Thomas Hardy's Medieval Mind
The LRB Podcast
00:00
The Elopement of Emma
Hardy's own courtship of Emma was conducted through the post and through the railway system. This weird taboo about purity becomes the dominant driver of the novel's tragic ending. So this is a great mixture of that kind of medieval and modern that you were talking about earlier, because the elopement is something that happens on trains.
Transcript
Play full episode
