Far from the Madding Crowd [Library Binding]

In breathtakingly evocative language Hardy writes a paean to times he knew were changing. He is writing at a period when the old country ways are at war with the new. Bathsheba Everdene is, in her way, one of the 'new' people. And Sergeant Troy, out of harmony with the village of his birth and 'a man to whom memories were an encumbrance', is too. So one would think they were meant for each other. Hardy shows us, though, that there is something about the old ways that is worth saving; this is personified by Gabriel Oak, who is staunch like his name. His steadfastness symbolizes the old ways, the ways in which loyalty, integrity, modest ambitions and decency are lasting values. One is led to think, perhaps, in the middle of the book that the new ways will be a path out of the seemingly simple and ineffective country ways, where people live their lives by the seasons, know their rôle in their society, get along civilly with each other, all of which might seem to lead to a certain lack of excitement. When Gabriel characterizes his proposal of marriage to Bathsheba by saying '. . . at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be--and whenever I look up, there will be you', this is taken by Bathsheba as a recipe for boredom. She comes to understand with time that this sort of domestic harmony is a haven from the harms of the world.

And so, while writing about changing times, Hardy also writes a prose poem about married love. He was 33 when he wrote it and ironically it was the success of this book that gave him the means to finally get married to his dear fiancée, Emma Gifford. And it launched him on a series that was to become a dominant part of his life's work.

The book ends with a neat summation, quoted in the title of this review, by one of the farm laborers, Joseph Poorgrass, who proposes a perhaps unromantic means of accepting our time among our fellow-men: '. . . since 'tis as 'tis, why, it might have been worse, and I feel my thanks accordingly.'

Far From the Madding Crowd is a pretty simple love story driven by the characters. First, there is Bathsheba Everdeen. She's vain, naive, and she makes the stupidest decisions possible. Yet, you still like her. Then there are the three guys who all want her: Troy who's like the bad guy straight out of a Raphael Sabatini novel, Boldwood who's an old lunatic farmer, and Gabriel Oak who is a simple farmer and is basically perfect. The reader sees what should happen in the first chapter, and it takes Bathsheeba the whole book to see it. The characters really make the book. The reader really has strong feelings about them, and Hardy puts them in situations where you just don't know what they're going to do. The atmosphere that Hardy creates is (as is in all of Hardy's novel) amazing and totally original. I don't think any other author (except Wallace Stegner in America) has ever evoked a sense of place as well as Hardy does. Overall, Far from the Madding Crowd is a great novel. I probably don't like it quite as well as some of his others, but I still do think it deserved five stars.