Far From The Madding Crowd

It is June, and sheep-shearing season has begun. The men of the village are hard at work in the great barn—six shearers, with Gabriel serving as the supervisor and Cain as his assistant. The narrator ruminates on the timelessness of places like Weatherbury, how in “these Wessex nooks the busy outsider’s ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity” (178).

Bathsheba is present for the shearing, largely to ensure all goes smoothly. She talks to Gabriel as he works; Gabriel doesn’t do much talking but is happy merely to be on the receiving end of her conversation. However, after some time, Boldwood arrives and crosses over to Bathsheba, and her attention turns to him. Gabriel observes, though he cannot hear, their conversation.

After some time talking, Bathsheba disappears, then reappears in her riding attire and horse. Gabriel, distracted, accidentally cuts one of the sheep, for which Bathsheba chastises him, despite being aware that she was the cause of the mistake. She departs with Boldwood.

Following her departure, the workers speculate about how long it will be before they are married. They gossip about what has thus far happened, and Henery even suggests that Boldwood has already kissed Bathsheba, which Gabriel flatly denies, though they men don’t fully trust or believe him.

That evening, at the shearing-supper, Bathsheba is unusually excited and requests a seat be left vacant at the other end of the table, asking Gabriel to fill the seat for a time until the seat can be filled by its proper owner. Boldwood then arrives, the seat evidently being reserved for him. After they eat, the men take turns singing songs.

After dusk, Gabriel notices that Boldwood has withdrawn into another room, which is currently being set up by Liddy. Bathsheba assents to singing “The Banks of Allan Water” in return, but only if Gabriel plays along with his flute; Boldwood joins in and sings, as well. Afterwards, Bathsheba wishes them all good night, then withdraws into the back room with Boldwood.

After following the dinner guests out, the narrative returns to Bathsheba and Boldwood. Bathsheba tells Boldwood that she will try to love him but tells him to give her five or six weeks to continue to think about it rather than decide right then. Boldwood accepts, then bids her good night. 

Because Bathsheba has no bailiff, she must walk the grounds on her own each night (though she doesn’t realize that Gabriel does the same shortly before her each night). Though her route is usually quiet and solitary, at one point this night, she encounters an unseen traveler. As the traveler tries to get by her, he accidentally gets snagged and tangled in her dress; when Bathsheba lights a lantern to aid in freeing themselves, she sees that the man is a soldier. As they work to get untangled, the man flirts with her, calling her beautiful. Bathsheba shies away from his advances, but he continues to flirt, eventually revealing himself as Sergeant Troy, who is from the area. She finally bids him good night and departs.

Once she returns, she immediately asks Liddy about Troy. Liddy reveals that Troy came from a privileged background and was educated but gave it all up to become a soldier. As she prepares for sleep, she thinks about Troy, and the narrator notes that “[it] was a fatal omission of Boldwood’s that he had never once told her she was beautiful” (201). 

The narrator describes the person of Sergeant Troy, “a man to whom memories were an incumbrance”: “With him the past was yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after” (203). He is a practiced liar who is “moderately truthful towards men” but never toward women (204). However, although Troy is not considered a good man, “[he] never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from the ugly” and, thus, was not overtly disliked, and was often even considered charming (204). However, due to his propensity to talk “unceasingly,” “[he] could in this way be one thing and seem another: for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the husband to look at the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe” (205).

During haymaking season, Troy shows up to Bathsheba’s farm unexpectedly and free of charge, claiming to have volunteered his time to her uncle, and is thus doing the same for her. He takes some time to flirt with her; though she acts disinterested, and even at times offended, he continues, saying that he “would rather have curses from [her] than kisses from any other woman” (208). His flattery begins to break through her protestations.

Toward the end of their conversation, he insists on giving her a gift: a gold watch engraved with his family crest and motto. This distresses her, but he insists that she keep it. Then he begins to backpedal, claiming that he didn’t intend for her to take it, but now wishes that she would; by the end of the conversation, he has taken the watch back and returned to the fields to continue working. 

Because the rest of the workers are working in the hayfields, Bathsheba must work to hive the bees herself. As she is about to begin her task, Troy arrives, insisting that she cannot and should not attempt to hive the bees herself. Once dressed in her own protective garments, her annoyance changes to laughter.

Troy comments that holding the hive up is worse than a week of sword exercises. Bathsheba tells him she has never seen sword exercises; Troy offers to show her, and she accepts, but only with a real sword, not with the walking stick he currently carries as a substitute. They agree to meet at a later point; she initially says she’ll bring Liddy, but when Troy looks hurt, she says she’ll come alone, instead.

At eight in the evening, Bathsheba meets Troy in a secluded spot near her farm. Troy first explains the exercises and movements to her, then tests her with one quick movement to see how she’ll react, then asks if she’s ready for the performance, which will involve the sword coming very close to her. She asks if the tip is very sharp; he lies and tells her no, then begins the performance, by which she is quite taken. He kills a caterpillar that had been resting on her bosom, which reveals his lie about the sharpness of the sword; she wonders at the fact that she had actually been in danger but is not upset with him. He takes a lock of hair, which had been cut during the show, tells her he must depart, and the two kiss.

Bathsheba has fallen in love with Troy. However, in contrast with her courtship with Boldwood, she keeps her feelings about Troy a secret, owing to “the difference between love and respect” (228). Nonetheless, Gabriel recognizes the infatuation in her and resolves to advise her away from Troy and toward Boldwood, whom he feels she has treated unfairly.

Gabriel constructs an excuse to meet her while walking one evening to raise her courtship with Boldwood. Bathsheba once again denies—truthfully—that she has consented to marriage with Boldwood and tells Gabriel that she intends to reject him outright soon enough.

Gabriel tries to raise the prospect of Troy naturally, but as he is unable to do so, advises her bluntly against her relationship with Troy, arguing that the fact that he is well-educated, yet has chosen to be a soldier, is “a proof of his worth. It show’s his course to be down’ard” (230). Bathsheba defends Troy passionately, claiming that “He is as good as anybody in this parish,” and that he is churchgoing and God-fearing, to boot (231). Gabriel questions this, as no one sees him at services, which Bathsheba explains by claiming that he sneaks in privately through an old tower door and sits in the back.

They continue to argue, and Bathsheba once again angrily fires Gabriel. Gabriel dismisses her, given that she has tried before, then chastises her for condescending to him when not long ago he was in her position himself. Instead, then, she asks him to leave her alone not as a mistress, but as a woman; he assents, then lets her go ahead a while. Before heading home, however, he stops by the church and affirms that Troy’s story of coming into church through the old tower is a lie—the necessary door is covered with ivy and has not been open in some time.

Back at home, Bathsheba writes to Boldwood to decline his offer of marriage. When she brings the letter to ask one of her servants to deliver it, she overhears them talking about herself and Troy, and not positively. Bathsheba denies there being anything between them, claiming that she hates him. Yet, when Maryann calls him a wild scamp in an attempt to agree with her, Bathsheba chastises her for calling him that and tells the three of them that if any of them speaks ill of Troy, they will be fired immediately.

Alone with Liddy, she reveals that there is something between her and Troy. She asks Liddy to swear Troy is not a “fast man;” Liddy is confused, though, because to her knowledge, he is. Unable to keep up with Bathsheba’s conflicting whims and edicts, Liddy begins to cry. Bathsheba swears her to secrecy; Liddy promises it, but distraught, tells her that she intends to resign at the end of harvest. Bathsheba begs her to stay, and the two make up.