We are introduced to Gabriel Oak—Farmer Oak—with a lengthy description of a man who has just about worn off the “young” adjective and has reached the maturity where passion and intellect have separated, which I take to be about thirty. He dresses unimpressively, and is neither hotly religious nor cold reprobate, but is seen both at church and at the pub. He saw a handsome young woman being driven into town with all her possessions in a wagon; he watched her, unseen, from a hill we was resting on, and saw her check her look in a mirror. He wrote her off as vain.

We next see Farmer Oak in a position worthy of the name, having used his life savings to rent land and buy a flock of sheep. It was winter and he was camping out in a trailer, so as to be nearby if any the ewes gave birth, which one had, and he had taken it inside to warm it by the fire for an hour before returning it to its mother. This having done, he looked at the sky, which he saw indicated 1am (from habituated use he could tell the time by the stars). We also learn that he is a good flute player (flute probably meaning something like a recorder, not a modern concert flute). He saw a light on the plantation on the next hill, and went over to investigate, seeing through a hole in the she the same girl as before, as she and her aunt milked a cow.

The next day, he happened to observe the girl returning on horseback, riding the saddle like a man (instead of side-saddle, which requires a special saddle), and furthermore, when she came to a part where the trees were low, she checked that no one was looking, and lay back on the horse, and then sat up afterwards. Gabriel found her hat that he had overheard her say that she had lost, and going to the plantation ahead of her met her. She was a little surprised that he had found the hat and had seen her riding (and ashamed when she realized that he had seen her antics). That night was cold, and Gabriel kept the vents closed briefly to warm the trailer, but fell asleep before opening them. He woke up confused, wet, with his head in the girl’s lap. She had rescued him from asphyxiation, having tried to wake him up first by throwing the milk she was carrying on him. She seemed upset that he had not been thinking about kissing her hand, and coquettishly replied to his request for her name that he should find it out.

He asked around and discovered that she was Bathsheba Everdene. Then, after trying to think of a way to talk to her, he dressed up in his Sunday best, slicked back his hair, and called on her. She was out, and when he told her aunt that he had come to propose, the aunt replied that she had a lot of men after he. Gabriel expressed disappointment, since he was only ordinary, and his best chance was in being first. Then he left. Shortly afterwards, Bathsheba met him, red from running after him to correct her aunt that, in fact, she had never had a sweetheart. However, while she liked the idea of marrying, she was not ready to commit the rest of her life to being one man’s property, no matter how much Gabriel promised her a piano, etc. (which she quite liked).

Shortly afterwards, Bathsheba moved away from the village, since she was only temporarily staying with her aunt. Gabriel had been training his old sheepdog’s young pup to be a sheepdog, but the dog did not know when to stop. He thought that since a little running the sheep was good, that he should do a lot, and one night he ran the sheep down to the fence which was on the cliff of a chalk quarry. It was old and rotten, then pressure of the sheep broke it, and much of the flock was killed in the fall. We found out in his conversation with Bathsheba the previous chapter that some of the money had been advanced to him, to be paid off by the increase of the flock. By selling the remaining sheep and equipment he was able to break even, being free, but destitute.

Gabriel went to the nearby fair to get hired as a bailiff (a farm manager), but did not succeed, switched to a shepherd’s crook and did not get hired as that, either. However, he slept outside that night and when he woke up, he saw the glow of a fire nearby. He went over to help, and his direction was the main reason that the fire did not spread beyond the one sheaf (which, if it did, would probably have burnt down the barn, as well). As it turned out, it was Bathsheba’s farm; she had taken over the lease just a few days prior from her uncle who had just recently died. Not knowing it was Gabriel, she hired him as a shepherd.

We are introduced to the hirelings of the farm and the general gossip when Gabriel visits the tavern to inquire about lodging. We discover that the bailiff was been caught stealing, and Miss Everdene dismisses him. However, instead of elevating either Henery (as he insisted on spelling it) or Gabriel, both of whom expected it, she decided she would manage the farm herself, which is did fairly effectively. There is also the matter of Fanny Robin, a slight woman-servant of Bathsheba’s uncle, who had disappeared the day Gabriel arrived. Gabriel had seen her on his way to the tavern that night, and she did not seem to be healthy, but she asked him to secrecy. Bathsheba sent people around the area to inquire. We are privileged to see Fanny make her way to the barracks of her beau, a Sergeant Frank Troy, to whom she thinks she is betrothed, but Troy seemed to maybe think otherwise. Still, some time later, we see him arrive after a church service and take up a position for a wedding. The congregation, surprised but up for some gossip, stayed to see what happened. Troy stood ramrod straight for an hour, then left, at which point Fanny arrives saying that she got the wrong church. Troy, deeply embarrassed, tables the idea of marriage for the indefinite future.

A few weeks later, on an impish whim following a conversation with her maid, she capriciously sent a Valentine’s Day card to the middle-aged wealthy bachelor, Farmer Boldwood, with the seal “marry me”. Boldwood had been immune to the advances of women (to their disappointment, as he was the nearest to nobility in the region), but with a beautiful woman asking him to marry him, he, for the first time in his life, fell in love. He proposed, and she apologized for her impulsiveness, but said she did not want to marry him. He would not be put off, and asked that she reconsider. Since she felt responsible for his state, she said that she would.

Now Gabriel, although he knew that she would not love him, he nonetheless expressed his love by a devotion to the good of her affairs. He did much of the work of a bailiff (checking in on the animals at night, making rounds of the farm, etc.) without her knowing. He always answered her honestly, and she trusted him above all others to give him a sound opinion. So after some preliminaries, she asked him his opinion of her response to Boldwood. Bathsheba was the sort of woman that was a bit miffed that he had given up on her (so he said), instead of still having some desire for her. She was even more upset when he told her that she thought her conduct unbecoming of a proper woman, and she ordered him to leave within the week. He said he preferred to leave now, and she accepted.

The next day, just leaving for church, the men ran up and told her that the sheep had gotten into the clover, and some seventy of them were bloated and miserable. Sheep in this condition usually die, unless someone knowledgeable punctures their stomach in just the right place—a little off would kill the sheep. None of the men, nor even Boldwood had either the tool or the proficiency, but they said that Gabriel Oak did. After the second ewe dramatically jumped unnaturally high and fell dead, she had them send for Gabriel with a polite note explaining the situation, to which she added “Do not desert me, Gabriel'. He saved all but a few sheep, she asked him to stay on, and he said yes.

At the communal sheep-shearing meal after they had sheared all the sheep (Gabriel deftly shearing them and the others washing and bringing them), Boldwood and Bathsheba withdrew to the window seat after the meal was finished, and Gabriel began playing his flute. But, one of the songs that evening mentioned a soldier coming, which was later seen as prophetic. For Sergeant Troy was on leave and had come back to the village. Although he viewed women as simply objects to be manipulated, he found Bathsheba quite attractive, and was very forward in wooing her. He took the liberty of kissing her, which made her feel dirty, but also desired, and he had no end of compliments of her beauty that were pushing, if not over, the line of Victorian propriety. Boldwood had made a mistake: he had never told her that she was beautiful.

Nevertheless, Bathsheba was uncomfortable with Troy and resolved to stop seeing him. When she found out that he had gone to Bath, she went so far as to go there to tell him—not the best way to avoid seeing someone, as Hardy wryly comments. The result was that she came back married, as Boldwood found out when he saw Troy after their return and tried to pay him to not pursue Bathsheba and marry Fanny instead. The marriage quickly proved to be a disaster. Troy found that she cramped his style, and she was angry that he had lost £200 of her money (somewhere between 5 and 10% of the value of a harvest), and then wanted more. She gave him £20 but was not happy about it. (He had seen Fanny Robin, and was going to give it to her, but she did not arrive at the appointed place, owing to having died at the workhouse, having spent all her strength getting there.)

After the harvest feast, Troy insisted on having a hard-liquor binge. Bathsheba left angrily, and Gabriel left after the first glass. Gabriel was uncomfortable about the weather, and realized that the weather signs pointed to two storms converging. He went to get people to cover the five sheaves, each which held £500 - £750 of grain. He found all the men passed out on the floor of the barn; the men were only used to ale, and Troy had intended on getting drunk. He managed to get the hardest drinker of them to come to long enough to tell him where the coverings were, but the rest were completely insensible. He only had coverings for three, which he covered. Then Bathsheba came out, concerned that Troy had made no provision for the grain, and Gabriel had her help him make thatch coverings. (A few days later, Gabriel talked with Boldwood, who was so despondent that Bathsheba had rejected him that he paid no attention to his farm, and his entire harvest was ruined.)

The village was notified that Fanny Robin had died, and Bathsheba directed that she be buried at her expense. The man sent to pick up her body spent the day drinking with the other men, and so Gabriel Oak ended up doing it, but came too late to the graveyard, and the parson was leaving and told him to come back the next day. So Gabriel left the coffin in Bathsheba’s house. Bathsheba and Troy quarreled about Fanny, and Troy said that he wished he had married her, and left. Bathsheba looked in the coffin and saw that Fanny was pregnant, and, despondent, sequestered herself in the attic with her maid. The next day Troy went and spent the £20 on a lavish grave stone for Fanny, and flowers, which he planted by her grave. Then he walked out of the village, until he ended up at the sea. He went swimming, and was swept out to sea, but rescued by some sailors just before dusk made him invisible, some distance from where he started. His abandoned clothes and known current led to him being reported back to the village as dead.

It required seven years before she would officially be free, if Troy came back. Both Bathsheba and Boldwood hired Gabrial; Bathsheba for a flat fee, but Gabriel negotiated partial ownership with Boldwood depending on how well the farm did. Boldwood renewed his suite, and Bathsheba, feeling like her leading him on with the Valentine and then rejecting him made her responsible for his emotional distress, agreed to give him an answer in December about whether she would marry him after the seven years were up. For his part, Troy was unsure he wanted to come back, since he presumed that, in his absence, Bathsheba would lose the lease on the farm, and if he came back he would be responsible for funding her welfare. He became an actor with a circus troupe, and found himself at the nearby fair that autumn. He managed to avoid being recognized during the first performance with a disguise and not saying anything, but he knew that Bathsheba’s thieving former bailiff recognized him the second performance.

Boldwood hosted his first-ever Christmas party, where he was planning to ask Bathsheba for her answer. She, for her part, felt that honor required her to accept his proposal. A few of Bathsheba’s men arrived, but stayed outside discussing the rumors that Troy had returned. Troy, Gabriel, and Bathsheba arrived all about the same time. Boldwood, seeing Troy, got his gun from the mantelpiece and shot Troy. Bathsheba asked Gabriel to get the doctor, but Troy was dead long before the doctor arrived. Boldwood walked down to the police station and gave himself up. At the assizes he was sentenced to death. However, some men of his village petitioned the Queen that he was under emotional distress and did not deserve the death penalty. At the last moment before his execution, word came that his sentence had been commuted to imprisonment.

Gabriel gave his notice that he was going to spend full-time as bailiff on Boldwood’s lease. Bathsheba, who had not done any farm management for quite some time, was distraught, plus, she realized that he was her most faithful friend. She went to him personally and pleaded with him, and eventually suggested that she loved him. The discovered that they both loved each other, and soon had a quiet wedding. Gabriel had not yet earned enough to take over the lease, so they planned to live at her place and he would manage both farms. They returned with joy to the house and their work.

Far from the Madding Crowd was recommended to me as a description of life in all four seasons. I had expected something more like Jane Austen with balls in London and whatnot, but I guess this is the Romantic era, so instead I was treated to pre-modern English country farming, which was a nice change. Divorced as I am from the production of food, I think I actually connect better with Jane Austen’s imperiled nobility who also live a life divorced from food production, but it is a nice backdrop, and I felt like I have a little better idea of how pre-modern farming and village life worked in England. It feels like it is a little simplified, and I doubt that sheep lying on the ground dying of bloat leap high into the air with their last breath, but it does seem like Hardy has some firsthand knowledge of sheep and harvests.

This is sort of a counterpoint to Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice explore some of the female tensions of wanting to marry for love, but also someone of good quality, and someone who is available, while here Hardy illustrates the main male responses to women. Gabriel is the man who is can continue loving after rejection, while Boldwood fantasizes and fetishes Bathsheba and is unable to get over her. In both cases, soldiers just want a short-term fling, and when one gets trapped in wedlock out of social expectations, it is not a fun place to be.

This is not a complicated novel. The plot happens just as you expect: Gabriel gets the girl after she finally realizes his value, and Boldwood kills Troy. I did not expect the intervening marriage, although perhaps my lack of imagination in ways marriages could end quickly in a book instead of continuing for fifty years is responsible for that. The strength of the book is in the rich description of pastoral life, in involving the villagers to move plot points while at the same time fleshing out their personalities, and in the psychological commentary. Hardy’s commentary on women, of whom Bathsheba is a template, and of the various kinds of men is insightful and witty. After we see Sergeant Troy being flagrantly forward and profligate in his praise, Hardy observes that Boldwood had not told Bathsheba that he thought she was beautiful (being consumed with himself). He observes that Gabriel was the sort whose exterior was inconsistent with his interior value. My favorite is in chapter five, of Boldwood, “It may be observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.”

While perhaps not as elegant as Austen, Hardy has written a comparably good work. It is well-written, with vivid characters and background activities. Judging from the introduction of the edition I read, he succeeded so well that he had to inform readers that there was no area of Victorian England called Wessex, and that he had imported that name from Anglo-Saxon times as it was unused in the present. Demonstrably, a 100-year book.