Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth published novel and his first major literary success. It was published on 23 November 1874. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership.
The novel is set in Thomas Hardy's Wessex in rural southwest England, as had been his earlier Under the Greenwood Tree. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the life and relationships of Bathsheba Everdene with her lonely neighbour William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy.
On publication, critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive. Hardy revised the text extensively for the 1895 edition and made further changes for the 1901 edition.[1]
The novel has an enduring legacy. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 48 on the BBC's survey The Big Read,[2] while in 2007, it was ranked 10th on The Guardian's list of greatest love stories of all time.[3] The novel has also been dramatised several times, notably in the Oscar-nominated 1967 film directed by John Schlesinger.
Synopsis
Meeting, parting and reuniting
Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, who arrives to live with her aunt. Over time, Bathsheba and Gabriel grow to like each other well enough, and Bathsheba even saves his life once. However, when he makes her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much and him too little. Days later, she moves to Weatherbury, a village some miles off.
When next they meet, their circumstances have changed drastically. An inexperienced new sheepdog has driven Gabriel's flock over a cliff, ruining him. After selling off everything of value, he manages to settle all his debts but emerges penniless. He seeks employment at a hiring fair in the town of Casterbridge. When he finds none, he heads to another such fair in Shottsford, a town about ten miles from Weatherbury. On his way, he happens to take note of a fire on a farm, and leads the bystanders in putting it out. When the veiled owner comes to thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be Bathsheba. She has recently inherited her uncle's estate and is now wealthy. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she employs him.
Bathsheba's valentine to Boldwood
Meanwhile, Bathsheba gains a new admirer. William Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about 40, whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words "Marry me". Boldwood, not realising the valentine was a jest, becomes obsessed with her and soon proposes marriage assuming she wanted the same. Despite not loving him, she toys with the idea of accepting his offer; he is the most eligible bachelor in the district. However, she avoids giving him a definite answer. When Gabriel rebukes her for her thoughtlessness regarding Boldwood, she dismisses him from his job.
When Bathsheba's sheep begin dying from bloat, she discovers to her chagrin that Gabriel is the only man who knows how to cure them. Her pride delays the inevitable, but eventually she is forced to beg him for help. Afterward, she offers him back his job, and their friendship is restored.
Sergeant Troy
"She took up her position as directed." Troy courts Bathsheba; Cornhill illustration by Helen Paterson Allingham
At this point, Sergeant Francis "Frank" Troy returns to his native Weatherbury and by chance encounters Bathsheba one night. Her initial dislike turns to infatuation after he excites her with a private display of swordsmanship. Gabriel observes Bathsheba's interest in the young soldier and tries to discourage it, telling her she would be better off marrying Boldwood. Boldwood becomes aggressive towards Troy, and Bathsheba goes to Bath to prevent Troy returning to Weatherbury, as she fears what might happen if Troy encountered Boldwood. On their return, Boldwood offers his rival a large bribe to give up Bathsheba. Troy pretends to consider the offer, then scornfully announces they are already married. Boldwood withdraws, humiliated, and vows revenge.
Bathsheba discovers that her new husband is an improvident gambler with little interest in farming. She also begins to suspect he does not love her. In fact, Troy's heart belongs to her former servant, Fanny Robin. Before meeting Bathsheba, Troy had promised to marry Fanny; on the wedding day, however, Fanny went to the wrong church. She explained her mistake, but Troy, humiliated at being left at the altar, called off the wedding. When they parted, unbeknownst to Troy, Fanny was pregnant with his child.
Fanny Robin
Fanny Robin on her way to the Casterbridge workhouse. Cornhill illustration by Helen Paterson Allingham
Months later, Troy and Bathsheba encounter Fanny on the road, destitute, as she painfully makes her way toward the Casterbridge workhouse. Troy sends his wife onward, then gives Fanny all the money in his pocket, telling her he will give her more in a few days. Fanny uses up the last of her strength to reach her destination. Hours later, she dies in childbirth, along with the baby. Mother and child are then placed in a coffin and sent home to Weatherbury for interment. Gabriel, who knows of Troy's relationship with Fanny, tries to conceal the child's existence – but Bathsheba agrees that the coffin can be left in her house overnight, from her sense of duty towards a former servant.[4] Her servant and confidante, Liddy, repeats the rumour that Fanny had a child; when all the servants are in bed, Bathsheba unscrews the lid and sees the two bodies inside.
Troy then comes home from Casterbridge, where he had gone to keep his appointment with Fanny. Seeing the reason for her failure to meet him, he kisses the corpse and tells the anguished Bathsheba, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be". The next day he spends all his money on a marble tombstone with the inscription: "Erected by Francis Troy in beloved memory of Fanny Robin ..." Then, loathing himself and unable to bear Bathsheba's company, he leaves. After a walk, he bathes in the sea, leaving his clothes on the beach. A strong current carries him away, but he is rescued by a rowing boat. He does not return home, however.
Troy returns
A year later, with Troy presumed drowned, Boldwood renews his suit. Burdened with guilt over the pain she has caused him, Bathsheba reluctantly consents to marry him in six years, long enough to have Troy declared dead. Boldwood begins counting the days.
Troy tires of his hand-to-mouth existence as a travelling actor and considers reclaiming his position and wife. He returns to Weatherbury on Christmas Eve and goes to Boldwood's house, where a party is under way. He orders Bathsheba to come with him; when she shrinks back in shock and dismay, he seizes her arm, and she screams. At this, Boldwood shoots Troy dead and tries unsuccessfully to turn the double-barrelled gun on himself. Although Boldwood is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged, his friends petition the Home Secretary for mercy, claiming insanity. This is granted, and Boldwood's sentence is commuted to "confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure". Bathsheba buries her husband in the same grave as Fanny Robin and their child.
Gabriel triumphant
Throughout her tribulations, Bathsheba comes to rely increasingly on her oldest and, as she admits to herself, only real friend, Gabriel. When he gives notice that he is leaving her employ, she realises how important he has become to her well-being. That night, she goes alone to visit him in his cottage, to find out why he is deserting her. Pressed, he reluctantly reveals that it is because people have been gossiping that he wants to marry her. She exclaims that it is "... too absurd – too soon – to think of, by far!" He bitterly agrees that it is absurd, but when she corrects him, saying that it is only "too soon", he is emboldened to ask once again for her hand in marriage. She accepts, and the two are quietly married.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Lucasta Miller points out that the title is an ironic literary joke, as Gray is idealising noiseless and sequestered calm, whereas Hardy "disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot ... he is out to subvert his readers' complacency".[6]
Thomas Hardy's Wessex was first mentioned in Far from the Madding Crowd; describing the "partly real, partly dream-country" that unifies his novels of southwest England. Far from the Madding Crowd offers in ample measure the details of English rural life that Hardy so relished.[7]
He found the word in the pages of early English history as a designation for an extinct, pre-Norman conquest kingdom, the Wessex from which Alfred the Great established England.[8] In the first edition, the word "Wessex" is used only once, in chapter 50; Hardy extended the reference for the 1895 edition.[9] Hardy himself wrote: “I am reminded that it was in the chapters of Far from the Madding Crowd… that I first ventured to adopt the word ‘Wessex’ from the pages of early English history... – a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and National school children.”[10]
Puddletown's parish church has significant architectural interest, particularly its furnishings and monuments. It has a 12th-century font and well-preserved woodwork, including 17th-century box pews. Hardy took an interest in the church, and the village provided the inspiration for the fictional settlement of Weatherbury[11]
In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy briefly mentions two characters from Far from the Madding Crowd – Farmer Everdene and Farmer Boldwood, both in happier days.
Adaptations
Radio
The novel was adapted by Graham White in 2012 into a three-part series on BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial. The production was directed by Jessica Dromgoole and featured Alex Tregear as Bathsheba, Shaun Dooley as Gabriel, Toby Jones as Boldwood and Patrick Kennedy as Troy.
Comics
The novel was adapted by Posy Simmonds into Tamara Drewe, weekly comic strip that ran from September 2005 to October 2006 in The Guardian's Review section. The strip, a modern reworking of the novel, was itself adapted into a film, Tamara Drewe (2010), directed by Stephen Frears.
In 1879, Hardy adapted the novel under the title “The Mistress of the Farm: A Pastoral Drama”. When J. Comyns Carr suggested something similar, Hardy gave him his version, which he said Carr “modified… in places, to suit modern carpentry &c”.[14] Hardy's experience of adapting a novel for the theatre was soured by controversy – the managers of the St James's Theatre, London, John Hare and William Hunter Kendal, on reading the Comyns Carr/Hardy adaptation, first accepted it and then rejected it; instead staging Arthur Wing Pinero's play The Squire, which appeared to be heavily plagiarised from the earlier script.[15] This enraged Comyns Carr and, to a lesser extent, Hardy. Prompted by Comyns Carr, Hardy wrote indignant letters to The Times and the Daily News.[16] Comyns Carr/Hardy's version was finally staged at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, where it opened on 27 February 1882 as Far from The Madding Crowd, with Marion Terry as Bathsheba and Charles Kelly as Oak.[17][18] The reviews were mixed, one critic calling their adaptation “a miniature melodrama… well placed in the provinces”, while praising The Squire’s appeal to “spectators of somewhat refined taste”. The production subsequently transferred to the Globe Theatre in London, opening on 29 April 1882, presenting a similar cast, but with Mrs Bernard Beere now playing Bathsheba.[19]
Inspired by these performances, a further, clumsy cut-and-paste version, of the novel was performed in America shortly afterwards, at the Union Square Theatre, New York in April 1882. The play was panned: according to the theatre reviewer for the American journal Spirit of the Times, it was unfair “to Thomas Hardy, to the public, and to Miss Morris, although she got even by spoiling the play after Mr Cazauran had spoiled the novel”. This experience made Hardy wary of theatrical adaptations and the potential risk to his reputation both from authorised adaptations and from unauthorised ones.[20]
In 1909, Harold Evans adapted the novel, with Hardy's input, for The Hardy Players, Hardy's own amateur theatrical society, formed in 1908 to perform a production of The Trumpet-Major. As Harold Evans’ daughter Evelyn wrote: “This pastoral romance presented more difficult problems of staging; sheep had to be sheared on stage in the great barn; the big shearing supper was essential; Boldwood’s Christmas party had to be staged, too, with its tragic climax, the shooting of Troy by the half-crazed Boldwood. Mr T. H. Tilley, a builder by trade, and a most gifted comedian, conquered all these staging difficulties. He constructed a model theatre (now in the possession of Mr Edward Grassby) with designs for each set, so that the Weatherbury (Puddletown) landscape could be faithfully portrayed. A painting of Waterston House formed one backcloth; meadows, fir plantations, house interiors, the others. Mr Tilley’s rich humour in the part of Joseph Poorgrass delighted Hardy and the audience. My father often chuckled over how Joseph, in his cups, declared, ‘I feel too good for England. I ought to have lived in Genesis by right.’” In the 1909 production, one important scene had to be omitted. Much to Hardy’s regret, the opening of Fanny Robin’s coffin by Bathsheba and her reaction to it could not be staged. At that time, having a coffin on the stage was seen as too shocking. “Years later,” wrote Evelyn Evans, “when Hardy attended a performance of Synge’s Riders to the Sea by the Arts League of Service, and watched drowned bodies carried on to the stage, he remarked wryly that his one coffin containing Fanny Robin and her child could hardly have shocked the same audience.” There was also some unexpected comedy gold in the 1909 production. Evelyn Evans describes it thus: “To make this pastoral play true to life, my father engaged a professional sheep-shearer to shear sheep on stage during the important shearing scene. Everything was to be done as Hardy described it: ‘The lopping off the tresses about the ewe’s head, opening up the neck and collar, the running of the shears line after line round her dewlap, thence about her flank and back, and finishing over her tail – the clean, sleek creature arising from its fleece: startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft cloud.’ The shearer, complaining of thirst, was given unlimited free beer at his task, with the result that above the actors’ voices could be heard a maudlin song, as the shearer sang to the sheep he was fondly kissing and clipping with expertise, becoming, unfortunately, drunker and drunker to father's great consternation.”[21]
New stage adaptations were performed in autumn 2008 by the English Touring Theatre (ETT), directed by Kate Saxon,[22] in March 2013 by Myriad Theatre & Film, and in 2019 by the New Hardy Players (re-formed at the request of Norrie Woodhall).[23]
In 2011 Roger Holman wrote a musical adaptation of "Far From the Madding Crowd".[24]
References in popular culture
Anime
Episode 20 of the animeKill la Kill is titled "Far from the Madding Crowd".
Music
British musician Paul McCartney, included the lyric "When I fly above the Maddening Crowd" on the song "3 Legs" from his 1971 release Ram.
^Wilson, Keith (1995). Hardy and The Stage. The Macmillan Press. p. 25.
^Wilson, Keith (1995). Hardy and the Stage. The Macmillan Press Ltd. p. 25.
^Stottlar, James (1977). "Hardy vs Pinero: Two Stage Versions of Far from the Madding Crowd". Theatre Survey. 18 (2): 23–43. doi:10.1017/S0040557400009224.
