The World We Write In: How Setting Affects Readers

As I've been reading Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, I have found it rather difficult to connect the story with Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.  What I have noticed, though, is that both authors use a lot of in-depth descriptions to really put the reader into the story.  I'm not entirely sure if this is the direction I want to go, but I think it's a good starting point anyway.  Here's my working thesis statement:

The setting in Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd draws the reader in, allowing them to take the journey with the characters.  The crazy, upside-down world in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass has a similar effect on the reader.  Setting, therefore, is one of the most important aspects of writing because it has such an influence on how the readers interpret the story.

Update (March 12):  I've decided to change my thesis.  After discussing and doing some more research, I'm going to focus my paper on feminism in Far From the Madding Crowd and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  I'm going to research feminism in the time period of both authors, who Carroll and Hardy approached feminism, and how their female characters interact with their stories.