Emphasizing the vast changes in literary criticism that have occurred during the last thirty years, H. M. Daleski reexamines Thomas Hardy's novels in the novelist's own terms, presenting a revisionary account of his treatment of gender. He also shows that Hardy was not as sexist as is asserted in much feminist criticism and that his female characters are sympathetically portrayed as the centers of his fictional worlds.

By carefully analyzing the novels, Daleski refutes the generally accepted reason for Hardy's abandonment of fiction at the height of his powers, claiming that he drove himself to a dead end in Jude the Obscure. Daleski studies Hardy within his Victorian context, but he also shows that both in his depiction of sexuality and in his technical innovations Hardy was ahead of his time. In these respects Hardy deserves to be regarded as a forerunner of the great modernists.

In Thomas Hardy and Paradoxes of Love, Daleski offers acute and thoughtful analyses of Hardy's major novels. Avoiding critical jargon, the author has made his book accessible to all readers with an interest in Hardy and his novels, as well as in the study of gender in English literature.