The Reading Group Reads
Far from the Madding Crowd By Thomas Hardy
"When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were an
unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and
diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the
rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun."
So opens one of Thomas Hardy's wonderful tales. Some of us confessed we fondly remembered Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak in the film made decades ago, along with Julie Christie, the swash buckling Terence Stamp and the brooding Peter Finch!
The novel was written in 1874, the year he was married to his first wife, although he never saw his manuscript in print for many years, as it was originally altered and serialised in the London Cornhill Magazine.
It's the story of three very different men and their love for the
beautiful, vivacious and firey Bathsheba Everdene, set in rural, mid-19th
century Wessex (Dorset) against the backdrop of the farming year and the most
endearing group of agricultural characters - their unrelenting tough lives
interspersed with rural celebrations - shearing suppers, Lady Days and Harvest
Suppers - and of course the gossip at their local hostelry: the Warren's
Malthouse.
Gabriel Oak's love is amazingly loyal, patient and constant; Sergeant Troy is outrageously gallant, an exhibitionist and not to be trusted; Boldwood's is obsessional, frantic and unrequited (Does this sound like Mills and Boon? I do hope not, because it certainly isn't!)
There is too, of course, the lovely Fanny Robin, who when we meet her is a fallen woman, but who's loved by Troy. She goes to the wrong church for her wedding and her beloved, unable to stand the humiliation, leaves and never marries her.
Farmer (when we first meet him, although soon to become a hired shepherd because of a tragic accident) Oak, is rejected by the very young Bathsheba, who said she'd love a wedding, but not a husband. She is them swept off her feet, and secretly marries Francis Troy. He soon regrets this, grows bored and meets again his lovely Fanny, who dies in the Workhouse before he can rescue her. Meanwhile, Boldwood harasses Bathsheba in his growing obsession, particularly when all think Troy has been drowned at sea.
Alas, Troy, cruelly and calculatingly reappears at Boldwood's Christmas Party he is having for Bathsheba, and is shot dead by the broken-hearted man.
The grief-stricken and heart-broken Bathsheba buries her husband in the local churchyard alongside his true love Fanny, whose burial some months before she had also personally arranged (Hardy's own maternal grandmother had buried her unfaithful, violent husband alongside his lover when he had died).
Many months later, when her self-esteem is at its lowest and Gabriel tells her that he's going to emigrate, she visits him and makes it very clear she'd like to marry him. "They'll think I've come courting you - how dreadful!". "And quite right too", said Oak "I've danced at your skittish heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long day, and is it hard to begrudge me one visit?".
So they are married, and everyone is happy that they are finally man and wife.
To come:
- The Nine Tailors, by Doprothy L Sayers, Wed, Feb 6 at Kent House
- Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, March 5 at the Hollingsworths, Lower End.
New members always welcome!