“The Unseen” by Catherine Webb: The Continuity and Reinterpretation of Thomas Hardy’s Traditions

Abstract

The article examines the leading female characters of Thomas Hardy and the modern English writer Catherine Webb. The image of a woman defending her freedom in the Victorian era is presented in the novel "The Invisible, or the Secret Life of Kat Morley" and goes back to the female image of T. Hardy. The end-to-end motives in the works of T. Hardy and K. Webb are also obvious: the motives of death and the confrontation between nature and the city. In many ways, rethinking the traditions of T. Hardy's work, K. Webb reads the feminine nature in a new way, introducing the image of a modern woman capable of deciding her fate. As a result, the author comes to conclusions about the continuity of T. Hardy's literary traditions by the modern writer K. Webb.