99. FAR from the MADDING CROWD

Thomas Hardy 1874

A stunning classic masterpiece about three men's devotion to Bathsheba Everdene, a proud, beautiful and strong-willed woman who inherits and becomes the owner of a big farm in Weatherbury, England. Gabriel Oak is a consistent hard-worker who oversees Bathsheba's farm, William Boldwood is a middle age obssessive wealthy farmer who is Bathsheba's neighbor and Frank Roy is an impulsive, dashing admirer who immediately captures Bathsheba's attention. Three ardent suitors from different backgrounds, wealth and temperaments come together in pursuit of Bathsheba and form the frenzy of this enticing novel full of dramatic twists and surprises.

'When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance to his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.'(opening lines)

'Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.'(21)

"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,"(27)

'"I be his lawful wife!" continued the voice with greater prominence of manner and tone. This lady called herself five-and-twenty, looked thirty, passed as thirty-five, and was forty. She was a woman who never, like some newly married, showed conjugal tenderness in public, perhaps because she had none to show.'(71)

"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."(74)

'It may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and generous enough to fling passing glances at any specimen or moderate beauty they may discern by the way. Probably, as with persons playing whilst for love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under any circumstances from that worst possible ultimate, the having to pay, makes them unduly speculative.'(82)

'To Boldwood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary complements-- comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and permanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical, unchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely erratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty to consider.'(104)

'Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way, to say a little is often to tell more than to say a great deal.'(112)

'In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen's Then is the rustic's Now. In London, twenty or thirty years are old times; in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone.'(130)

"Yes; victuals and drink is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of words may be used. 'Tis the gospel of the body, without which we perish, so to speak it.'(136)

'He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. His outlook upon time was a transient flash of the eye now and then: that projection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which makes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word for circumspection, was foreign to Troy. With him, the past was yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after.'(149)

'Such women as you a hundred men always covet-- your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you-- you can only marry one of that many. Out of these say twenty will endeavor to drown the bitterness of despised love in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or attempt to make a mark in the world, because they have no ambition apart from their attachment to you; twenty more-- the susceptible person myself possibly among them-- will always be draggling after you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things. Men are such constant fools! The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. But all these but the ninety-nine women they might have married are saddened with them. There's my tale. That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race."(156)

'It may safely be asserted with respect to the closeness of his cuts, that had it been possible for the edge of the sword to leave in the air a permanent substance wherever it flew past, the space left untouched would have been almost a mould of Bathsheba's figure.'(166)

A Bantam Book edition, October 1967
362 pages
Book owned