A Pair of Blue Eyes

A Pair of Blue Eyes is Thomas Hardy's novel centered on Elfride Swancourt, a young woman living with her clergyman father in Cornwall. Her relationships with the architect Stephen Smith and the older intellectual Henry Knight are complicated by class prejudice and differing ideals of feminine innocence. Information concealed or misunderstood acquires increasing power over their choices. Coastal scenery and a dangerous cliffside encounter intensify the novel's interest in vulnerability and dependence. Hardy shows how affection can be damaged when people demand an impossible consistency from another person's past instead of recognizing the limits of their own judgment.