The Romance of the Rose

Hardy transforms his journey to St Juliet in March of 1870 into Tristram riding to Leoness, so to speak. He's reconfiguring it as some kind of ideal love which has been betrayed by the architect. The relationship between Hardy and Emma got deteriorated to such an extent that they often wouldn't see each other much each day. One slightly kind of gothic element was the way in which Emma, for the last ten years of their marriage, lived mainly in an attic above his study. And he'd be below often writing poems about other women that he'd met in London and fancied.