Thomas Hardy is known to be one of the major English novelists of nineteenth century. Most of his novels feature an imaginary Wessex, closely modelled on South East of England, at a time where dramatic changes were taking place in English society. These changes are often reflected in his writing in the exploration of the permeable boundaries between the peasantry and the more privileged classes. In the present story the reader’s interest is on the tragic fate of a young woman from the servant class -Sophie- who, through marriage to a widowed vicar, moves up the social ladder, only to experience solitude, dissociation and nostalgia for the simplicities of her old way of life. The prospect of a return to the simple life presents itself in the form of a suitor of old - Sam Hobson, a gardener whom she had once thought of marrying before the vicar’s proposal fell upon her, offering a materially better prospect. Sam Hobson reappears in her life when she is at the lowest, immobilized through her foot injury, isolated through the death of her husband, the boarding school education of her son and the demureness of her social standing as the vicar’s widow. At this point Sam Hobson fortuitously reappears in her life. He is now the manager of a market garden in London.
