Description: Hardy's experience as a professional architect reveals itself through in the meticulous, highly visual descriptions of towns and buildings in his novels. Using the restoration of a castle as a framework, Hardy considers the ancient analogy between architecture and philosophy. Paula Power is the "Laodicean" -- a term for early Christians lukewarm in their beliefs -- and her eclectic approach to the restoration comes to symbolize the lack of absolutes in every aspect of human life. The architect, George Somerset, who considers his art an expression of the rational, finds himself captivated by Paula's "irrational" views and by her open rejection not only of aesthetic rules but also of religious, social, and sexual conventions.

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