Structure and title page

Division of the text

There are various ways to divide the book up to study it:

• One way would be to keep the divisions of the book when it was first issued as a 3-volume novel. The first and third volumes consisted of 20 chapters; the second of 19
• Another way is to keep Hardy's own divisions, which he called Phases.

If we set the two structures side by side, we have:

Volume	Chapters	Range	Phase	Title	Chapters	Range
I	1 - 20	20	First	The Maiden	1 - 11	11
			Second	Maiden No More	12 - 15	4
			Third	The Rally	16 - 24	9
II	21 - 39	19	Fourth	The Consequence	25 - 34	10
			Fifth	The Woman Pays	35 - 44	10
III	40 - 59	20	Sixth	The Convert	45 - 52	8
			Seventh	Fulfilment	53 - 59	7

Roman numerals

Many of the editions of the novel use Roman numerals for chapter numbers. This was quite common in nineteenth century novels, and was used for all of Hardy's. However, this website will replace them with the more usual Arabic numerals.

Title page

The subtitle, added just before the first edition, was the cause of some controversy. It was quite usual for novels to have sub-titles, and even for the words ‘faithfully presented' or some such formula to be used to make the novel seem as real as possible.

Hardy wrote to a friend that ‘the conviction was thrust upon me ... that the heroine was essentially pure – purer than many a so-called unsullied virgin: therefore I called her so.'

The quotation Hardy used would also have been quite typical. Some novelists even had a quotation for every chapter. Hardy's quotation comes from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona I.ii.115-6.

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