Emma's father retired early and relied on his mother's private income, so when her grandmother died in 1860, the family had to make economies and moved to a cheaper, rented house in Bodmin, Cornwall.

[4] Given Thomas Hardy's comparatively humble origins, Emma "regarded herself as her husband's social superior, and in later life would make embarrassing references in public to the gap in class that existed between them".

It was observed that the couple did not get on with each other; A. C. Benson noted, "It gave me a sense of something intolerable the thought of his having to live day and night with the absurd, inconsequent, huffy, rambling old lady.

In 1899, Gifford became a virtual recluse and spent much of her time in attic rooms, which she asked Thomas Hardy to build for her and were what she called "my sweet refuge and solace".

[7] An active suffragist and supporter of women's suffrage, in 1907 Emma Hardy joined George Bernard Shaw and his wife in a march in London.

The maid summoned the cook, who attempted to carry her down the staircase, but by the time Hardy had been called, he found her unconscious, and she died shortly afterwards.

[8] Hardy found a notebook titled "What I Think of My Husband" in her attic bedroom and spent the rest of his life regretting the unhappiness he had caused her.

[12][13] Unsophisticated in style, and genial in spirit, Recollections makes plain Gifford's early zest for life, and her uncomplicated enjoyment of what it had to offer.

Musical evenings with her family; parties and balls, with "Splendid sashes and stockings and shoes...and very graceful and light and airy we all looked in them"; horse-riding on her mare Fanny, "scampering up and down the hills on my beloved mare...my hair floating on the wind"; and the Cornish scenery, "with its magnificent waves and spray, its white gulls and black choughs and grey puffins, its cliffs and rocks and gorgeous sunsettings":[14] all are recalled in a lively way that explains Hardy's early fascination with her, and on which he drew decades later when he immortalised her in his Poems 1912–13.