Would you say that Hardy was writing in response to other Romantic novels of the era that immediately preceded his work?
Maybe we can argue that Hardy is part of an extended history of Romantic novel writing that includes Hawthorne and which runs counter-point to writers like Conrad working at the same time.
The 20th century writers that come to mind as Romantic writers (under the criteria you've listed) are Robert Penn Warren and James Baldwin, two writers whose work was often explicitly and heavily symbolic and concerned with social issues expressed as part(s) of a "love story".
I don't know much about modern romance novels, I will admit. I read Tess of the d'Ubervilles in high school. I didn't like it, and it kind of surprised me because I loved Victorian novels. I preferred Dickens and Austen.
From what I know of romance novels, I think that paragraphs like this are definite precursors.
As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds; a peasant girl but very moderately prepossessing to the casual observer in her simple condition and attire will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a woman of fashion with the aids that Art can render… (ch 34, p. 146)
To me, a romance novel is all about description. That’s the point, right? In the time the book was written, the descriptions had to have layers of meaning because it would not have been considered proper to be too bold about it.
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