Five-minute digest
Far from the Madding Crowd
Summary
Gabriel Oak, a young shepherd farming his own small flock on Norcombe Hill, falls in love with Bathsheba Everdene, a proud, lively girl staying with her aunt nearby. She saves his life when he nearly suffocates in his smoky hut, but refuses his plain proposal, saying she wants somebody to tame her. Soon afterwards Gabriel's inexperienced young dog drives his whole flock over the edge of a chalk-pit, and he is ruined. Looking for work as a bailiff, he arrives at Weatherbury in time to save a burning rick-yard and finds that its owner is Bathsheba, who has inherited her uncle's farm. She hires him as shepherd. Determined to manage the farm herself, she dismisses her thieving bailiff and goes to Casterbridge market among the men. On a whim she sends a valentine sealed 'Marry me' to her neighbour, the reserved gentleman-farmer William Boldwood, who has never noticed her, and awakens in him an intense, consuming passion. Meanwhile Fanny Robin, a servant who had left the farm, waits at the wrong church on her wedding day, and Sergeant Frank Troy, the man she was to marry, will not try again. Troy, handsome and clever, meets Bathsheba in a dark fir plantation when his spur catches her skirt, dazzles her with a display of swordsmanship in a hollow among the ferns, and marries her secretly in Bath, to Boldwood's anguish. At the harvest supper Troy makes the farm-hands drunk while a storm threatens the uncovered ricks; Gabriel and Bathsheba save the harvest together through the night. Troy's debts and gambling grow. Fanny, destitute and pregnant, struggles along the Casterbridge highway to the Union workhouse, and dies there with her baby. Bathsheba opens the coffin brought to her house, and Troy, coming in, kisses the dead girl and tells his wife that Fanny is more to him than she ever was. He leaves, is swept out to sea while bathing and is believed drowned, but has been picked up by a boat. Boldwood presses Bathsheba for a promise to marry him after seven years. At Boldwood's Christmas Eve party Troy returns to claim his wife, and Boldwood shoots him dead. Boldwood is sentenced to death, but evidence of his disordered mind, including a closet of dresses and jewellery labelled 'Bathsheba Boldwood', leads to a reprieve and confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure. When Gabriel plans to leave for California, Bathsheba realises how much she depends on him; they marry quietly, and the farm-workers serenade them. The novel appeared anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine through 1874 and was published by Smith, Elder in two volumes in November 1874. The library text is that first edition, with the two volumes' chapters numbered separately.
Top Lessons
Steadfast love
Gabriel's love outlasts refusal, ruin and years of service without reward. Hardy contrasts his patient affection with Boldwood's consuming passion and Troy's quick charm, and the closing chapter praises a love grown from knowing each other's rough sides.
Skill and stewardship
Gabriel saves the ricks from fire and storm and the sheep from bloat by knowledge and hard work. Hardy honours the craft of farm life and shows that faithfulness in small duties can save a whole household.
Vanity and its consequences
Bathsheba admires herself in a mirror on the first page and sends a valentine as a joke. Her small vanities set off great consequences for Boldwood, and she grows through suffering into humility and honesty.
Passion and the disordered mind
Boldwood's love turns from devotion to fixation, shown in his neglected ricks and his hidden store of gifts. The reprieve raises the question of responsibility when passion overthrows judgment.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears”
Frequently cited
“And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up, there will be you.”
“I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent”
“Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.”
“It was a small tube or trochar, with a lance passing down the inside; and Gabriel began to use it with a dexterity that would have graced a hospital-surgeon.”
Frequently cited
“Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other’s character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality.”
Frequently cited
“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”
“These somewhat pathetic evidences of a mind crazed with care and love”
Medical Lens
Boldwood is a careful study of a reserved man whose passion becomes a fixed idea: he neglects his ricks, makes Bathsheba promise to marry him after seven years, buys and labels gifts for a wife he does not have, and finally kills Troy. After the trial a petition to the Home Secretary argues that he was not morally responsible, and his sentence is commuted to confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure, the usual phrase for a criminal judged insane; Gabriel himself doubts he was out of his mind, and the novel leaves the question open. Fanny Robin's death in the Casterbridge Union after childbirth, with her infant, shows the workhouse as the last refuge of the poor. Gabriel's use of a trocar to relieve sheep 'blasted' with clover is a precise piece of veterinary practice. Bathsheba's collapse after the shooting, and drink at the harvest supper and the Buck's Head, add further material. Any modern diagnosis of Boldwood is interpretive.
- Vol. I, Ch. XXI
Gabriel relieves the bloated sheep by puncturing their rumen with a trocar, saving most of Bathsheba's flock.
- Vol. II, Chs. IX–XI
Fanny's struggle along the Casterbridge highway to the Union-house, and the report of her death there.
- Vol. II, Ch. XIII
Bathsheba opens the coffin and finds Fanny with her dead child beside her.
- Vol. II, Ch. XXV
Discovery of Boldwood's locked closet of gifts, the petition on his mental state, and the reprieve to confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure.
- Vol. II, Ch. VI
Troy plies the workers with brandy and water at the harvest supper while the storm gathers.