Hardy, with the eye of the artist, loved the color and line of the landscape. He cares for his fellow beings and is capable of judging them. Unconcerned with time's passing, he leisurely continues to do what he thinks is right. Undismayed, he checks the time by peering into neighbors' windows or by referring to the position of the stars. His features are average, his clothes ordinary, and his 'moral color was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.' Even his idiosyncrasy is a mild one: He wears a large watch with a faulty hour hand. In the first paragraph, the friendly face of Gabriel Oak smiles at us. Far from the Madding Crowd might well entitle his whole series of Wessex novels. Thus isolation furnished both the theme and the title of the novel. 'Far from the madding crowd' was how Thomas Hardy wished us to view his beloved native country and the types who inhabited it. But, perhaps irked by her snub, he maintained that she had her faults, the greatest of them being 'what it is always. Gabriel did not disagree with the gamekeeper's comment on the attractiveness of the retreating girl. 'She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on a minute scale, but she did not speak them more probably, she felt none.' Stepping forward, Gabriel handed two pence to the keeper, saying, 'Let the young woman pass.' The girl glanced carelessly at him. Unimpressed by the wagoner's protest that the girl refused to pay an additional two pence, the gatekeeper would not let the wagon pass. She flushed as 'she simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind.' Hearing the wagoner return, she replaced the glass.Īfter the two resumed their journey, Gabriel left his 'point of espial' and followed them down the road. Her smile, tentative at first, widened at her satisfying reflection. Looking to make sure the wagoner was out of sight, she took out a mirror. Enthroned atop everything sat a pretty, dark-haired young woman in a crimson jacket. This delay permitted Oak to view the wagon's motley array of household goods, complete with plants and pots.

When the wagoner retraced his path to retrieve a lost tailboard, the horses halted. From behind a hedge, he watched a yellow wagon come down the highway, the wagoner walking beside it. Twenty-eight-year-old Gabriel Oak was surveying his fields one mild December morning.

Far from the madding crowd book