To make it professionally in theater you need to be a triple threat: good singer, good dancer, and good actor. Thomas Hardy exhibits the writing equivalent of a triple threat: writes extremely beautiful prose, entertaining storyteller, and ponders interesting social issues in a thought-provoking way. Okay, so that comparison is a little tortured, but you still get my gist. Hardy’s work embodies everything one can hope to find in a writer and novel. The only parts that bored me were the tavern scenes with the townsfolk, which reflects more my own biases (I don’t particularly like the Falstaff tavern scenes in Shakespeare’s plays or tavern scenes in the various fantasy novels I’ve read over the years).

Far From the Madding Crowd tells the story of Gabriel Oak whose aspirations to be a wealthy farmer ends when a large portion of his sheep commit suicide over a cliff and his marriage proposal for the haughty and independent woman Bathsheba Everdine is rejected. Due to his changing fortunes, he leaves town in search of work under a large and wealthy farmer, ultimately to find his paths cross again with Bathsheba who luck has changed for the better and has now inherited her uncle’s farm. Working for the women he once loved and hoped to marry, he watches as the poor decisions of his mistress lead her to a disastrous marriage with an irresponsible flirtatious rake named Troy and drives another local landowner named Boldwood who is also in love with her to jealousy and eventually culminating in an obsessive madness.

Besides being an extremely entertaining novel with well-drawn characters and well-written, the novel also offers a wide-variety of allusions from Biblical to Norse mythology. The novel tackles the issue of changing fortunes. Gabriel’s fortunes change with a bad stroke of luck, but his hard work and persistent payoff in the end. Bathsheba starts off impoverished due to circumstances, but a good stroke of luck sees her inheriting her father’s estate, only to make poor decisions and almost ruin everyone else’s lives. Gabriel is portrayed as a virtuous character who accepts his misfortune and watches his love flirt and eventually marry these other suitors; he endures despite his misfortune and never changes from it.  In this way, Gabriel clearly finds himself in the lineage of Job, especially when his persistence and hard work lead to the recovery of his fortune when he eventually marries Bathsheba and now has his own farm shared with her. The novel features a variety of allusions to many different sources ranging from the Bible to Norse Mythology.

The book contemplates the different forms love can take: true love (Gabriel), lust (Troy), and love to fulfill an emptiness in life (Boldwood). Gabriel stands by Bathsheba and always puts her interests first before his own, even when it seems she will never return his love. Troy can’t resist the beauty of Bathsheba’s face and openly admits he marries her for both her beauty and the ease her money will bring. Boldwood’s feelings borders on a kind of creepiness. When Bathsheba sends him a valentine, asking him to marrying her as a jest, it opens a new perspective in his narrow worldview. It makes him see how empty his life is without a woman, how meaningless it all is without love and somebody to dote upon. Contemplating the emptiness of his own live drives him insane and makes him obsessed with Bathsheba marrying him. In this sense, Troy wants a woman who can support him, Boldwood wants a woman who will depend on him, and Gabriel wants an equal.

 

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