Publisher's Synopsis
A Pair of Blue Eyes, set in Cornwall, contains autobiographical elements, romance, suspense and a post-Darwinian message. The young heroine of the novel combines the features of both Hardy's youthful loves, Tryphena Sparks and his first wife Emma, who had blue eyes and a cascade of blond hair. The motif of a poor young man of great ability who struggles with adverse circumstances will reappear in many subsequent Hardy novels, including in The Woodlanders, Return of the Native, and Jude the Obscure.Stephen Smith, a gifted young architect's assistant, arrives at Endelstow in Cornwall in order to restore the old church and soon falls in love with the vicar's daughter, Elfride Swancourt. Hardy creates his heroine with a sufficient complexity; she is pretty, intelligent and, besides, reminds us of Shakespeare's Miranda. The narrator, apparently fascinated with her eyes, describes them at length: "These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance - blue as the blue we see between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or surface, and was looked into rather than at" (1-2). Elfride's father does not approve of the relationship because Stephen has a lower social status, so the lovers decide to run away. However, they postpone marriage until Stephen improves his financial situation; he goes to India to find a job that would allow him to maintain his future wife. In the meantime, however, quite unexpectedly Elfride becomes attracted by the handsome Lord Luxellian, whom she met in Hyde Park, and next she turns her attention to an older friend and mentor of Stephen's, Henry Knight, an amateur geologist and intellectual, removed from the everyday world.
