The Woodlanders is a story with a complicated plot. George Melbury, a timber merchant from Little Hintock, where the events take place, decides to marry his daughter Grace to Giles Winterborne, an honest lumberjack and son of an old friend. For Giles, Grace is his childhood sweetheart and still the object of his affection despite being loved by Marty South. However, when Mr. Melbury considers his daughter's educational status, he changes his mind regarding her marriage to Giles. He has ambitions to marry her to a man of higher status and treats Giles with unusual coldness. Meanwhile, Dr. Edred Fitzpiers enters the scene. He seizes on Grace's fascination with him and the opportunity that Giles is no longer favored by Mr. Melbury to fill the vacant place in Grace's heart (Sherren, 1902). He falls in love with her, asks her father for permission to marry her, and they marry. Shortly after the marriage, Fitzpiers blames himself for marrying a woman who is beneath him and becomes more interested in Mrs. Felice Charmond, a fashionable widow. They meet in secret and finally decide to leave for the continent. He just leaves Grace a note about his departure. Grace becomes interested in Giles again, but her father's efforts to get her divorced under the new law and free her fail. Eventually Fitzpiers is separated from Mrs Felice Charmond who is believed to have been killed in Germany. He returns to Little Hintock and his wife Grace asks him to save Giles' life. He does his best but Giles dies. After Giles' death, Fitzpiers asks Grace for forgiveness and they reconcile. The novel ends on a romantic note with Marty standing at Giles' grave and saying, "If I ever forget...in the middle of a paper......rban." The novel is classified by Hardy in the category of novels of ingenuity. Nonetheless, the novel is an expression of class divisions within society. This is statistically supported by the vector profiles of this group. This argument is again supported by Page (2000) and Widdowson (1998; 1989). They emphasize the idea that class consciousness is a major theme in The Hand of Ethelberta. A Few Crusted Characters is a set of 9 tales, which Hardy calls familiar sketches (1912d). It is about a villager who returns after a long absence to his native village, “and for the last stage of his journey, he takes the transporter's van from the village. He asks the other passengers for information about the people he knew in his youth and his inquiries lead very naturally to a series of anecdotes concerning typical characters of the village” (Abercrombie, 1912: 86-87).