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Title: Far from the Madding Crowd (Cambridge Literature) by Thomas Hardy, Pat George, Patricia George ISBN: 0-521-56767-X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.48 (29 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Forget the infamous "love triangle"...
Comment: In Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy introduces us to the precarious "love square". At the core of all the turmoil is beautiful farm girl, Bathsheba Everdene - spirited, vain, intelligent and adept at toying with the hearts of men. Inevitably beguiled by her charms a humble and kind farmer, Gabriel Oak, fervently attempts to win Bathsheba's affections. Enter the competition: (suitor#2) Farmer Boldwood - a wealthy and temperate middle-aged man respected in the community, eventually plunges into maniacal obsession at the mere possibility of making the beloved Miss Everdene his wife; and (suitor#3) Sergeant Francis Troy - a dashing young philandering soldier, with his share of inner demons, ruthlessness and vanity, vies for Bathsheba's hand in marriage. Bathsheba's ultimate decision, and the cataclysm it evokes, lies at the epicenter of Hardy's unforgettable ambivalent story.
Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy's fourth novel, saw publication in 1874 and earned him widespread popularity as a writer. A delicately woven tale of unrequited love and regret, set in the mid-19th century, Far From the Madding Crowd is a masterpiece of pure story-telling. Hardy's classic style is a pleasure to read as he masterfully brings his characters and their dealings to life. I would not hesitate to say it definitely captured my heart as another favourite.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Fun Hardy Read? It Exists
Comment: I've always condidered myself to be sort of an optimist; so it is really odd that I've always really loved Thomas Hardy's books. I count Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure among my very favorites, and whether or not it is my favorite, I think that The Mayor of Casterbridge is marvelously written. Still though, reading all of that fatalism and cynicism can be a little much. It was really nice to pick up this novel and not read so many grim scenes.

Far From the Madding Crowd is a pretty simple love story driven by the characters. First, there is Bathsheba Everdeen. She's vain, naive, and she makes the stupidest decisions possible. Yet, you still like her. Then there are the three guys who all want her: Troy who's like the bad guy straight out of a Raphael Sabatini novel, Boldwood who's an old lunatic farmer, and Gabriel Oak who is a simple farmer and is basically perfect. The reader sees what should happen in the first chapter, and it takes Bathsheeba the whole book to see it. The characters really make the book. The reader really has strong feelings about them, and Hardy puts them in situations where you just don't know what they're going to do. The atmosphere that Hardy creates is (as is in all of Hardy's novel) amazing and totally original. I don't think any other author (except Wallace Stegner in America) has ever evoked a sense of place as well as Hardy does. Overall, Far from the Madding Crowd is a great novel. I probably don't like it quite as well as some of his others, but I still do think it deserved five stars.

Rating: 5
Summary: Wild and wooly in Wessex
Comment: Few literary settings are more distinctive than Thomas Hardy's Wessex, a hilly, chalky, bucolic quilt of pastures and villages occupying the southwest of England, its residents sworn to the immutable cultural traditions of centuries long past. But it is not the goal of "Far from the Madding Crowd" to be merely a sentimental portrait of a region for which Hardy has a great affection, but a grandiose drama about the eventual union of a man and the woman he loves. In summary, Hardy does accede to a Happily Ever After ending, but how he gets to this point is why his novel deserves to be read.

It's not surprising that the novel was originally attributed to George Eliot because the protagonist, Gabriel Oak, as the novel's moral anchor, is very similar in character to Eliot's Adam Bede. Oak is trying to make a living on his own as a farmer, but a stroke of bad luck compels him to take a job as a shepherd for a beautiful young woman named Bathsheba Everdene who has recently inherited her uncle's farm and commands a large number of workers and servants. Oak iconically personifies the rustic setting, not only because of his surname but because of the intimacy with which he communes with nature, and his fondness for playing the flute seems designed to evoke an image of Pan.

Oak has an awkward history with Bathsheba -- he had known her before her windfall, but in her independent spirit she spurned his love. As the head of Weatherbury farm, however, she can't get by on her independence alone, and she needs Oak's expertise in ensuring her sheep are healthy and fit for wool production. Her romantic attention turns toward a profligate soldier named Francis Troy who, through an unlikely error, has just barely avoided wedding Fanny Robin, one of the Weatherbury servants. Bathsheba's eventual marriage to Troy breaks the hearts of Oak and another rival, a neighboring farmer named Boldwood whose affections she had once teased and whose obsessive nature erupts at a most climactic moment in the novel.

The plot developments are a flamboyant display of contrivance, but Hardy masters his devices so well it's impossible not to go along with him for the ride. As an example, consider the jilted Fanny who is so weary from sickness that she has to use a dog as a crutch to get to her destination where she finally dies; not until Hardy reveals what's written on the lid of her coffin do we (and Oak) realize the role Troy played in her death. Likewise, Troy's impulsive reaction to this incident seems like a purposely destructive measure that intends to stir even more turbulence into the story.

A large part of Hardy's appeal is his prose, which maximizes the value of a mastery of language; his sentences are like finely cut gems that demand to be held up to a light and studied for their craftsmanship. I believe that Hardy is the consummate novelist; he approaches the art of the novel as a painter looks upon a canvas, a weaver upon a tapestry, a composer upon an opera -- as the supreme representation of man in harmony with nature and in conflict with fate.