However, Elfride had “become sublimated in his memory” and he could not disregard his innermost feelings for her; and so, after he finds out that it was only Stephen who came before him, he makes a “resolution” to re-claim Elfride, only to find that she has died as a married women. Hardy’s “treatment of Knight is an early indication of his interest in the emotional difficulties which he felt confronted modern people…These difficulties he sees as arising primarily from the effects of education and the loss of traditional beliefs on people’s instinctive, spontaneous response, especially in sexual relationships.”(5) Hardy’s worries may be linked here to the rapid modernisation of the time, highlighted by the Education Act of 1870. Maybe Hardy in A Pair of Blue Eyes, wants to show that in despite of the rapid change in Victorian society, love can still be an “instinctive, spontaneous” part of people’s lives rather than it being repressed by education etc. People should know about love and sex: “Hardy.. wrote in reply to a magazine questionnaire about the desirability of sex education for girls, “Innocent youths should, I think, also receive some information…for it has never struck me that the spider is invariably male and the fly is invariably female.”(6) This is a brilliant analogy of the representation of love in Victorian writing, but I couldn’t find a better description of it’s main themes than William C. DeVane’s comment on Browning, (but this could also be related to Gaskell and Hardy):”In the full scope we see love triumphant, and love rejected; love eager and young, and love satisfied; love a strong support, and love betrayed; love making heroes of men, and love enslaving and corrupting them. The poet’s theme is love in all it’s guises.”(7)