Far From the Madding Crowd: A Commentary

by Donald Wilms

Donald Wilms is a teacher at the READ Center and a Past President of the Chesterfield County (VA) Education Association. He did the research and moderated our RVA Classic Book Discussion in November 2020. He offers his commentary on Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy below:

Having borrowed his title from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Thomas Hardy penned his first successful novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, in 1874.  Inspired by Gray—who opined:

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,

Or wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre

—and his own upbringing in rural southern England, Hardy animated the long-gone kingdom of Wessex with rustic inhabitants of their own small realm.  At first, one might be led to think this is the story of Gabriel Oak, then of Gabriel and Bathsheba Everdene, but soon enough, the female farmer takes center stage as the sun around whom three masculine planets rotate as if her beauty and charm are the gravity that keeps them all in her orbit.

Gabriel Oak, who vows to love Bathsheba for all his days despite her having rejected him as a lover, provides stability to the heroine’s life as her employee and eventually the manager of her farm.  Sturdy and rugged, though not handsome, Gabriel is strong and virile even if too willing to give up on winning his lady’s love.  Indeed, it is his ability to accept her rejection at face value that irks Bathsheba about him and for which she stops thinking of him as a suitor.

Farmer Boldwood, who initially does not even notice Bathsheba’s presence, once his passions are awakened, becomes obsessed with winning her as his wife to the detriment of his own sanity.  As she did Gabriel, Bathsheba rejects Boldwood as unsuitable for her, but he will not step down as Gabriel has done.  While he holds no attraction for her as a husband—indeed, she has no liking for a husband at all because she does not wish to be possessed—her act of trifling with him by sending him what she considers an innocent valentine is the catalyst for the rest of the story.

In contrast to Gabriel, whom she likes but who withdraws his attentions too quickly, and Boldwood, whom she does not like but who will not withdraw his attentions at all, Frank Troy, handsome and dashing, woos Bathsheba almost as sport. Unfortunately, Troy is the lover who wins the young girl-turned-farmer and elicits a response that neither Boldwood nor Gabriel Oak could accomplish.  However, unknown to all the other characters, perhaps even to himself, Troy is really in love with another woman.  Hence, Bathsheba moves from one extreme to another: from Boldwood, who cannot control his passion for her to the detriment of his own health and livelihood, to Troy, who completely controls his passion to the detriment of her health and almost to her livelihood.

As Gabriel holds the stability of this community, Bathsheba is able eventually to recover from the extremes of Boldwood and Troy and find her place bolstered by Gabriel Oak’s quiet strength.  Because of him, she is able to endure tragedy and recover her place in her own mind and to her own comfort.

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