Far from the Madding Crowd - Lecture on Chapters XIII-XXX (Patreon)

'It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides.'

Today we are returning to the pastoral dream-country of Wessex and spending more time in the company of Thomas Hardy's vibrant and unforgettable characters.

We're discussing true love, idealisation, descriptions of nature and architecture, Hardy's tragic intensity, courtship in the nineteenth century, rakes, symbolism, romantic desire, and much more.

Please do feel free to enjoy the discussion, using the timestamps at your personal pace, even if you haven't read up to these chapters yet. I'm being mindful to stay away from spoilers for things that are revealed later in the narrative.

Timestamps:

0:00 welcome back to Wessex

2:00 the marriage divination game

4:00 the real value of fortune-telling

6:00 ‘wither thou goest, I will go’

7:00 how boring was Victorian life?

9:00 fate, chance & will in Hardy

11:00 Bathsheba’s valentine’s card

12:00 reading as exercise in empathy

14:00 subjective love vs spectacle

16:00 the effect upon Boldwood

19:00 men obsessed with women

21:00 private vs public behaviour

23:00 Fanny confides in Gabriel

24:00 the heartache of Shepherd Oak

26:00 descriptions of the natural world

27:00 Thomas Hardy the architect

29:00 church scene appreciation

31:00 Sergeant Troy & Fanny Robin

33:00 Hardy’s layered tragic interplay

34:00 leveraged moves for deep reading

35:00 the story of Adam and Eve’s fall

38:00 treading the injured lover’s hell

40:00 tragedy of romantic relationships

42:00 discovering Boldwood’s nature

44:00 ‘a hotbed of tropic intensity’

46:00 an ominous part of the novel

48:00 set-pieces in great literature

50:00 romance at the sheepwashing

51:00 why do we idealise in love?

53:00 how to know you’re in true love

56:00 what do we mean by love?

58:00 how to get others to love you

1:00:00 ‘I love you’ in Victorian times

1:01:00 courtship in the nineteenth century

1:02:00 Boldwood & Bathsheba

1:04:00 seeing marriage as possession

1:06:00 Gabriel Oak as Eros/god of love

1:07:00 what we want vs what we need

1:11:00 Gabriel tries to guide Bathsheba

1:12:00 ‘cannot allow any man to criticise’

1:14:00 ‘sheep are such unfortunate animals’

1:16:00 ‘beg to a man who begged to me?’

1:18:00 ‘do not desert me, Gabriel’

1:19:00 Thomas Hardy’s Immanent Will

1:22:00 time & the city vs countryside

1:24:00 longing for a time before our time

1:27:00 does Bathsheba lead Boldwood on?

1:31:00 when Bathsheba meets Troy

1:33:00 symbolism in Victorian novels

1:35:00 what kind of man is Sergeant Troy?

1:37:00 libertines in classic literature

1:38:00 when Troy meets Bathsheba

1:39:00 Bathsheba Everdene’s capitulation

1:42:00 Troy’s attitude towards women

1:43:00 ‘men are such constant fools’

1:45:00 ‘love yields to circumstance’

1:47:00 Sergeant Troy’s sword display

1:50:00 abandoning one’s self-reliance

1:51:00 Gabriel Oak vs Sergeant Troy

1:52:00 ‘people are full of mistakes’

1:53:00 comic vs tragic trajectory

1:55:00 death symbolism of robins

1:56:00 the riddle of Bathsheba’s words

1:58:00 what are you making of the novel?

Resources to Explore:

• Historical Context: One of the best books on the nineteenth century is The Victorians by A. N. Wilson. This work presents a vivid panorama of the century and focuses on the most important thinkers, events, and ideas, which are part of the cultural backcloth of Thomas Hardy's works.

• Classical Allusion: Sergeant Troy's watch is inscribed with a Latin motto that is taken from Ovid's Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love/Love's Remedy): 'Love yields to circumstance.' If you're interested in expanding into Ovid beyond his Metamorphoses, then this collection from Oxford World's Classics curates his love poems together, which includes the one alluded to in Hardy's novel.

• Non-Fiction: As mentioned in the lecture, a leveraged move for appreciating many of the great works of the era, and particularly Hardy's works, would be to wrangle with some Schopenhauer and Darwin. The Essential Schopenhauer is a great resource to dip into and presents key selections from his most important works in a clear way. For Darwin, it's good to have a volume of 'The Origin of Species' on your shelf. I like the hardback Everyman edition.

• Miltonic Allusion: Another leveraged move, this time for imaginative literature, would be to spend some with Milton's Paradise Lost. As we did in the discussion, you may like to spend time contrasting Milton's depiction of Eve's creation from Adam in book eight (our lecture on that is here) with the more minimalist original description in Genesis 2:21.

• Poetry Appreciation: If you have picked up a copy Hardy's Wessex Poems, I recommend appreciating these poems next: 'The Ivy Wife,' 'The Sergeant's Song,' and 'A Meeting with Despair' And if you have a copy of Lyrical Ballads, I recommend enjoying these next: 'The Last of the Flock,' 'Lines Written in Early Spring,' and 'The Nightingale, a Conversational Poem.' Continue to see if you feel the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge upon Hardy.

• Scripture: The best method I've personally found for deepening one's knowledge of the Bible is to follow literary allusions in great novels back to the source. You can acquire a rapid acquaintance with a wide variety of biblical stories, personages, and messages this way. I recommend spending time with the story of Bathsheba in 2 Samuel. The middle part of the novel also prompts us towards the Book of Ruth and the story of Moses in the Book of Exodus. For a New Testament passage that is complementary to the agricultural symbolism in the novel, you may also wish to consider the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13.

• Exercise: Thomas Hardy is a master of crafting compelling and memorable literary set-pieces. These are the scenes that we recall years after reading a novel or watching a film because they are often visually striking and deliver a strong emotional impact. What are your favourite set-pieces in all of literature? Why do you like them? And are there any thematic commonalities among your favourite literary scenes?

Reading Assignment:

Our next discussion will cover from chapter thirty-one up to and including chapter fifty-seven, which comprised the third volume of the original publication and will take us, with great excitement, through the end of the novel.

Questions for You:

1) Why do we idealise in love?

2) What is the best cure for heartbreak?

3) Do chance and fate govern Hardy's universe? Do they govern ours?

4) Which of Hardy's characters do you sympathise with or relate to the most? Do you feel like you've met these kinds of people in your real life?

If this is your first reading of Far from the Madding Crowd, I would love to know how the story is meeting your expectations and what you think is going to happen next. If this is a reread for you, what is it like returning to the story? And please do share with us your favourite passage from the story so far.

Happy reading, everybody!