維多利亞時代面臨了許多對於傳染病的恐懼，而這些恐懼與當時社會制度動搖所造成的焦慮感密不可分。這些既有社會制度仍然存在現今社會中，因此在目前的全球疫情大流行之下，研究十九世紀對於傳染的看法應能讓我們更加了解該如何在現有的社會文化脈絡下看待它。
本文研究哈代的兩篇短篇小說。兩位女主角在婚姻中都並不滿足，而她們的壓抑最終以病症的方式呈現出來。＜The Fiddler of the Reels＞描述Car’line在被提琴手Mop誘惑後無法自制地隨著琴聲起舞，這種症狀類似「狂舞症」，一種從中古以來便時有所聞的、帶傳染性的集體歇斯底里症狀。
舞場在十九世紀是都會中舞女／妓女充斥的娛樂場所，因此這樣的症狀隱含了十九世紀對於女性性覺醒以及妓女問題的焦慮。而最終此症狀也在他們的私生女身上出現，暗示著一種類似梅毒的先天性感染。在＜An Imaginative Woman＞中，這樣的先天性感染也出現在女主角 Ella 的孩子身上。Ella 在與丈夫同眠之前獨自欣賞著她所欽慕的詩人相片，而當晚她便懷了第四個兒子。雖然她從未外遇，但她的孩子有著與詩人極相似的五官。這種由家庭主婦的想像力所造成的、對於家庭本質的破壞，在故事中以類似傳染的方式呈現。經由傳染的暗喻，哈代在此批判了當時婚姻制度的不足與脆弱。
As Chung-jen Chen points out in Victorian Contagion: Risk and Social Control in the Victorian Literary Imagination, contagion is "a physical object, a biological entity, a psychological dimension, a cultural artifact, a social construction, and a political process." Discourse of contagion goes beyond the physical and can be seen as indicative of and consequent to the social, cultural, and political. Victorian society faced many fears about contagion, and these fears are inseparable from threats to established systems such as public wellbeing, social hierarchy, patriarchal order, familial harmony, and political stability—systems still existing today, though evolved through time. Epidemiological studies of Victorian society can expose how the fear of contagion is inseparable from an anxiety about the fragility of such social systems. Under the circumstances of the current pandemic, studies of the nineteenth-century sense of contagion can shed a light on how our society should see and face contagion within its socio-cultural context.
This paper examines two Hardy short stories, "The Fiddler of the Reels" (1893) and "An Imaginative Woman" (1894), in which the vulnerability of the marriage system is highlighted by allegorical contagions. "The Fiddler of the Reels" tells the story of Car'line Aspent/Hipcroft, whose involuntary dance caused by Mop's seduction evokes the legends of "dancing mania." Here the Victorian anxiety surrounding female sexuality, dancing halls, prostitution, and sexually transmitted diseases can be seen. In "An Imaginative Woman" the metaphorical vertical transmission of sexual diseases is illustrated by the son of Ella Marchmill, whose face resembles that of her poetic idol Robert Trewe, whom Ella never meets in person. As this anomaly is caused entirely by Ella's admiration of the poet, the threat that female sexuality creates within the domestic order again emerges. The unhappily married heroines in Hardy's short stories carry maladies that can be transmitted to their children, threatening the family from within. Thus, contagion serves as a metaphor for the anxiety inherent in the inadequacy and vulnerability of the marriage system—defects that Hardy criticizes throughout his texts.