and a Pagan worldview gives way to a world devoid of spiritual meaning.Stave, Shirley A. is the author of 'Decline of the Goddess Nature, Culture, and Women in Thomas Hardy's Fiction' with ISBN 9780313295669 and ISBN 0313295662.