morality led to him being identified with the 'Anti-marriage league'. That marriage is less-than-exclusive in the novel is highlighted most clearly through the words and thoughts of Grace Melbury; as heroine and betrayed wife of an unfaithful husband, she ought to represent the moral centre, but she openly acknowledges sexual and marital infidelity. On Fitzpiers' illness, she welcomes Mrs Charmond and Suke Damson into the bedroom with the unsubtle, "Indeed, you have a perfect right to go into his bedroom [...] Wives all, let's enter together!" When abandoned by him, she calls nature "bountiful" in so soon replacing him with another, tender form of "undiluted manliness" - Giles. The novel draws attention to the double standards prevailing in relation to sexual morality - when Fitzpiers returns after the death of Mrs Charmond he is outraged when he is led to believe (wrongly) that Grace has been cohabiting with Winterborne. In fact Winterborne has sacrificed his life to preserve Grace's good name. Fitzpiers clearly believes that Grace owes him fidelity even after he has had affairs with two women and deserted her. The affair with Suke Damson shocked his first publisher who insisted that the line "it was daybreak before Suke Damson and Fitzpiers returned to Little Hintock" be taken out of the first edition. The fact that Fitzpiers has extra marital relations with two women demonstrates his callous and exploitative character. In particular, although Mrs Charmond may be said to be a seasoned woman of the world who can take care of herself, Suke Damson is a simple village girl who is dazzled by Fitzpiers and whom he never has any intention of marrying. As a result of the affair her prospects of a happy marriage are ruined - she and her husband Timothy Tangs have to emigrate to New Zealand to escape the rumours and gossip (but not before Tangs tries to injure Fitzpiers with a man trap) The Woodlanders also contains many poetic descriptions on the natural world, the countryside and the changing seasons. Background Florence Emily Hardy, his second wife, recorded that in 1874 Hardy "put aside a woodland story", which ten years later evolved into The Woodlanders. It was intended to be the successor to his 1874 Far from the Madding Crowd, but he laid the novel aside to work on other things. Hardy eventually decided to return to his "woodland story" after the editor of