Thomas Hardy and the Pre-Raphaelites
In Hardy's novel Return of the Native, we find an extended description of the anti-heroine Eustacia Vye that veers between rhapsody and ominous warning. CHAPTER VII. QUEEN OF NIGHT. EUSTACIA VYE was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passion there is and instincts which make a faultless goddess, that is, those which make not quite a faultless woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious interchange of caresses and blows as those we endure now. She was in person full-limbed and somewhat he