Two on a Tower

About the book

Lady Constantine becomes interested in the work of Swithin St. Cleeve, a younger astronomer using a tower to observe the heavens. Their growing attachment crosses differences of age and social position, while her marital circumstances and his scientific hopes create further complications. Hardy places these intimate problems beside the immense distances and timescales opened by astronomy. The contrast does not make human feeling trivial; instead, it exposes the peculiar force of rules that can dominate lives within such a vast universe. Messages, assumptions, and practical arrangements repeatedly intervene between intention and result. The tower becomes both a shared refuge and a place from which the lovers can see beyond their immediate world without acquiring freedom from the obligations and misunderstandings that continue to shape it.

• Love and convention
• Science
• Scale and perspective

Why read it

For a romance that uses astronomical distance to sharpen the pressure of immediate social and emotional constraints.

English text