Far From the Madding Crowd

This book was quite the doozy! It's been awhile since I've read 19th century literature and I had forgotten how patiently the authors set up the setting and introduce all of the characters. The first 51% of the book was boring, with an abundance of long flowery scenes of pastoral bliss. Around the half-way point, the book really took off plot-wise and was gripping to the very end. Hardy's characters are shockingly well-developed and interesting.

From today's perspective and cultural lens, there are some moments that are ridiculously misogynistic and the narrator, who I assume to be Hardy, keeps throwing out these sexist generalities about "women" that are pretty eye-rolling. (At one point our heroine proclaims that is is better for a wife to be a victim of domestic violence - insulted, beaten, starved - rather than face the shame of running away! "There is one position worse than that of being found dead in your husband's house from his ill usage, and this is, to be found alive through having gone away to the house of somebody else"). Truth of the matter is, though, Bathsheba lives in a paternalistic sexist society and does the best she can to survive and thrive in it. Hardy also shows how damaging that worldview is to both the female and male characters. Bathsheba has to constantly live in a place where men take one look at her, declare themselves to be madly in love, claim her for marriage, and then berate her when she says she needs time to think! Two of her three suitors both view her as primarily an object that they want to win, albeit in different ways (one through money and the other through charm). She is also coerced into acquiescing by the two potential rival suitors, also in different ways. One basically terrorizes her with a sword (in one of the more disturbing scenes of sex and violence I have read in awhile) and the other makes her think he will go insane if she refuses him. Romantic, huh?

Overall, I think I can mark myself a Hardy fan. I read [b:Tess of the d'Urbervilles|32261|Tess of the d'Urbervilles|Thomas Hardy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358921541s/32261.jpg|3331021] in high school and still vividly remember some of the scenes. This book similarly looks at gender and class politics with well-developed characters and settings that stick out in your mind. This book took on a pretty morbid Gothic twist reminiscent to me of [b:Wuthering Heights|6185|Wuthering Heights|Emily Brontë|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388212715s/6185.jpg|1565818] and I ended up talking about this book with my mother while reading it, sending her updates. Also the parallels with the Biblical heroine of Bathsheba are obvious and striking and interesting to discuss.

Though in one sense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylight coteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd and winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on the other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody in the tithing, and where calculation is confined to market-days. Of the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but little, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all.

4.5 stars!

I was somehow under the impression that Hardy was a Very Serious Author, but

Far From the Madding Crowd has solidly disabused me of that notion. It’s a total soap opera, with a degree of melodrama and sensationalism that puts even

Jane Eyre to shame.

Bathesheba’s impulsive valentine to Boldwood with the “Marry Me” seal, her sudden and secret marriage to Troy, Troy’s secret lover Fanny, Fanny’s sad demise, Bathsheba being the obsession of three different men, Troy’s “death,” his circus performance, his reappearance, his murder

: taken together, all if it is absolutely ridiculous. Accordingly,

Far From the Madding Crowd is a complete page-turner that makes for one of the most engaging Victorian romances that I’ve picked up (despite having one of the least-enticing first chapters I’ve ever read).

I was also surprised to find that, while the novel has the reputation of being

one of Hardy’s happiest

, it’s absolutely chock full of misery.

From the beginning when Gabriel loses his farm and shoots his dog for running his sheep over the cliff, to Bathsheba’s miserable marriage to Troy, to Boldwood’s prolonged sufferings while he pines over Bathsheba, to poor Fanny and her baby, to Troy himself, desperately in love with a dead woman and eventually murdered. Even the stray dog who helps Fanny is thanked by being stoned.

This is neither to condemn nor praise the novel, but it made for a much different reading experience then I’d anticipated.

One thing I

had expected was beautiful prose, and Hardy did not disappoint. The nature writing is definitely one of the highlights of his work. His descriptions are visual and cinematic, particularly when it comes to the natural landscape, which he imbues with both color and texture. He often uses slightly unusual and strange metaphors that give a very unique feel. He gives some characters dialects, but does it so lightly that I didn't find it confusing or intrusive. Overall, his style is incredibly readable and moves along at a good clip, with the occasional dash of humor.

My major criticism of the novel is with Hardy’s characterization, which isn't just poor in hindsight but bothered me throughout. This is the reason I knocked off half a star, and the reason I don’t think

Far From the Madding Crowd will be particularly rereadable for me. Hardy seems to keep his characters at arm’s length. Their emotions never entirely seep through into the narrative. Instead, the book has a calmness, almost a

hollowness about it. The characters simply do not feel like real people for most of the novel. Gabriel, Troy, and Boldwood eventually begin to come into their own with identifiable goals and inner turmoil and personalities that have a degree of complexity (and possibly the gaggle of side characters too, though I couldn’t ever keep them straight), though even still they’re a bit caricatured, with the “villain” almost comically cruel. Bathsheba, however, is never even fully formed enough to be deemed two-dimensional. She is indecipherable and mercurial, sometimes steadfast but sometimes fickle as the plot demands. Vanity seems to be her one enduring quality. I get the impression that Hardy himself doesn’t understand her, and so is unable to communicate anything solid about her to the reader. Or perhaps because he wants her to personify women as mysterious and unknowable. Whatever the reason, it’s impossible to connect with her or become emotionally invested in her story. It’s utterly bewildering what Gabriel, Troy, and Boldwood—three very different men—see in her. Given that their all-consuming obsession is the core of the plot, it’s disappointing that this wasn’t explored a bit more. (Shallow character development and a lack of psychological realism is also something I felt with the other Hardy novel I read,

Two on a Tower.) The crazy plot was wonderfully fun, but ultimately the novel was missing an emotional core.

Finally, a comment on theme. I’ve often seen this novel referenced as a feminist work featuring a headstrong female character determined to step into a man’s role. In actuality, though, it primarily seems to warn against the siren song of feminine beauty, the fickleness of female character, and the dangers of falling completely and unabashedly in love with a woman. This didn’t impact my enjoyment of the novel at all, but I’m not terribly impressed with the novel inasmuch as it comments on anything larger.

Oh, and while reading the novel I happened to come across the poem from whence

Far From the Madding Crowd gets its name,

”Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray (included in Philip Smith’s compilation of

100 Best-Loved Poems). It's a lovely poem, and it's clear why Hardy chose it for his title.

Some favorite passages:

The sky was clear—remarkably clear—and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. The North Star was directly in the wind’s eye, and since evening the Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars—oftener read of than seen in England—was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.

In the corner stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were ranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to ovine surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia, ginger, and castor-oil being the chief.

After placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the altitudes of the stars. The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were half-way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees, and Cassiopeia’s chair stood daintily poised on the uppermost boughs. “One o’clock,” said Gabriel.

“It wouldn’t do, Mr. Oak.

I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you would never be able to, I know.”

It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in.

Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings.

“Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don’t yet know my powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if you serve me well, so shall I serve you. Don’t any unfair ones among you (if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because I’m a woman I don’t understand the difference between bad goings-on and good. […] I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.”

Winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an obliteration by snow.

Bathsheba’s was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect.

Flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops’ croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint—like an apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite—snow-white ladies’-smocks, the toothwort, approximating to human flesh, the enchanter’s night-shade, and the black-petaled doleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of the vegetable world in and about Weatherbury at this teeming time;

Her emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in her likings. We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.

“And I would rather have curses from you than kisses from any other woman; so I’ll stay here.”

[…] Bathsheba re­solved to hive the bees her­self, if pos­sible. She had dressed the hive with herbs and honey, fetched a lad­der, brush, and crook, made her­self im­preg­nable with ar­mour of leath­er gloves, straw hat, and large gauze veil—once green but now faded to snuff col­our—and as­cen­ded a dozen rungs of the lad­der.

Beams of light caught from the low sun’s rays, above, around, in front of her, well-nigh shut out earth and heaven—all emitted in the marvellous evolutions of Troy’s reflecting blade, which seemed everywhere at once, and yet nowhere specially. These circling gleams were accompanied by a keen rush that was almost a whistling—also springing from all sides of her at once. In short, she was enclosed in a firmament of light, and of sharp hisses, resembling a skyfull of meteors close at hand.

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.

She fired up at once. “You are taking too much upon yourself!” she said, vehemently. “Everybody is upon me—everybody. It is unmanly to attack a woman so!

I have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me; but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I will not be put down!”

There she remained long. Above the dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontories of coppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western sky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating stars. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all.

The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst, and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead. The church clock struck eleven. The air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct, and so was also the click of the same at their close. The notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things—flapping and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.

The creeping plants about the old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high magnifying power.

Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones—dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly.

but love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe.

when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the last crash of those preceding. It was a stupefying blast, harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant thunder. By the lustre reflected from every part of the earth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a huge riband of bark being apparently flung off. The other portion remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. The lightning had struck the tree. A sulphurous smell filled the air; then all was silent, and black as a cave in Hinnom.

The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The hollow echo of its fall reminded the wagoner painfully of the grim Leveller. Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three. Presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty-red leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops, like diamonds on auburn hair.

This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be. If Satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should have married her. I never had another thought till you came in my way. Would to God that I had; but it is all too late!” He turned to Fanny then. “But never mind, darling,” he said; “in the sight of Heaven you are my very, very wife!”

Iridescent bubbles of dank subterranean breath rose from the sweating sod beside the waiting-maid’s feet as she trod, hissing as they burst and expanded away to join the vapoury firmament above.

No Liddy, I’ll read. Bring up some books—not new ones. I haven’t heart to read anything new.”

It was too human to be called like a dragon, too impish to be like a man, too animal to be like a fiend, and not enough like a bird to be called a griffin. This horrible stone entity was fashioned as if covered with a wrinkled hide; it had short, erect ears, eyes starting from their sockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing the corners of its mouth, which they thus seemed to pull open to give free passage to the water it vomited. The lower row of teeth was quite washed away, though the upper still remained. Here and thus, jutting a couple of feet from the wall against which its feet rested as a support, the creature had for four hundred years laughed at the surrounding landscape, voicelessly in dry weather, and in wet with a gurgling and snorting sound.

“Do you like me, or do you respect me?” “I don’t know—at least, I cannot tell you. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

He who had believed in her and argued on her side when all the rest of the world was against her, had at last like the others become weary and neglectful of the old cause, and was leaving her to fight her battles alone.

“Bathsheba,” he said, tenderly and in surprise, and coming closer: “if I only knew one thing—whether you would allow me to love you and win you, and marry you after all—if I only knew that!” “But you never will know,” she murmured. “Why?” “Because you never ask.” “Oh—Oh!”

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. This good-fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.