1.

Troy tells Bathsheba that her beauty may do more harm

than good in the world. Because a hundred men will love her for her beauty, and because only one can marry her, the others will be ruined. Is Troy correct in essence? Bathshebas guilt over Boldwood is strong, and she feels pangs even over Oaks love. To what degree is she culpable for what happens to the men who love her? Some readers may agree with Troy that Bathsheba, by merely being beautiful, harms the men around her. But most will see this claim as a manipulative speech aimed, whether romantically or reprehensibly, at persuading Bathsheba to favor Troy. But insofar as Troy is correct about the influence of Bathshebas beauty, the question is in fact who is responsible for a man who drinks, mopes, or stalks her. Boldwood does indeed wreck his life for love of Bathsheba, whose beauty, once he finally notices it, so dazzles him. She feels deeply to blame, yet she explains herself maturely, accepts the guilt for sending the valentine, apologizes sincerely, and declares herself not open to his proposal. It seems harsh to call her responsible for Boldwoods descent into obsession. Indeed, he tells Oak that she made no promises and is not to blame for Boldwoods shattered state. This suggests that his frequent reminders that she owes him marriage for having suggested the possibility by sending the valentine are on a par with Troys flirtatious banter: manipulative and selfish. Oak, by contrast, though he is also a disappointed suitor, stoops to none of these tricks. Nor does he

let his life go to ruin over Bathsheba. It seems clear, then, that Bathshebas sense of culpability is overwrought. 2. Many of Hardys novels concern the inescapable power of

fate, chance, or destiny over individuals lives. List three instances in which fate, rather than a characters intent or choice, drives the plot. In the end, what is more responsible for the tragedies that occurfate, or peoples actions?

Most of the events that happen in the novel, particularly those that drive the important plot points, occur because a character chose to do, or not to do, something. Fanny chose to walk to the garrison to find Troy; Troy chose to walk away from her in disgust outside the church. Bathsheba chose to drive all night to Bath, ostensibly to warn Troy about Boldwoods threats but really to see him again, and she chose to marry him there, secretly. The list of the good and not-so-good choices in the novel is long, and characters, Bathsheba in particular, often act in full knowledge that others have reasons to fear the results of their actions.

However, at a few points, fate intervenes, usually with negative results. For instance, Fannys confusion of All Souls and All Saints is an act of fate, as is Troys leaving the church just as Fanny finally arrives. Certainly, the way in which Bathsheba and Troy meet, when her dress snags on the path and he stops to untangle it from his spur, of all things, seems fateful. And Troy

and Bathsheba happen to be on the road when Fanny, weak to death and heavily pregnant, passes them, setting the stage for the terrible revelations. Other plot points, too, seem governed by fate.

The question, then, is whether the power of fate overwhelms the characters. Some readers might agree to this premise. However, following each of the coincidences, characters must respond. Bathsheba does not have to seek out Troys company again; Troy certainly did not have to scorn poor Fanny in the churchyard and leave her, pregnant with his child. In fact, it could be argued that fates outcome is positive as often as it is negative. Had Bathshebas sheep not wandered into the early clover and fallen ill, she might have had no reason to beg Oak to return, for example. It seems that fate intervenes, but then characters must respond to that intervention.

3.

What is the role of the rustics in the novel? Hardy depicts

the villagers as dwelling in an old country that is somewhat sanitized. Literary critics have pointed out that no one is hungry in Weatherbury or dissatisfied with the hard work that is the lot of the laborers. Hardy presents the rustics in this way for a particular reason. What does Hardy accomplish in his depiction of the rustics? For readers in his time, Hardy provided a comforting, nostalgic view of old country Englandvery much like a bucolic story set on a Kansas farm

would be for American readers. Erased are the conflicts inherent in a rapidly industrializing, urbanizing country; present are the good old days, whether these actually existed at any time. In addition, the villagers are presented humorously; they provide comic relief. Whether presented with Joseph Poorgrasss drunken double-vision or Henery Frays dour pronouncements, readers are intended to chuckle over the villagers. They are sometimes presented as inept; Oak must come in and salvage their errors. Hardy avoids the temptation to treat the rustics as mere stereotypes, however. Though they are only minor characters, they develop. For example, at first they are deeply suspicious of Bathshebas intent to run the farm herself, predicting that they will all be ruined. Over time, however, they come to respect Bathshebas abilities and become her fierce defendersthis despite the unconventional role she has taken up, for a woman at that time and place. They are also capable of deep pity for Fanny and of true friendship for Oak, the newcomer that they easily could have resented. They provide a chorus, to take the Greek dramatic term, that comments on the doings of the major characters, providing readers with extra insight into the main characters and the novels themes. 4. In Chapter 22, Hardy writes a long and loving description of

the great barn on Bathshebas farm. Discuss two questions that the passage suggests: First, to what does Hardy compare the barn? Second, what does this passage suggest about the importance of the continuity between past and present?

Readers may find this type of description old-fashioned; its not as common for todays writers to spend many paragraphs describing a place in such detail. It may be easier for readers to think like a movie director instead, allowing time for the cameras to linger on a building in order to set a mood. The description of the barn does set a mood, both of reverence and of continuity. The barn is spacious, like the nave and chancel of a church, and has buttresses and pointed stone arches. Its floors are as rich in hue as the state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion, suggesting that it is at the spiritual and economic heart of the community. The parts of the barn, and the people in it, contribute to a harmony that permeates the building. Throughout the passage, moreover, the narrator speaks of how the barn, which is four hundred years old (in the time of the novel) and still functioning as it ever did, connects past and present. It embodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time so that the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Looking at it, the villagers feel grateful, proud, and full of the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up. Perhaps Hardy presents this description to his urban readers, living in fast-moving, industrialized cities, as a nostalgic, lovely image of an England that still existed, a little way out in the country. 5. Interspersed throughout the novel are poetic descriptions of

the natural world, often as it is perceived by Gabriel Oak, who is remarkably attuned to nature. How is the natural world

characterized in these descriptionsas friend to humans or their enemy, as beautiful or terrible? Why does the narrator revel in these descriptive passages, at the risk of interrupting the plots motion? Nature is all of these thingsfriend, enemy, beautiful inspirer, terrifying threatduring the course of the novel. In Chapter 2, the narrator describes a night sky so vast, so pierced by stars, that to lie on ones back and gaze into it is to experience the roll of the world eastward as almost a palpable movement. After such a sight, it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame. The writer who describes the night sky in this way has no doubt experienced these impressions, and readers can easily believe that something of Hardy is in Gabriel Oaks attuned perceptions of nature. From the smallthe behavior of a frog that bespeaks a coming stormto the massivethe lightning bolts dancing like skeletons in airnature is instructive to those who can read it and punishing to those who ignore it. Thus, Oak reads the signs and acts to save the crops, while Boldwood, wrapped up in his fantasies, disregards the signs and loses his crops. Readers may argue that Hardy lingers of the descriptions of the natural world because in these he has the opportunity to write poeticallyhe was, after all, a poet firstand because he himself had a deep appreciation for nature, having grown up in the country. Yet more is going on that personal preference. Like fate, nature has a hand in human existence, one that is

largely beyond the control of tiny human frames. Natural events give the characters the opportunity to act, to choose, to respondor to passively accept the hand nature deals them, as Troy does when he walks away from Fannys flooded grave. Bathsheba and Oak do not walk away. They act to repair the grave; they prepare for the next rain by having the drainage repaired. How the characters respond to nature thus provides a criterion by which to understand and judge them.

theme analysis The Importance of Place Hardy called the fictional adaptation of the English old country that is the primary setting of his novels Wessex and described it as a partly real, party dream country. Connection to ones place, ones land and community, matters greatly in this and other Hardy novels. Readers can pay attention to a characters sense of place and connect it to the plot outcome for that character. Generally, in Far from the Madding Crowd, the closer the connection to place, the better the character fares. Consider the characters who suffer greatly in the novel. Despite her dalliance with Troy and her pregnancy, Fanny has in Weatherbury a true home, a community and sense of place. But when she leaves Weatherbury to find Troy and ask him to fulfill his promise to marry her, a promise, readers must think, that he made in order to persuade her to sleep with him, that her downward spiral begins. She has no place in the military

garrison or in the town that houses it; in fact, its her very lack of belonging to this community that causes her to arrive at the wrong church, missing her wedding and inviting Troys scorn. Fanny is a vagrant thereafter, wandering from place to place and finally collapsing in the workhouse at Casterbridge. Her choice to uproot her life is her undoing, as is clear by the compassion and pity the villagers and farmers in Weatherbury feel for her and in their care to bring her body home for burial. Troy, too, is a wanderer by choice; he, too, has little sense of place. Its unavoidable that a military man will travel from garrison to garrison, but even after Troy leaves the military, he cannot settle on Bathshebas farm. One day, hes in a coastal town to bet on races; another, hes at market in Casterbridgenot to do business, but to idle time away. Even in Weatherbury hes antsy; he finds the farmhouse oppressive and wants to remodel; he finds the farm work boring and would rather drink. Its interesting that Bathsheba first meets Troy on a path used by passersby, away from her familys farm, and that she marries him in Bath, a city unfamiliar to her. He represents an uprootedness from place and community, a state in which he thrives but in which Bathsheba suffers. Troys wanderings take him all the way to America and back; his return, at last, to Weatherbury is not motivated by homesickness but by the thought of easy lodging, good food, and Bathshebas beauty. Its fitting, in an ironic way, that Troy, after his long roving, is buried right back where he started, in the village he rejected.

Boldwood, readers might think, has a strong sense of place. Yet a little contemplation reveals that, while he does stay close to his land, he loses his connection to it in his obsession with Bathsheba; further, Boldwood is by choice an isolated man whom the villagers hardly know. He could have a confidante in Oak but keeps Oak at arms length, as a laborer, not a friend. No one else even attempts to approach Boldwood, who seems to the villagers almost aristocratic in his removal from them. Boldwoods world, as he descends into his passion for Bathsheba, shrinksfrom the village, to the farm and then the farm house, and finally to the little closet of his bedroom, where he stores his fantasy future with Mrs. Boldwood. Without the corrective that companions would provide, he indulges his obsession to the ruin of his crops, Bathsheba, Troy, and his own life. Appropriately, his murderous outburst removes him entirely and permanently from the community and place that might have sustained him. By contrast, Oak and Bathsheba are deeply rooted in their village, on their farm, and in their community. Readers may have found amusing the villagers reception of Oak, the newcomer, in the malthouse. However, careful attention reveals how eager all the characters involved are to confirm community and to draw the newcomer in. They offer Oak drink and food, apologizing for its rustic nature; he partakes gratefully, declining to comment on the gritty cheese and communal tankard. Then connections between the villagers and Oaks grandparents and parents are examined proof that Oak is already home. Gradually, as they come to know Oak, the

villagers respect and befriend him; one, Jan Coggan, becomes Oaks close friend and confidante. Oak is at home and happy to work the fields and herds; the one time that he does storm out of Weatherbury, he is eager for an excuse to come back. Bathsheba, too, has deep roots in the village. The farm was her uncles; she loves the place and wants not only to see it flourish but also to be one of the prime reasons for its success. She is willing to defend the farm, even at risk to her life. Though she is a major employer in town, she is nevertheless close to Liddy and sympathetic to how her farm and her behavior affect the laborers well-being. As mentioned above, the threats to Bathshebas happiness come from outside the community, and she makes her gravest errors when away from the community, at Bath or on the road to and from Casterbridge. Like the unfortunate, uprooted Troy and Fanny, Oak and Bathsheba end the novel in Weatherbury, drinking tea in the farm house, which is itself a symbol of the unchanging countryside and community that sustains the characters, while outside, the villagersthe communitycomment approvingly on their union. The Importance of Perspective In a notebook Hardy kept in 1878, he explained that A Plot, or Tragedy, should arise from the gradual closing in of a situation that comes of ordinary human passions, prejudices, and ambitions, by reason of the characters taking no trouble to ward off the disastrous events produced by the said passions, prejudices, and ambitions. Throughout Far from the

Madding Crowd, readers encounter characters who lack the perspective needed to prevent disastrous events. Some characters lack this perspective because of youth and immaturity; others thrust it away purposefully. The importance of perspective is particularly revealed in the contrasts among the three suitors for Bathshebas love. Troy, for instance, precipitates disaster for manyFanny and her baby, Bathsheba, Boldwoodbecause he refuses to adopt perspective. Troy lives utterly in the present. He is a man to whom memories were an encumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. He takes his pleasures where and when he can and thinks little of consequences. Because of this lack of perspective, Fanny gets pregnant, and because he cant wait on her to correct a simple mistake, she remains unmarrieda disaster indeed, in her culture. Undeterred by these events, Troy tempts Bathsheba to come, unaccompanied, to his room for a tryst; when she finds him at Bath, he has already moved on to the temptation du jour. Even when Troy does experience regret and guiltemotions that arise from perceiving how past actions have affected the presenthe cannot sustain them. After impulsively buying Fannys tombstone and adorning her grave, he wakes to the storms damage and finds that the merest opposition had disheartened him. He simply walks away, out of his past and present, toward a less encumbered life. Even when he returns to Bathsheba, Troy shows a disturbing disjunction with the past. He returns as if nothing has ever happened to change his claim on herand legally, of course, he is correct.

He is her master. Yet their continuing together is an untenable thought to her and to Boldwood, of whom Troy knows enough to judge, if he could be make to take the trouble, a threat. Boldwood is another character who lacks perspective, but his is a different kind of lack. Boldwood understands the past and the future quite well; he uses the past to force the future he wants, and hes willing to wait for that future. Boldwoods mistake is to lose sight of import. His fixation on the errant valentine is extreme. Oaks words of caution, Bathshebas protestations, his own laborers fearsnone of these alerts Boldwood to the dangerously obsessive quality of his love for Bathsheba. He places such heavy value on Bathshebas prankone that Libby egged her on to carry out in the first placethat it justifies his hounding and torturing her. His lack of perspective arises largely from extreme self-centeredness. Even when Bathsheba begs and pleads for him to let her be, he presses her for promises till she is in tears. Only the blast of the gun with which he kills Troy seems to bring Boldwood to his senses; only when Troy dies does he find the perspective that reveals the destructive nature of his passions. To his credit, he drops his suit immediately and offers himself up for arrest and punishment. Bathsheba, throughout the novel, turns to the one suitor who does have perspective, Gabriel Oak. Oak has both an appreciation for how actions and consequences are unavoidably intertwined but also a flexibility that allows him to adapt to changing circumstances. Disasters, such as the loss of his

sheep or Bathshebas rejection of his proposal, befall him. Successes, as with his work on the two farms and his position of leadership among the workers, attend him. He does not take either kind of result too much to heart, and he makes allowances for the weaknesses of the people around him, knowing that he is not flawless (readers may recall that he nearly died in the shepherds hut and had to be rescued by his dog and by Bathsheba). Bathsheba soon learns that when she needs advice, Oak has it. When she refuses his advice, as on the matter of Troys character, she regrets the results. Bathsheba longs to talk with Oak about Boldwood but hesitates to do so because of her own culpability and because she knows Oak still loves her. More than once, she walks to his house but cant bring herself to go in. At every crisis, she seeks Oak outor would if she could bring herself to do so. As she sits by the coffin, she thinks, What a way Oak had . . . of enduring things. Neither she nor Boldwood have been able to learn the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gavethat among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in their midst and was not racked by incertitude, as Bathsheba is. Oak, then, models the perspective that is necessary for any person who does not wish his or her passions, prejudices, and ambitions to lead to tragic ends. Fittingly, he is the successful suitor, marrying a battered but still

beautiful Bathsheba as her friend and partner more than as her possessor, as Troy was and as Boldwood hoped to be.

Metaphor Analysis

The Two Watches Over the course of the novel, readers learn that Gabriel Oak and Frank Troy each owns a watch. These watches become metaphors for the men who own them. Oaks watch, a small silver clock, is quite old and had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. Oak tries to deal with this defect by thumps and shakes, but largely he relies on the natural world as a baseline, often comparing the watchs time to observations of the sun and stars and to neighbors clocks. In addition, this watch is hard to pull out; to consult it, Oak has to haul it out of its pocket like a bucket from a well. Troys watch, in contrast, is heavy and made of gold, an unusually good one for a man like me to possess, he tells Bathsheba. Unlike Oaks watch, this watch is freighted with the past, a gift from its owner, an earl, to Troys father. It is engraved with a five-point crown and the motto Love yields to circumstance, and it has, Troy solemnly says, regulated imperial interests in its timethe stately ceremonial, the courtly assignation, pompous travels, and lordly sleeps. It belongs to a world that Troy enviously wishes he could inhabit by birthright.

These watches suggest much about their owners. Oaks, homely and defective, nevertheless is useful. Its defects, in fact, foster the two communitiesnature and neighborsthat cause Oak to grow into the wise, compassionate man he becomes. Though imperfect, the watch matters to Oak, who consults it despite its unreliabilityrather like the unreliability of the villagers or of Bathsheba herself, flawed people yet, in Oaks eyes, valuable. Troys watch also fits his character and desires. Like him, it is flashy and seductive to the eye, and its motto describes well his manipulations of Fanny and Bathsheba. It represents the society to which he compares the people in his own sphere, finding them lacking. And its method of acquisitionan inheritance, a gift, unearned and undeserved fits perfectly with Troys preferred modus operandi. He does not care for work; he feels that he deserves wealth, leisure, and beauty because of who he is. When Bathsheba begins to fall for Troy, the narrator comments that Troys deformities lay deep down from a womans vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with the homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine. Troy is like his watchall flash and prettiness and ease, pompous travels, and lordly sleeps. Oak and his watch are alike, both like the bucket that must be dropped deep and drawn laboriously from the well before the user experiences its benefits. Name Symbolism

While readers must be cautious about over-interpreting characters names, certain names in Far from the Madding Crowd suggest shades of meaning. Gabriel Oak, for example, shares his last name with a tree associated with strength, constancy, and prosperity. It suggests the value that Bathsheba takes so long to see but that others recognize quickly in Oaks capable, strong personality. Oak endures lifes storms and, though they buffet him, emerges unbroken, unlike Boldwood and Bathsheba, who both wreck themselves on misfortune. Bathsheba, too, has a name fraught with history. The Biblical figure of Bathsheba was a lovely woman whom King David saw bathing (the story is found in 2 Samuel 11 and 12). Her beauty inflamed the king, who had her brought to his room and slept with her despite the fact that she was married; her husband, Uriah, was at war. When she found herself pregnant, David calls Uriah home from the front to give him a report, and then tells him to visit his wife before returning to the front, assuming that Uriah will sleep with his wife. Thus the timing of the childs birth would not be suspicious. But Uriah refused to shirk his duties. So David had Uriah moved to the front lines and exposed, where he, predictably, died in battle; then the king took Bathsheba as one of his wives. The child died, and David, confronted by the prophet Nathan about his crimes, suffered great grief. Thus when Hardys readers, who generally had extensive Biblical knowledge, read that the vain and beautiful young woman whom Oak sees as she admires her image in her mirror is named Bathsheba, they would

have recognized the allusion and wondered what ill effects Bathshebas beauty might bring about. Indeed, Boldwood is destroyed by his obsessive desire to obtain Bathsheba, and Troy claims that he would have married Fanny had not Satan . . . tempted me with that face of yours. Readers may also recall that Bathshebas father had her mother, also a beautiful woman, pretend not to be married to him so that he could enjoy an illicit desire for her. Readers may wonder what possessed such a man to name his daughter Bathsheba. Yet another, happier parallel between the Biblical character and Bathsheba exists: Both survive grief and death to enjoy life again. Sheep, Bees, and Other Animals Throughout the novel, the animals that inhabit the farms, and the characters interactions with the animals, provide parallel views into the relationships among characters and commentary about human behavior. Consider a few examples: The younger dog, whose adherence to the rules of herding is not tempered by the judgment experience brings, drives the herd to its death. The dogs overzealous behavior, which results in its own destruction, is like that of people who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent behavior in a world made up so largely of compromise. As the novel develops, readers watch as two very different characters do the same. Boldwood cannot be made to see that basing his pursuit of Bathsheba on a silly prank, which she deeply regrets, endangers them both. His obsessive herding of Bathsheba (who, incidentally, is compared to a stolen lamb in the Biblical story) drives them

both toward destruction. Troy, too, cannot learn a new behavior set to replace the one that resulted in a pregnant fiance, a destroyed military career, a wrecked household economy, and a grieving wife. Till the moment of his death, he is still fixated on getting present pleasure for as little cost to himself as possible. The bees, which make a brief appearance, and the sheep, which are of much concern throughout the novel, are both creatures hived or herded for the benefit of people. Both, at times, stand in for the woman who is desired by three men and reveal something of her problems. Troy hives her as he does the bees, driving her into compromising situations, as he likely did Fanny in her turn, and then turning her vanity and her sense of right behavior against her in order to capture her. Boldwood, as has been mentioned, inflates Bathshebas guilt over a trifle in order to cut off her excuses for not marrying him, one by one, and herd her into his keeping. Only Oak, whose astute knowledge of and careful care for the sheep make him the bailiff everyone wants to hire, also has the knowledge of and love for Bathsheba to be her companion-lover. He reveals his merit in the care of her sheep and her land, but while other characters have no difficulty seeing this, it eludes Bathsheba till the end of the novel. Marriage as Prison Even in this early novel, Hardy began to express doubts about the state of marriage. Although he was at the time of composition preparing to enter his first marriage, which was a happy union for a time, he felt strongly the

limitations marriage brought to many women in his culture. Later novels deal more extensively with this issue and brought him much censure from cultural gatekeepers, but even in this novel, which ends in a happy marriage of friends, there are hints that marriage can be a prison. Readers see these hints in Bathshebas reluctance to marry and in her experience of marriage. When Gabriel first proposes to Bathsheba, she says that while being courted and being a bride might be nice, being a wife is another matter: I hate to be thought mens property in that way, she declares, and there would be no escape from a husbandhed always be there. It takes very little time, after her marriage to Troy, to see that she is no longer mistress of the farm. At the harvest feast, not only does Troy get the men drunk though she begs him not to, but he peremptorily sends her away; and she has no control over her economy, which he is happy to gamble away. When she discovers his relationship to Fanny, the imagery of imprisonment is strong. She was conquered . . . . She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard. She had been proud that her waist had never been encircled by a lovers arm in a gesture of possession; now she is bound to a man who loves ease and pleasure, not her. The narrator comments that Bathsheba instinctively adored Diana, goddess of virginity. When, after Troy is presumed dead, Boldwood forces Bathshebas promise of marriage from her, he, too, begins to build the prison he hopes will hold her. It is a gilded cage, baited with beautiful jewelry and clothing but just as deadly to her, built as it is on the question of what she owes Boldwood because of

his overreaction to a childish lapse in judgment. Fittingly, since the novel is a pastoral romance, Boldwood at last realizes the horror of his behavior and imprisons himself after, whether intentionally or merely out of despair, he kills Troy, freeing Bathsheba from the marriage into which Troys manipulations and her own vanity trapped her

NEXT: conclusion which Hardy expresses in "Hap": there is neither purpose nor significance in his suffering or struggling. The gods or the Immanent Will or the "purblind doomsters" of the universe have no persona1 enmity towards the Judes of Hardy's world: "These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown/ Blisses about [his] pilgrimage as pain" ("Hap"] . Yet despite the acknowledgement of futility which concludes their struggles, the protagonists who engage in the contest with Fate, who believe their desires and their strengths to be worthy fodder for the gods, are those who b reader. Their lost potential and unfulfilled intention distinguish them rom the "successful" characters of the "minor" works . Chaptew 1 - Far From the Madding Crowd Far From tne Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy's first

"major" work, explores Hardy's philosophy of "indifferentism." As characters are acted upon by Fate or circumstance, tneir own perceptions of the experience dictate their responses. The actual events which affect the characters are of l2sser importance than rhe characters' belief in their significance. A ~rotagonist who sees himself in the larqer framework of Fate has a greater power to engage the readers' interest, because he actioely struggles with Fate, and he asserts that his struggle has both meaning and purpose. The aetachment of Hardy's narrative voice as it occasionally interjects to remina the reader of the distance Detween nimself and the characters is present here, as in al1 Hardy's work, and the various tragic instances are therefore viewed from a remove. The irony with which Hardy invests his narratorts cornments establishes him as an impersonal observer of human foibles, rather than an involved coconspirator. In addition, as most critics agree, the rnany main characters are zlmost equally weighted in importance, so

that the readerts sympathy shifts along with the shifting view-points. Although aathsheba and Gabriel Oak are plalnly the protagonists of the text, their thoughts and feelings are rarely expressed in any greter depth than those of Boldwood and Troy, for example. In addition the main characters fa11 into two distinct types: those who have an anthropocentric or even egocentric view of Fate and those who adopt an attitude of stoic indifference to their circumstances. The elements of Fate, if they may be called such in - Far From the Madding Crowd, are primarily the result of chance or coincidence. The larger representatives of Fate are actually natural forces, such as weather and animal behaviour, which rnay indicate Hardy's belief in the unknowing oppositicii of Nature to the puny will of man. Gabriel ak may be seen as a natural man who adjusts his will to the forces of Mature to the point where he seems to reconcile himself with it, thereby securing his triumph. Unlike some of Hardy's later works, Far From the Madding Crowd does not present the rsader with the

conscious articulation of the characters' perception of Fate; instead the narrator's asides provide the only insight into these perceptions. The actions of the characters demonstrate their appreciation of the external forces which afflict their lives, yet even Gabriel, perhaps the most fully evolved character, does not actively practise self- His personality suggests balance, as well as the quality of the "average man": ... one who felt himself to occupy that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality ... . Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture. (1) The reference to "Laodicean neutrality" evokes the Hardyan stance of detachment which promotes survival. Clearly Gabriel is the prototypic "indifferentist" who does not overrate his "place" in the universe, and is therefore not

in danger of comrnitting nubris. The opinions of his "friends and critics" suggest a balance in Gabriel Oak, which is supported by the solidity of his name. Indeed, the narrator tells us that Gabriel has a sense of his own "charmed life": Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life hc led, he stood still after lookinq at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it with an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. (12) Perhaps the author intends us to see Oak as a prelapsarian Adam, for he describes Gabriel's first vision of Bathsheba: "... in a bird's-eye view, as Milton's Satan first saw Paradise" (13) . Like Adam, or Satan before his fall, Gabriel's view is not yet tainted by negative will or experience. The description also evokes the biblical David's first siqhting of his Bathsheba, with al1 its attendant perils 12 Samuel 11:2). The suggestion of an imminent "fallt' is enhanced by the balance with which Gabriel responds to her departure: "With an air between that

of Comedy and Tragedy, Gabriel returned to his wo~k" (19). When Fate throws the two togecher again throuqh the incident of Gabriel's near suffocation in the hut, Gabriel's response is to take her a lanb and propose rnarriage. Aqain Hardy insists on the total balance of his protagonist: "He had made a toilet of a nice'y-adjusted kind of a nature between the carefully neat and the carefully ornate ..." (251. Bathsheba's refusal of Gabriel marks the beginning of his decline, though the crucial blow cornes rom Nature, in the form of his own younger doq. Unlike his master, the doq has no perception of balance: "- still finding an insuperable difficulty in disinguishing between doing a thing wll enough, and doing it too well" (34) . Tne death of Gabriel's sheep first evokes in him a sense of gratitude that he is not rnarried, and then the praqmatic response of destroying the agent of his loss: George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a worknan to live, and was, in fact, taken and rragically shot at twelve

o'clock that same day - another instance of that untoward fate which so ofren attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoninq to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. (38) Despite the seeming lightness of Hardy's tone in describing the fate of the hapless sheepdog, the moralizing about the "other philosophers" rings true to his disposition of the human characters in his works; it is no accident that the doq is "tragically" shot, but perhaps a suggestion that al1 philosophers of the sort meet a similarly tragic end because their logical reasoning cannot cope with illogical reality. Havinq completed the last task demanded by his former position, the fully-evolved Gabriel leaves for Casterbridge: He had sunk frcm his modest elevation as a pastoral king in~o the very slime-pits of Siddim; Lui ii~r~r WS l+fE t Liii~ s Yi~~ifi~i ~217, h~ h2U never before known, and that indifference to fate,

which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the los a gain" (39). The dignity and indifference referred to here are the hallmarks of Hardy's "successful" chdracters. Their self-knowledge and readiness in the face of the "fate" which befalls them allows their will to eventually triumph. Oak's ordeal has swiftly transformed him into che sort of "indifferentist" whom Fate supports. In the next interlude, Haray's rustics give their views on scch esoteric matters as Fate and "Luck." Jan Coggan describes his late wife's virte, Dut Leaves tne question of her salvation to "luck": Xye, poor Charlotte. I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into heaven when 'a died! But 'a was never much in luck's ;$ay, and perhaps she went downwards after all, poor soul! (61) The randomness which Coggan ascribes to Fate is partly undermined by the remarks of Mark Clark, who attempts to

comfort Gabriel with the suggestion of Time as a rectifying force: "You should take it careless-like, shepherd, and your time will come" (65). The "philosophy" of Hardy's rustics of the man of action Troy. Like Dick Dewey in Under the Greenwood Tree, the labourers who frequent the malt-house are untroubled by the larger questions because, as Edwin Muir maintains: They are too low to fear a fall. They are in the position the universe wants to have them; therefore beyond the reach of tragedy .... !Muir 117) The fact that the rustics are "happy" is a result of their unconsciousness of any "will" to change their circumstances, and their consequent lack of "unfulfilled intentions." The case of Fate as regards Bathsheba is different from that of Gabriel in that it revolves aimost totally aroun "crass casualty," like the affairs of the characters in Hardy's "comedies." The first "chance" which precipitates Bathsheba's involvement with Farmer Boldwood is her tossinq the hymnal to determine whether or not to send the card to Teddy Cogqan. The author asserts the

unlikelihood of the book landing closed, yet this minor event leads to her decision to address the car to Boldwood. The second "chancetf which seems equally inconsequential is that she "happen" to possess a seal which says "Marry Me." Hardy does not speculate on ih~ reasons behind Bathsheba's possessing such a seal in the first place, or the impetuousness of her impulse. There has been no previous inkling of her interest in Boldwood, let alone her attraction to him. The improbability of the action notwithstanding, the enterprise itself seems silly at best, malicious at worst, but apparently devoid of negative consequence. However, as David Cecil suggests, Hardy invests each act, however trivial, with a response: For by this means he can convey how the fate of the characters is determined by forces nidden rom them. To tne characters the past ma be dead; they may have put their past actions behina them. But they cannot escape their consequences. (Cecil 40) Hardy is not long in revealing the consequence of

Bathsheba's action. Boldwood's reaction to receiving the "proposal" demonstrates the extent to which he attaches "fateful" significance to events: The vast difference between starting a train of events and directing into a particular groove a series already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded by the issue. ( 97) The implication of the narrator's comment here suggests the element of "disorder" which may provoke the most profound of tragedies. However, Bathsheba's letter might not have set the tragedy in motion had it not been for another instance Gabriel Oak is misdirected to Boldwood's home, the farmer seizes the occasion cc cal1 on Bathsheba. Bathsheba regrets her impetuous act "to disturb a man she respected too highly to deliberately tease" (1163. The description of Farmer Boldwood's temperament establishes him as the diametric opposite of Gabriel Oak. The surface caln in Boldwood: ... may have been the perfect balance of encrmous antagonisiic forces - positive and negative in Fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he

was in extremity at once. If emotion possessed him at all, it rulea hi^ .... He was always hit mortally, or he was missed. (118) The susceptibility of Boldwood's character provides the ideal circumstance for the seemingly random tragedy engineered by Fate. Boldwood's "desire" increases berause he cannot easiLy reach Bathsheba. The first time he goes to see her she is with Gabriel; the second tirne, she is not at home, with the result that: ... the smaller human elements were kept out of sight; the pettishnesses that enter so largely into al1 earthl living and doing were disguised by the accident of lover and loved one not being on visiting terms. ... (121) Boldwood idealizes Bathsheba because she 1s out of bis reach; therefore the continuinq thread of their "relationship" is maintained, but only by "accident." At another level, the forces of "chance" which have drawn Boldwood end Bathsheba together keep Fanny and Troy

spart. Troy's promise to marry Fanny is thwarted by a casual error - the mistaking of Al1 Saints' for Al1 Souls' Church. This mischance is compounded by the accidental meeting of Troy and Bathsheba on Rer land. While later events suqgest he might actually have Deen planning to cal1 on Fanny, his presence is not accounred for, nor does Bathsheba ask why he is there. Upon reflection, Bathsheba decides to be flattered by Troy's attention: "TC was a fatal omission of Boldwcod's that he had never once told her she was beaueiful" {163).Troy is subsequently presented by the narrator as a man of action, totally lackinq in introspection: Wih him the past was yesterday; the future to-rnorrow; never the day after.... Sergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of expectation, was never disappointed. (164) The result of Troy's frivolous nature Fs a paucity of will: ... the comprehension became engaged with triviaiities, whilst waitinq for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself in useless grooves, through unheeding the

comprehension. (165) Troy's wzsteful preoccupation with trivialities makes him Fate's victim; in describing Troy's "usual" attitude towards women, Hardy refers to "This philosopher," clearly linking his fate with that of Gabriel's wrong-headed sheepdog. The inappropriateness of the match between herseif and Troy causes essentially the same sort of desire for Bathsheba as her inaccessibility creates for Boldwood. Hardy refers to the "folly" of Bathsheba as a contrlbutinq factor: We now see the elements of folly distinctly mingling with the many vzrying particulars which make up the character of Bathsheba Everdene. (185) Hardy's detachment from her cnaracter and his almost clinical analysis of his creation have a curious effect: the reader anticipates dire consequences from this folly, despite the narrative disengagement. In addilion, the word "now" suggests a cuirninacion of events, which makes the situation ripe for change.

This sense of foreboding is echoed by Maryann on the night of Bathsheba's elopement with Troy: I hope nothing is wrong about mitress ... but an ---- +- -- -..A***- bh;- UIILlfirly LUhCii L'2iiiC L" iiiG liiuuuld LA.-" .,,.4&. . .Ay. 1 went to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the stone floor and broke into two pieces. Breaking a key is a dreadful bodement. (215) The marriage of Bathsheba and Troy of course lives up to Maryann's "bodement," and as early as the night of the wedding celebration, Bathsheba may be seen to regret her choice. The chance meeting of Bathsheba and Troy with Fanny, when it is far too late to be of any use to the latter, is yet another example of Hardy the puppet-master playing with timing. He also uses this occasion to remark rather cynically on the utility of "faith": This woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of feeling lessens the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the strong. She

said again in the same tone "1'11 believe that the end lies ive posts forward and no further, and o get strength to pass them." This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictirious faith is better than no faith at all. (263) Hardy's ironic detachment is especially noteworthy in that he has her die in childbirth after reaching her goal. In c- -- L- I1.c-2 &LI1 --.c--- 11.. aaaiticn, cne drrwiyuous LCLCL~IIL~ CU ~a~~~~ IcLcLa LyuuArl to the ability to deceive oneself, to render one's circumstances tolerable - a technique employed by the more ? "successful" of Hardy's protagonists. The comment regarding the weak's loss of individuality, although a seeming aside, is actuily a partial key to Hardy's attitude towards tragedy as it afflicts the individual, singling him or her out in a way that makes the outcome consequential. Tragedy in Hardy's works derives from the consciousness of will, anu the belief that will is deliberately foiied by powers beyond human control. Hardy's subjects are not the noble, elevated

characters of Shakespearean tragedy, but the "Everyman" of twentieth century works. Fanny's death, therefore, becomes a pivotal point in the narrative, in spite of her apparent obscurity. Most scholars do not number Far From the Madding Crowd among Hardy's tragedies, because, as Dale Kramer says: " ... it possesses a resolution that awards happiness to the hero and heroine" (Kramer 45). J.M. Barrie, on the other hand, argues that the death of Fanny lends the narrative its tragic focus : True humour and pathos can no more exist apart than we can have a penny-piece with only one side. Fanny crawling home to die is too awful for pathos. It is tragedy. (Barrie 156) Barrie's claims regarding the impact of Fanny's death may be borne out by Bathsheba's reaction to the sight of her (and her child) in the coffin: The one fact alone - that of dying - by which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved. And to that had destiny

subjoined tnis rencounter tonight, which had, in Bathsheba's wild imagining, turned her companion1s failure to success, her humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendancy; it had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon al1 things about her an ironical smile. (295-6) The transcendence of Fanny is actually described as being a product of Bathsheba's "wild imaginings," yet there can be no doubt that Hardy intended to ironize her situation in regard to Fanny and Troy. Troy's subsequent behaviour as he renounces his marriage to Bathsheba supports her conviction that she has lost her lover to a dead woman. Troy's unaccustomed introspection is an interesting character development; he blames his defection rom Fanny to Bathsheba on "Satan": "If Satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, 1 should have married herV(299). Troy's sense of having been deceived is doubly ironic in that, while he now appears to realize his error,

i3 deer,iiLE.d L - Ll --- . . A .,...-.Ti1 vnt LU ULLIILCZ pV""LL "ULr>AUC k.1 ,,&4 CIL. LbC, qiven Troy's poor credibility because of bis habitua1 lack of moral introspection, the reader is inclined to Selieve the opposite; that is, it is not Fate but his own weakness that has led to his bad judgment. However, the nariacor remarks:ltFate had dealt grimly with him rhrough the last four-and-twenty hours"i308). His frustration at his apparently ill-fated qesture of planting flowers on Fanny's grave is the Eirst indication that Troy, too, is a potentially trayic character: The planting of flowers on Fanny's grave had been a species of elusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention had been known and circumvented. (315) Troy's recognition of tne thwarting of his will, by a seerning "higher power," is the first stage of his evolution as a character. Hardy remarks on his previous feelings of singuiarity, of individuality, which exempt him from the lot of the average:

It is seldorn that a person with nuch animal spirit does not feel that the fact of his iiEe being his own is the one qualificaion which singles it out as a more hopeful life than chat of others who rnay actuzlly resemble hirn in every particular. (315) As "the hero of his story," Troy has expected "that matters would right themselves at some proper date, and wind up well." It is not so much the death of Fanny but the realization that he is no longer "immune" to Fate, but rnerely like anyone else, which causes his despair: "This morning the illusion completed its disappearance, and, as it were, al1 of a sudden, Troy hated himself" (310). In this state of self-loathing, Troy decides to swim - a curious undertaking - but when it seems certain he will drown Fate intervenes again, providing a "passing ship" and with it the opportunity for Troy to reinvent hirnself. When Troy resurfaces, in the chapter "At the Sheep Fair," Hardy actively draws the audience into his own knowledge, therefore making us a party to the irony tnat attends al1 the characters' doings:

... in the circus tent there was sitting on the grass, putting on a pair of jeck-boots, a young man whom we instantly recognize as Sergeant Troy. (337 The use of the present tense not only creates a sense of foreshadowing, but also heightens the illusion of narrative distance, inviting the audience to observe the machinations of a lesser creature. The circus setting provides an atmosphere of unreality and theatricality which belies the consequential nature of rii l . . trie chapcerZs everiis. rit: pxilliit~ f Et111~1i~b ;;d T~y, separated only by the material of the tent, has potential to thwart Troy's new purpose, thereby increasinq his desire, but he is able to intercept the note rom Pennyways, leavinq Bathsheba open to the surprise revelation of her husband's continued existence. This sequence, in many ways resemblinq a bedroom farce, actually lays the groundwork for the tragedy which follows, demonstrating yet again Hardy's conviction that comedy may have traqic outcornes; that rhere is no act without consequence.

Since her husband's presumed death, Bathsheba has been intent on somehow making amends for the thoughtlessness of her approach to Boldwood. Hardy avoids clarifying her thouqhts on the natter of Boldwooa's proposa1 by an interestinq piece of feminist deconstruction. The notion that the words of men are inadequate, or at least unsuited to the task of expressing a woman's mind underlines Bathsheba's inability to explain herself to Boldwood: "Tt is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in languaqe which is chiefly made by men to define theirs" (350). The difficulty wnich she experiences in decidinq whether to agree to marry Boldwood in six years' time is given almost cosmic proportions; it is as if, having once incurred Fate's wrath by trivializing it, she is now reluctant to act at all: It is hardly too much to Say that she felt coerced by a force stronger than own will, not only into the act of prornising upon this singularly remote and vague matter, but into the emotion of fancying she ouqht to promise. (352) She tells Gabriel "1 feel 1 hold that man's future in my

hand" (352). Gabriel responds that her reason for agreeinq is important: If wild heat had to do w'it, making ye long to overcome the awkwardness about your husband's vanishing, it mid be wrong; but a cold-hearted agreement to oblige a man seerns different, somehow. (352) Gabriel's voice, advocating reason over passion, appears to sway Bathsheba in Boldwood's favour, so that on Christmas Eve, following her agreement with the farmer, she is apparently prepared to commit to the promise. This choice compounds the irony of her first act towards Boldwood, because despite Gabriel's belief that her choice is "reasonable," it is still based on emotion - this time, guilt - and remains an example of the inadequacy of men's words to express her desires. In the intervening time, Boldwood's own perception of Fate has comrnitted him to the course suggested by his will; that is, like Troy, he . 3 - . imagines ~iidi FdLe WALL LULLL i~ kii~ fiiv*~ UCC~ZE bis ni:ls it to be so. He believes he is serving a stipulated period

of trial, like the biblical Jacob, 2nd that his diligence is purposeful: ... his faith that a time was coming - ver far off perhaps, yet surely nearinq, when his waiting on events should have its reward. (330-1) Although Hardy shows that patient receptiveness has irs reward, through the character of Gabriel Oak, Boldwood Lacks the insight, and the sublimation of self which enables Gabriel to eventuaily escape the negative influence of Fate. When Troy encers his home in disguise, Boldwood is the last to recognize him. More importantly, he does not recognize that the "stranger" is more rhan an aaversary and in fact his nemesis: Even then Boldwood did not recognize the impersonator of Heaven's persistent irony towards hirn, who had once before broken in upon his bliss, scourged hirn, and snatched his deliqht away, had corne to do these things a second time. (376) Even after Troy's death, Boldwood finds his will thwarted, as his suicide is preventsd by "a timely blow from Samway"

(378). The "tirneliness" of the act appears to be a final whim of Fate in the destruction of Farmer Boldwood. The man who profits rom the removal of Troy and . . Euidwuud 13, ~t ~~~i;;~~l, th2 C~ZZZC~CZ C~ZE U2:d chose as the early victim of Fate. Since his first association with Bathsheba, after the "pastoral tragedy" caused by his overzealous sheepdoq, Gabriel Oak has developed int~ what Hardy describes in later works as an "indifferentist;" that is, one who responds to both good and il1 fortune witn equanimity. The battles which Gabriel wages are largely with the forces of Nature. The first of these, which convinces Bathsheba of his value to her as an emplope, is the fire in the haystacks. iater, while the newly-wed Troy and the other farm-workers sleep off an evening of debauchery, Oak notices the signs which foretell a sEorm, potentially fatal to Sathsheba's crops. He refers to these signs - a fleeing toad, a huge brown garden sluq, the sheep huddled toqether as "messages irom the Great Mother." His sense of connectedness to the natural world enables him to fight the

pending storm. In addition, his *dillingness to sacrifice his 1Lfe to protect the crops is gallant and fatalistic: Wos his life so valuable after all? What were his prospects that he should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour could not be carried out without such risk? (2461 As the storm worsens, Gabriel's struggle takes on almost mythic proportions, but its overall effect on his character is humbling: Heaven opened then, indeed.... The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones .... With these were intertwined snakes of green .... ... love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe. (250) Gabriel's sense of his "place" in the universe is remarked upon by Sathsheba when Fanny dies. It is interesting to note chat she values his stoicism, while clairning no like insight for herself:

What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt any more than she hers-lf, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave - that arnong the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his persona1 weli-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively iooked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his i qn r owri SLCI~~~~U~ILL iil L1i irtid~t. In this respect, Gabriel is unlike Troy, or indeed any of the other principal characters, and Hardy appears to comrnend the indifference he shows by rewarding him as the novel progresses. When Boldwood asks Gabriel to oversee his farm in addition to Bathsheba's, Hardy describes it as a change in fortune which is linked to the "stars," rather than the individual's choices or merit: "Gabriel's malignant star was

assuredly setting fast" (328). It is interesting to note that Hardy ascribes the improvement to the departure of il1 luck, rather than to the coming of good fortune, underlining the idea that Gabriel, had for a time, been singled out as Fate's victim, but as Mark Clark suggests at the outset, his "time" has indeed come. Even as Gabriel's own s~ar rises, o to speak, he rnaintains a healthy fear of the caprices of Fate, warning Farmer Boldwood, without success, not to rely on obtaining his desire: "Pray don't speak of it, sir .... We don't know what may happen. So rnany upsets may befall 'ee. There's many a slip, as the say - and 1 would advise you - 1 know you'll pardon me this once - not to be too sure." (362) Dale Kramer explains the seeming superstition of Hardy's Hardy's emotional allegiance may be with the strugglers ... but his vision of the universe urges upon him the awareness that exertion of ego or desire brings on chastisement and suffering.

(Kramer, 34) Clearly Gabriel is allowed to "succeed" in the long run because he has chosen to repress both ego and desire, aligning himself with the rustic characters who do not fail spectacularly because they do not desire spectacularly. Hardy's treatment of the rustics is noteworthy because, as Kramer suggests, he appears to approve of them, even while gently satirizing them. It is through these philosophers that Hardy discusses notions of God or Providence, and their views are diverse and provocative: "Your lot is your lot and Scripture is nothing; for if you do good you don't get rewarded according to your works, but be cheated in some way out of your recompense. "No, no; I don't agree with 'ee there," said Mark Clark. "God's a perfect gentleman." "Good works, good pay, so to speak it," attested Joseph Poorgrass. (104) The rustics argue the justice of God in relatively desultory terms; the question of distance in their dealings with that

. . iofcy beiny credies CA c*~L&ii"~ ~~~~iLi;~. T~LSY E complacently grateful for the "gift" of being able to drink, for as Mark Clark maintains: "Tis a talent the Lord hs mercifully bestowed on us, and we ought not to neglect it" (283). At the same time he underlines the distance between hirnself and nis benefactor, referring to "a qreat gaffer like the Lord." The major characters more often regard Fate or Nature or some sort of just destiny as the controlling force of their lives. Bathsheba, for example, is depicted as an unacknowledged pagan: Although she scarcely knew the divinity's name, Diana was che goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively adored. (273) Her identification with the goddess of both chastity and tne hunt may represent her desire for the contrsl which her "destined" circurnstances do not permit. Only on one occasion does Hardy depict any sort of orthodox reliqious belief on the part of the major characters: upon the death of Fanny Robin, Gabriel kneels to

pray. Later, when Bathsheba is distressed over her discovery of Fanny's baby, she kneels in an effort to compose herself: "Whether from a purely mechanical, or rom any other cause, when Bathsheba rose, it was witb a quieter spirit ..." (296). The implicit irony of Hardy's assessrnent of prdyer iii iiibi Ffi~td~te i3 ftki~i ~;;ip:i~tCid hy hi^ description of Troy's reaction to seeing Fanny in the coffin: What Troy did was to sink upon his knees with an indefinable union of remorse and reverence upon his face, and bending over Fanny Robin, qently kissed her, as one would an infant asleep to avoid waking it. (298) The ambiguity which Hardy expresses reqardinq the efficacy of prayer is typical of his treatment of God throughout rne work. Since Hardy clearly intends the audience to respect Gabriel, it would appear that his prayer is admirable as, in this instance at least, are the seeningly sincere actions of Troy. Yet Hardy suqgests that Bathsheba's prayer rnay be effective for "purely mechanical" reasons.

The final words of the novel are given to one of the rustics, Joseph Poorqrass, who acts as an ironic paraqon of religious fervour throuqhout the narrative. His allusion to the biblical book of Hosez suggests that Gabriel has married a pagan: "Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone." However, his concluding sentiment has a flavour of "All's well that ends well" that dirninishes the ominousness of the previous comment: "But since 'tis as 'tis, why it might have been worse, and 1 feel my thanks accordinqly" (399). The suggestion of a qualified success or a compromised criurnpn is ci riiiifij 2idiiiij f~ Zi ;l-<s: ;kL2r2 th^ th~ argues in favour of indifference, and yet many critics see the "happy endinq" for Bathsheba and Gabriel as the work's chief flaw, speculating that the "false quality" (Kramer 45) is a result of Hardy's pandering to reader expectations. Yet the ending is a very apt one when considered in light of Hardy's "redemption" of his characters: those who are not destroyed by the act of asserting their wills aqainst that of a higher power are frequently given a sort of "consolation prize" in lieu of cheir actual desires.

The quality of "mediated happiness" which Hardy provides for these protagonists presages subsequent works, such as The Woodlanders and The Well Belovea, where those wno relinquish or adapt their desire are permitted to survive the defeat of their will. After their initial battering at Fate's hands, neither Gabriel nor Bathsheba has the temerity to express "will" again; instead they convince chemselves that what Fate has provided is actually what they "desire. " Chapter 2 - The Hand of Ethelberta The Hand of Ethelberta, though Hardy it dismisses as a "light work", still centres around the protagonist's perception of Fate. Unlike some of his creations, however, Ethelberta is able to separate her will rom her desire. Her will is altruistic in that she strives to achieve security and education for her extensive family. Her desire, however, is another thing entirely. Ethelberta must suppress her desire for Christopher Julian in order to achieve her stated goal, and in this she is successful. Again, as in the case of "the indifferentist" Gabriel Oak, Ethelberta succeeds largely because of her indifference to

the outcome of her efforts. She likens her pursuits to a garne rom which she may withdraw rather than lose. The opening image of the hawk and the duck is a most apt symbol for the struggles of Ethelberta, by whose hand the events of the story are orchestrated. The duck's wiles in escaping his more powerful would-be killer reflect the skillful sleight of hand of the heroine who, despite her low birth, manages to control and choreograph the behaviour of those who are her social "superiors." On the other hand, it is equally possible to identify Ethelberta with the pursuing hawk, whose desire is slightly out of reach - temporarily at least.

LAllegro and Il Penseroso by John Milton

These two companion works were among those featured on The Lark Ascendings first program on March 1, 1998, and were repeated on October 25, 1998, which is the version that we are offering. Here are the notes to them by Nancy Bogen that appeared in the handout program:
Literally "The Happy One" and "The Thoughtful One," these companion poems are thought to date from Milton's last summer at Cambridge, when he was 23 years old. As the titles are suggestive of music, the poems can be considered akin to two parallel movements in a musical work that offer point-for-point contrasts. The richness of both of these poems in that respect can only emerge with successive readings. Suffice it to say here that L'Allegros idealized day in the country with all of its natural sights and sounds and humble rural concerns, and nights at the balls and in the theaters of "Tow'red Cities" are balanced against Il Penserososmeditative walking in the woods followed by a browsing among his beloved books in a "high lonely Tow'r," and a sojourn by day in the "studious Cloister's pale" and the "peaceful hermitage." Based on Milton's devotion to formal study at Cambridge and his subsequent long course of personal study at home, it seems generally agreed that his preference would have been for the life of Il Penseroso. Nevertheless, willy-nilly both poems also clearly reflect the interests and concerns of a young man in his early twenties with a penchant for females. Certainly telling is his preoccupation with consorting with women and the act of

procreation in L'Allegro. For example, according to one genealogy, Euphrosyne or Mirth, who is described as "fair and free," was one of three daughters of Venus and Bacchus (love and wine); according to another, she was the "buxom, blithe, and debonair" daughter with whom frolicsome Zephyr (wind) "fill'd" Aurora (dawn) while "playing" with her, "As he met her once a-Maying,/ There on Beds of Violet blue,/ And fresh-blown Roses washt in dew." In sharp contrast to this light eroticism is the foreboding origin of Melancholy given at the beginning ofL'Allegro: that she is of "Cerberus and blackest midnight born,/ In Stygian Cave forlorn,/ 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy." Somewhat later in L'Allegro, the "I" exhorts Euphrosyne or Mirth to lead along in dance the Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty, concluding with: "And if I give thee honor due,/ Mirth, admit me to thy crew/ To live with her, and live with thee,/ In unreproved pleasures free." Even in the last and presumably best of the enumerated pleasures that regarding poetry many of the words and phrases that Milton used are suggestive of fleshly concerns: "lap," "soft," "married," "pierce," "winding bout," "linked sweetness long drawn out," "wanton heed," "giddy cunning," "melting voice," "untwisting all the chains that tie," "hidden," "heave his head," "golden slumber on a bed of heapt Elysian flow'rs." One would expect Il Penseroso to be devoid of such concerns, but not so entirely: "vain deluding joys" are described as "the brood of folly without father bred," and according to the second genealogy of Melancholy given there, the "bright-hair'd" Vest boare her to "solitary" Saturn, who happened to be Vesta's father. Further, by way of illustration, Milton added this quasi-erotic scene respecting Saturn and Vesta: "Oft in glimmering Bow'rs and glades/ He met her,

and in secret shades/ Of woody Ida's inmost grove,/ While yet there was no fear of Jove." Milton had contemporary models aplenty for L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, most notably, "A Dialogue Between Pleasure and Pain," which introduces Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and the song in praise of melancholy in Fletcher's comedy The Nice Valour, which in one anthology of the time is countered by William Strode's "Against Melancholy." But in terms of sheer expressiveness, Milton's pair of contrasting poems were and still are without equal.
Type of Work and Publication Year
.......John Milton's "L'Allegro" is a lyric poem centering on the joy of taking part in the delights of a spring day, including those provided by nature in a pastoral setting and those provided by the theater in an urban setting. The title is an Italian word that originally meant "the cheerful man." The poem was published in London in 1645 as part of a collection, The Poems of John Milton, Both English and Latin. It is a companion piece to "Il Penseroso," a lyric poem centering on sober, contemplative living that courts melancholy rather than joy. The poems use similar metric and rhyme schemes.

Setting
.......The poem is set in the speaker's mind as he anticipates the pleasures he will enjoy on an inviting spring day first in a countryside setting and then in an urban setting.

Summary
.......The speaker orders Melancholy from his life, telling it to find a dwelling place among the Cimmerians people who live in a land of unending darkness. At the same time, he invites a goddess of joy, Euphrosyne, to bring him mirth on the dawning of a new spring day as the song of the lark and the din of a rooster chase the last of the darkness away. .......The sun begins to rise, robing the clouds in flames. Then the plowman in the field whistles, the milkmaid sings a song, the mower sharpens his scythe, and shepherds count their sheep under hawthorn trees. Smoke curls up from a chimney cottage. The young and old come out to play. And when the sun goes down again, they will tell stories over ale. One of the tales will be about the "lubber fiend," a hairy giant with a tail. He does farm work and household chores in return for a bowl of cream. (See lines 104-114 for the passage about this creature.) But despite his grotesque appearance, he means no harm. .......On fine days in May, knights and barons in the cities contend with wits or weapons in peaceful contests before their ladies, and Hymen (the god of marriage) appears to preside over many a wedding with pomp, and feast, and revelry, / With mask, and antique Pageantry (lines 127-128). .......Then there are the plays to see in the citythose of the great Elizabethan writers Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. .......The speaker ends the poem by again addressing the heavenly bringer of joy, Euphrosyne, this time referring to her as "Mirth." These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth with thee, I mean to live. (lines 151-152)

Theme
.......Casting off gloom to embrace the delights of a glorious spring day is the theme of "L'Allegro." Milton begins the poem by rejecting melancholy in the first ten lines. Then, in line 11, he invites the goddess of joy (Euphrosyne) to go forth with him into the sun-kissed fields. He asks her to bring with her Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles (lines 26-28) The rest of the poem centers on the people and activities they will see.

End Rhyme
.......The end rhyme of the first ten lines of the poem uses this pattern: abbacddeec. Following is an illustration of this pattern. Hence loathed Melancholy Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy; Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell Milton wrote the rest of the poem in couplets (pairs of rhyming lines). Lines 11-16 demonstrate the pattern. But come thou goddess fair and free, In heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus at a birth With two sister Graces more To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore

Internal Rhyme
.......Milton also included occasional internal rhyme in the poem, as in the following lines. And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew (line 22) Such as hang on Hebe's cheek (line 29) And love to live in dimple sleek (line 30) Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn (line 53)

Figures of Speech
.......Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem. For definitions of figures of speech, see Literary Terms.

Alliteration some sager sing (line 17) Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn (line 53) Jest and youthful Jollity (line 26) And love to live in dimple sleek (line 30) dappled dawn doth (line 44) Stoutly struts his dames before (line 52) Warble his native wood-notes wild (line 134) Apostrophe But come thou goddess fair and free, In heav'n yclep'dEuphrosyne,
The speaker is addressing the goddess of joy, Euphrosyne

Metaphor Right against the eastern gate, Where the great Sun begins his state (lines 59-60)
Comparison of the eastern horizon to a gate

Rob'd in flames, and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight. (lines 61-62)
Comparison of sunlight to flames

Mountains on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest (lines 73-74)
Comparison of mountains' slopes to a breast

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize (lines 121-122)
Comparison of the gaze of the ladies' eyes to rain

Onomatopoeia And the busy hum of men (line 118) Paradox wanton heed (line 141)
Use of wanton (which means undisciplined) to describe heed (which means disciplined or careful attention)

Personification Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child (line 133)

Comparison of a parent to imagination

LAllegro and Il Penseroso, John Milton

Topic Influence and Purpose L.B. Too often, LAllegro and Il Penseroso are pit against one another in an either/or duel. Professors contrive essay topics asking which poems thesis is nobler, which should be the blueprint for a life well spent, or which represents John Miltons own belief. Authorial purpose is exceedingly difficult to prove and can rarely be known unequivocally; however, it is possible to gain some insights from the works themselves. While LAllegro enumerates earthly and bodily pleasures and is set in the summer countryside, Il Penseroso is the inverse: it praises the joys found by oneself, of philosophy and theological contemplation; accordingly, it is set in a nighttime wood. There are three concepts central to Miltons poetic pairing: the first is the question of action versus theory. Namely, is it better to live or to think? To gain experience for oneself, or to study the experience recorded by others? Much practiced in debate, Milton describes the delights of each. From LAllegro:

Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. Com, and trip it as ye go On the light fantastick toe, And in thy right hand lead with thee, The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty (Milton 31-6)
And from Il Penseroso:

The spirit of Plato to unfold What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook (89-92)

Hinging on the action/theory discussion is the second concept, the distinction of others from the self. Throughout LAllegro, the speaker is always accompanied by one or more characters, whether his lover or mythological creatures such as nymphs and Euphrosyne, personified Mirth. In Il Penseroso, the speaker is markedly alone. Though he references mythological figures, there is a noticeable distance between them and himself. Again there is argument as to which state is better: to be in company or to be alone with ones thoughts, and again Milton makes a case for each. The third force driving these poems has less to do with the fictionalized speaker and everything to do with Milton as author. Both poems are sprinkled with Classical allusions; however in Il Penseroso there is a clear progression into the strictly Christian realm by the conclusion, emblematic of Miltons struggle with his education in the Greco-Roman masterpieces and his own notions as a Christianand indeed, with his societys heavily Christian lifestyle. Admittedly, this struggle was not individual to Milton, as the growing British prominence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fancied itself the new Roman Empire, but Milton harbored a keen intellectual lust for the works of antiquity and thus experienced particular scholarly strife rectifying the heathen with the devout. A hint to this dilemma may be found in the disparity of language in the last lines of both poems. LAllegro concludes, These delights, if thou canst give,/ Mirth with thee, I mean to live (152). Il Penseroso differs with: These pleasures Melancholy give,/ And I with thee will choose to live (176). The chasm of significance separating mean to live from choose to live is mighty deep. Even supposing John Milton outwardly intended to promote Il Penserosos thesis above that of its counterpart, the poems have a voice of their ownand perhaps speak for Miltons subconscious. In examining the poems most arresting attributes, their visuals, an answer emerges of its own accord. LAllegro clearly represents Day:

Som time walking not unseen

By Hedge-row Elms, on Hillocks green, Right against the Eastern gate, Wher the great Sun begins his state, Robd in flames, and Amber light The clouds in thousand Liveries dight (57-62)
And Il Penseroso, Night:

And missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven Green, To behold the wandering Moon, Riding neer her highest noon, Like one that had bin led astray Through the Heavns wide pathless way; And oft, as if her head she bowd, Stooping through a fleecy cloud (65-72)
These foundation images with which the poems support themselves cannot stand singularly: Day and Night are joined in endless succession. Therefore, choosing Il Penseroso above LAllegro is just as silly as expecting an everlasting night. True wisdom comes from a balance of experience and thought, of interaction with others and time with oneself, of a multitude of worldviews and spiritual attitudeswisdom is comprised of all these things together. Perchance it is this idea that Milton, slyly or subconsciously, wanted to impart. O.A. Il Penseroso simply cannot be read without LAllegro. You cannot read them independently of each other and have the true revelation of the complete meaning that is born between the pair. The

meaning is that both moods are important to achieve a state of balanced harmony. In other words, the pair of them represent a balanced whole, a mind that can understand both moods; whereas, reading one without reading the other is to be incomplete and at the mercy of the worst of one. The first lines of each poem renounce the other in its worst form. To Mirth, Melancholy says:

Hence vain deluding joys, The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys; Dwell in some idle brain (Milton 1-5)
Melancholy is a mood that sees the worst in Mirth. Mirth is full of joys that delude those who follow it. It is a mood that does little to better the mind or fill it with anything but toys. Mirth, Melancholy says in shun, should belong to the idle-brained. And To Melancholy, Mirth says:

Hence loathed Melancholy Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn Mongst horrid shapes and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings (1-6)
Mirth sees the worst in Melancholy. Melancholy is without light, sharing the company of horrid shapes. It is forlorn, isolated in near hopelessness. And as for its appearance, Mirth describes is as ragged (9).

It is important to consider what it means to be opposed to something, to be the opposite. Melancholy and Mirth (sedation and excitement) are in direct opposition of meaning to each other. Granted there are degrees of these emotional states, but the connotations of the words are set up to represent opposing forces. When John Miltons Melancholy decries Mirth it is the assertion of the organic truth of the moods opposing position to Mirth, and vice versa. As opposites, they instinctively know their inverses; Mirth knows what it doesnt possess that sets it apart from Melancholy. The first lines of each poem distinctly draw on the disparity between the two. In doing this, both moods reinforce their opposition to each other. So, how do these moods create a balanced whole? Like magnets, as opposites they are attracted to one another. For all that those opening lines do to alienate the two moods, their stories in fact reflect an inter-dependency. First, consider the most important companion of Mirth, Liberty. What would set you free? Answering this honestly requires true understanding. Understanding comes only by contemplation. An example of what I am describing is found in the often misunderstood philosophies of Epicurus. He posited a theory on pleasure without pain. If ones pleasure led to pain, then it was a lower pleasure and not to be pursued or else the individual lost the intended goal of the philosophy: to be pain-free. One has to be able to evaluate pleasures to know what will actually bring pleasure, and what will only lead to another pain. Mirth does not exist without consideration and contemplation because of its relationship with Liberty. To answer what freedom is, the route requires thought. This is one example of how Melancholys companion, The Cherub Contemplation is also a part of Mirth (54). Second, consider the height of Melancholys excitement in lines 163 through 165:

In Service high and Anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies

As this poem winds down to the last few versus the reader finds Mirth. If Mirth is joy, then Melancholy has an organic sense of Mirth. The second-to-last line gives this away too when the speaker says, These pleasures Melancholy give (175). The kind of joy that Melancholy brings, like Liberty, is not wholly Mirth, but delivers a form of pleasure. When Melancholy experiences music, it experiences a connection to Mirth. Melancholy and Mirth are a perfect pair in that they do not survive completely alone. There is no doubt of their opposition, but the poems are intricately woven with a sense of each other. They are magnets, one South and one North. In a way it is like a childs painting, gifted to a parent: the parent hangs it on the refrigerator with a little magnet. The magnetic poles come together to create a bigger picture; it is important to understand both poems as separate but dependent companions. They are a balanced whole that represent the truth of core human emotions. We are capable of both Melancholy and Mirth. In LAllegro and Il Penseroso, each state is represented by a unique Goddess with different influences in which both have independent merit. Each also reminds one of the worst of the other: one can be idle-brained and the other forlorn, lost in darkness. Ultimately they are incapable of defining themselves without the other and are thusly bonded. They remind the reader of how each can mislead as well as guide. This inverse relationship is where one sees the whole picture, the balance that is intrinsically present and beautifully hopeful. Concluding Thoughts L.B.: As one can infer from my As the Page Turns comment on Thomas Cole, I like traditional painting techniques. Whether landscapes, still life, or portraits, I have a deep appreciation for the precedent set by the masters. The same is true of poetry. Though I am also partial to more modern authors like H.D. and T.S. Eliot, they dont quite reach the realm of John Donne, Richard Lovelace, or our beloved John Milton. This is becausedespite what our English teachers tell us in high schoolrhyme and meter are the marks of poetry at its most esteemed. Miltons Il Penseroso and LAllegro work with the eyes, ears, and mind of the reader; the

messages and the presentation are crafted with poise and delicacy, and in my opinion, cannot be rivaled by modern poetry. O.A.: I greatly respect these two poems as companion pieces; both inspire contemplation and enjoyment in one reader, or composer for that matter! In addition to various works of art, the symmetry of these two poems also inspired George Frideric Handels interpretive composition, LAllegro, Il Penseroso, ed il Moderato. I find in reading Milton an amazing display of literary knowledge combined with creative genius. He is able to reference so many works, and yet his is completely his own. It is something all writers should aspire to.