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Far from the Madding Crowd – a study guide

plot, characters, criticism, video, study resources

Thomas Hardy - portrait

Thomas Hardy is one of the few writers (D.H. Lawrence was another) who made a significant contribution to English literature in the form of the novel, poetry, and the short story. His writing is full of delightful effects, beautiful images and striking language.

He creates unforgettable characters and orchestrates stories which pull at your heart strings. It has to be said that he also relies on coincidences and improbabilities of plot which (though common in the nineteenth century) some people see as weaknesses. However, his sense of drama, his powerful language, and his wonderful depiction of the English countryside make him an enduring favourite.

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) was the first of Hardy’s novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. Heroine and estate-owner Bathsheba Everdene is romantically involved with three very different men. The dashing Sergeant Troy, who is handsome but unreliable; Farmer Boldwood, who is honourable but middle-aged; and man-of-the-soil Gabriel Oak, who is worthy and prepared to bide his time. The conflicts between them and the ensuing drama has lots of plot twists plus a rich picture of rural life.

Plot summary

Far from the Madding Crowd At the beginning of the novel, Bathsheba Everdene is a beautiful young woman without a fortune. She meets Gabriel Oak, a young farmer, and saves his life one evening. He asks her to marry him, but she refuses because she does not love him. Upon inheriting her uncle’s prosperous farm she moves away to the town of Weatherbury.

A disaster befalls Gabriel’s farm and he loses his sheep; he is forced to give up farming. He goes looking for work, and in his travels finds himself in Weatherbury. After rescuing a local farm from fire he asks the mistress if she needs a shepherd. It is Bathsheba, and she hires him.

As Bathsheba learns to manage her farm she becomes acquainted with her neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, and on a whim sends him a valentine card with the words “Marry me.” Boldwood becomes obsessed with her and becomes her second suitor. Rich and handsome, he has been sought after by many women. Bathsheba refuses him because she does not love him, but she then agrees to review her decision at some future date.

The same night, Bathsheba meets a handsome soldier, Sergeant Troy. She doesn’t know that he has recently made a local girl, Fanny Robin, pregnant and almost married her. Troy falls in love with Bathsheba, enraging Boldwood. Bathsheba travels to Bath to warn Troy of Boldwood’s anger, and while she is there, Troy persuades her to marry him.

Gabriel Oak has remained her friend throughout and does not approve of the marriage. A few weeks after his marriage to Bathsheba, Troy sees Fanny, poor and sick; she later dies giving birth to their child. Bathsheba discovers that Troy is the father. Grief-stricken at Fanny’s death and riddled with shame, Troy runs away and is thought to have drowned.

With Troy supposedly dead, Boldwood becomes more and more emphatic about marrying Bathsheba. Troy sees Bathsheba at a fair and decides to return to her. Boldwood holds a Christmas party, to which he invites Bathsheba and again proposes marriage. Just after she has agreed, Troy arrives to claim her. Bathsheba screams, and Boldwood shoots Troy dead. He is sentenced to life in prison. A few months later, Bathsheba marries Gabriel, who has become a prosperous bailiff.

Study resources

Far from the Madding Crowd – Oxford World Classics version

Far from the Madding Crowd – Wordsworth Classics version

Far from the Madding Crowd – Penguin Classics version

Far from the Madding Crowd – Kindle eBook version

Far from the Madding Crowd – York Notes

Far from the Madding Crowd – Brodie’s Notes

Far from the Madding Crowd – 1967 film version on DVD

Far from the Madding Crowd – audioBook version (unabridged)

Far from the Madding Crowd – audioBook version at LibriVox

Far from the Madding Crowd – eBook version at Project Gutenberg

Thomas Hardy: A Biography – Michael Millgate’s definitive study

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy

The Thomas Hardy Society

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex – tutorials. web links, study resources

Film version

John Schlesinger’s film adaptation (1967) has an outstanding sound track by Richard Rodney Bennett, and stalwart performances from an all star cast of Julie Christie as Bathsheba, Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak, Terence Stamp as Sergeant Troy, and Peter Finch as Boldwood – plus delicious a country bumpkin role for Freddy Jones. The film was shot by now-director Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now and Bad Timing) and the screenplay was written by novelist Frederic Raphael. This film is a visual treat which has stood the test of time.

In this clip, Bathsheba meets Sargeant Troy on a spectacular iron age hill fort at Maiden Castle in Dorset.

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Principal characters

Gabriel Oak	a young and loyal farmer
Bathsheba Everdene	young woman who inherits a farm
Sargeant Frank Troy	handsome and dashing young soldier
William Boldwood	well-to-do farm owner
Fanny Robin	a poor orphan servant girl
Joseph Poorgrass	a timid farm labourer
Pennyways	a bailiff on Bathsheba’s farm

Thomas Hardy - manuscript page

Manuscript of The Mayor of Casterbridge

The novel title

Hardy took the title for his novel from Thomas Gray’s poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751):

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.

The title is often mis-quoted as ‘Far from the Maddening Crowd’ – though interestingly, both words mean the same thing.

Hardy’s WESSEX

Hardy’s study

Thomas Hardy's study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other novels by Thomas Hardy

Click jacket covers for further details at Amazon

Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) was Hardy’s first success as a novelist. It’s a light and gentle evocation of pastoral life. It depicts the world of an agricultural Britain which Hardy saw being transformed by the industrial revolution. Modern readers might find the love interest a bit soppy, but the picture of the Melchester church musicians and their resistance to change is touchingly humorous. It enabled Hardy to express his affection and love for the Wessex countryside. Structurally divided into Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, it follows the natural rhythms of the earth and of rural society. This is one for either the complete beginner to Hardy, or for devotees who wish to flesh out their knowledge of the early stages of his career as a novelist.

The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) is probably Hardy’s greatest work – a novel whose aspirations are matched by artistic shaping and control. It is the tragic history of Michael Henchard – a man who rises to civic prominence, but whose past comes back to haunt him. This is not surprising, because he sells his wife in the opening chapter. When she comes back unexpectedly, he is trapped between present and past. He is also locked into a psychological contest with an alter-ego figure with whom he battles both metaphorically and realistically. Henchard falls in the course of the novel from civic honour and commercial greatness into a tragic figure, a man defeated by his own strengths as much as his weaknesses. There are strong echoes of King Lear here, and some of the most powerfully dramatic and psychologically revealing scenes in all of Hardy’s work.

The Return of the Native (1878) It’s often said that this is one of the most Hardyesque of all the novels. There are some stand-out characters: Eustacia Vye, a heroine who patrols the moors looking out for her man through a telescope; Clym Yeobright, a hero who can’t escape his mother’s influence; and Diggory Ven, an itinerant trader who wanders in and out of the story covered in red dye. Improbable coincidences and dramatic ironies abound – and over it all presides the brooding presence of Egdon Heath. But underneath the melodrama, there are profound psychological forces at work. You need to be patient. This is one for Hardy enthusiasts – not beginners. This edition, unlike any other currently available, retains the text of the novel’s first edition, without the later changes that substantially altered Hardy’s original intentions.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page. This is Hardy at his best.

The Well Beloved (1892) is set in the stone quarries of Portland Bill – one of the strangest parts of Hardy’s Wessex. The hero is a sculptor (that’s the link with stone) who improbably beds a woman, her daughter, and grand-daughter at twenty year intervals on the implausible pretext that they look similar. This is blatant authorial wish-fulfilment on Hardy’s part (and he did eventually marry a woman forty years his junior). It’s one for specialists – or the psychiatrist.

The Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.

Jude the Obscure is Hardy’s last major statement before he gave up writing novels for good. Hero Jude is intellectually ambitious but held back by his work as stonemason and his dalliance with earthy Arabella. When he meets his spiritual soulmate Sue Brideshead, everything seems set fair for success – except that she is capricious and sexually repressed. Jude struggles to do the right thing – but the Fates are against him. The outcome is heart-rendingly bleak and tragic.

Wessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. Stories such as ‘The Withered Arm’, ‘The Son’s Veto’, and ‘The Distracted Preacher’ explore many of the themes of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more fully in his novels.

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy offers commissioned essays from an international team of contributors, comprising a general overview of all Hardy’ s work and specific demonstrations of Hardy’s ideas and literary skills. Individual essays explore Hardy’s biography, aesthetics, his famous attachment to Wessex, and the impact on his work of developments in science, religion and philosophy in the late nineteenth century. Hardy’s writing is also analysed against developments in contemporary critical theory and issues such as sexuality and gender. The volume also contains a detailed chronology of Hardy’s life and publications, and a guide to further reading.

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy is a good introduction to Hardy criticism. It includes a potted biography of Hardy, an outline of the stories, novels, and poetry, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from the early influential full length study by D.H. Lawrence to critics of the present day. Also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Hardy journals.

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