Key themes
- Freedom, reputation and the cost of female independence
- Three very different kinds of love
- The Wessex landscape as moral actor
About this book
Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gen
Published serially in 1874, Far from the Madding Crowd was Hardy's first major success and established his Wessex world. The title comes from a line in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Discussion questions
- Bathsheba is one of Hardy's most independent heroines but makes choices that seem to undermine that independence. How do you read her — as a feminist character, a cautionary figure, or something more complex?
- Gabriel Oak's patient love is contrasted with Boldwood's obsession and Troy's recklessness. What is Hardy saying about love through these three very different men?
- The Wessex landscape — the sheep, the harvests, the seasons — is almost a character in the novel. How does Hardy use the agricultural world to mirror and comment on the human drama?
- The novel was published anonymously and immediately attributed to the author of Adam Bede. What does this tell us about what readers expected from literary fiction in 1874?
- The ending has sometimes been criticised as too convenient. Do you agree — or does the resolution feel appropriate given the novel's moral world?
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