Thomas Hardy at Max Gate: The Latter Years

‘Max Gate’ is a large house on the outskirts Dorchester which Dorset poet and novelist Thomas Hardy designed himself, and being an intensely private person, he surrounded it with a thick screen of trees. In this house, Hardy continued to write his novels including The Mayor of Casterbridge; choosing a different upstairs room for each novel and a new pencil to begin each one. As time went by, however, he and his wife, Emma grew farther and farther apart. I found this to be both sad and intriguing. What was at the root of their differences and who, if anyone, was to blame?

Any investigation of the personal life of the Hardys is made more difficult by the fact that he deliberately destroyed much of the evidence. However, I have come to a tentative conclusion as to the root of the problem