Far From The Madding Crowd

At numerous points in the novel, our attention is drawn to the relative stasis of rural life, in particular the way in which things change almost imperceptibly slowly. “In comparison with cities,” Hardy writes, “Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen’s Then is the rustic’s Now. In London, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were including in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone” (177-78). This is illustrated in the landscape and customs of the town just as much as it is in the people—one of the first people Gabriel meets, the old maltster, is so old that his son was friends with Gabriel’s grandfather, and they knew Gabriel’s father when he was just a boy. The townspeople exist across a vast spectrum of ages, and yet they all seem to collapse into one another such that, throughout the novel, there is little difference between the young and the old, as they all work together to meet the needs of the town.

Time, as such, is marked by period as much as it is by calendar months, seasons, and holidays, reflecting a shift in the concept of time taking place around the moment of Hardy’s writing. In the late 19th century, with the advent of the railroad and our ability to traverse great distances quickly, people began to think about time in ever smaller increments, whereas previously time was thought of in slower, more abstract terms, more tied into nature, the land, and harvest. We see both in action throughout the novel. The narrator marks the passage of time by referring to the tasks at hand—sheep-shearing season, haymaking season—and Gabriel is still able to tell time by the stars. We do also frequently encounter the chiming of clocks and pocket-watches, and as the novel progresses, there is a greater reliance on the calendar as shorthand (such as Bathsheba’s assent to Boldwood in six years’ time), as well as a greater passage of time between events. These two conceptions of time are constantly in tension with one another.

Still, Weatherbury—and Wessex, more broadly—staves off modernity and retains its traditions, even as we see that what is taken as traditional—such as the various inns and pubs—has itself undergone change, albeit slowly. Even the characters who ostensibly wish to break free of Weatherbury’s traditional, sleepy country life, like Troy, are unable to do so: Troy leaves for America, at this time the literal frontier and the face of modernity, only to return to reclaim the comforts of Weatherbury; Gabriel, too, considers emigrating to California, only to choose to remain in Weatherbury for the rest of his days for fear of upsetting the delicately balanced codependent relationship he has developed with Bathsheba. Weatherbury does not exist in a bubble and it is not as idyllic as the people may want it to be, but it nevertheless works to stave off modernity as best it can.

As a subset of the larger theme of Victorian social norms, gender norms play a key role in the novel. However, although the narrator ostensibly works to reinforce those norms and frequently derides women as a whole, as with Victorian norms, the actual events of the novel seem to undermine traditional gender roles at the same time—and, in fact, Hardy was influenced by John Stuart Mill, who was an early proponent of women’s suffrage.

This is seen most clearly in Bathsheba. Bathsheba works against the typical depiction of women in nearly every way: she is confident, free, educated, independent, accomplished, and highly capable. Even so, she encounters frequent resistance and criticism based solely on her sex. Her decisions are constantly second-guessed by those around her; even Gabriel condescends to her, going so far as to secretly patrol the grounds ahead of her each night, despite the fact that she does so herself. Ahead of Troy’s return, the men debate the extent to which Bathsheba is responsible for Troy’s actions, with some claiming she is getting what she deserves for being independent, while others claim she should not be blamed because she has only “a girl mind” (441-42). No one suggests that perhaps it is Troy, the person who has actually committed the deeds, who might be to blame for his own actions and treatment of Bathsheba.

She is an interesting case, though, because even as her character works against norms, she ostensibly seeks to fit inside them. She is independent and free-willed, but only up to a point—she considers it a point of pride that she has remained perfectly chaste up until Troy, and though she is ready to break things off with him, she allows him to use her jealousy against herself in order to completely reverse course. Even after Troy’s disappearance, it’s questionable whether or not her claim that she must wait seven years is really meant to put Boldwood off, but the narrator tells us that while she believes Troy to still be alive, she believes she belongs to him and resigns herself to her own ruin as a result.