which must be half insane"; a frequent visitor to the household, Evelyn Evans, said Emma Hardy "was considered very odd by the townspeople of Dorchester.... Her delusions of grandeur grew more marked. Never forgetting that she was an archdeacon's niece who had married beneath her ... she persuaded embarrassed editors to publish her worthless poems, and intimated that she was the guiding spirit of all Hardy's work"; Christine Wood Homer, a friend of the Hardys, said Emma "had the fixed idea that she was the superior of her husband in birth, education, talents, and manners. She could not, and never did, recognise his greatness.... Whereas at first she had only been childish, with advancing age she became very queer and talked curiously." After twenty years of marriage, Thomas Hardy published Jude the Obscure, controversial for its portrayal of Victorian religion, sexual mores and marriage. Emma disapproved of Hardy's last novel because of the book's criticisms of religion and because he worried that the reading public would believe the relationship between Jude and Sue paralleled her strained relationship with Hardy. Emma and Hardy spent more and more time apart, and he began seeing other women, such as Florence Dugdale, companion to Lady Stoker, sister-in-law of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Hardy portrays Florence in various poems such as "On the Departure Platform". In 1899, Emma became a virtual recluse and spent much of her time in attic rooms, which he asked Thomas Hardy to build for her and she called "my sweet refuge and solace". Women's suffrage An active suffragist and supporter of women's suffrage, in 1907 Emma Hardy joined George Bernard Shaw and his wife in a march in London. Death Emma Hardy died at Max Gate, the house she shared with Hardy near Dorchester on 27 November 1912 at the age of 72. On 26 November, she had felt unwell and allowed a doctor to visit but not to examine her. At 8 am on 27 November, her maid found Emma "moaning and terribly ill". The maid summoned the cook, who attempted to carry her down the staircase, but by the time Hardy had been called, he found her unconscious, and she died shortly afterwards. The doctor gave the cause of death as heart failure and impacted gallstones. She was buried three days later at the church of St Michael, Stinsford, Dorset. Thomas Hardy had a wreath inscribed "From