Far From the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy

lady_charlie · Post by **lady_charlie** » 06 Aug 2013, 20:54

I am trying to read this book. It is more interesting than I thought it would be and easier to read than I thought it would be.

I usually like classics and this is not the first book I have read by Thomas Hardy.
I am already curious about the title.
Does anyone know why he chose this title?

mcs1040 · Post by **mcs1040** » 21 Sep 2013, 17:17

I found this on Wikipedia:

"Hardy took the title from Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751):

Far From the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

"Madding" means "frenzied" here. The title may be ironic: the five main characters – Bathsheba, Troy, Boldwood, Oak, and Fanny Robin – are all passionate beings who find the "vale of life" neither quiet nor cool."

L_Therese · Post by **L_Therese** » 25 Sep 2013, 05:45

I recently finished reading this book, and I encourage you to keep going! Hardy writes accessible and compelling, albeit imperfect characters who struggle in very real ways, yet Hardy doesn't let the mundane fall in the way of his plot! Even if it feels slow at times, I promise the book will redeem itself long before it's over.

lady_charlie · Post by **lady_charlie** » 22 Oct 2013, 20:40

Thank you!
I did actually let it fall by the wayside and have read three other books since I started this one, sigh.

It is sort of tough going but I can really see the characters and places in my head, like watching a movie almost.

Does it seem out of place that a woman could have money and own things back then?

sisterkaramazov · Post by **sisterkaramazov** » 12 Nov 2013, 21:20

I really didn't enjoy this book at all. Bathsheba Everdeen was a thoroughly uninteresting character without any nuance or redeeming qualities. I think I would have found her more likable if she was made to do the things she did to survive, but it seemed like she acted just from cruelty. I recommend Jude the Obscure over this one.

Nathrad Sheare · Post by **Nathrad Sheare** » 15 Nov 2013, 07:31

I just finished "Far from the Madding Crowd" and liked it a LOT. The first thing I enjoyed about it was how perfect each of its chapters' endings was. I've read a whole lot of classic literature in my life, my first favorite novel in the world being Moby Dick. I was eight, and it was about a big whale that destroyed ships.

However, no great work I've read until now, besides, perhaps, the Scarlet Letter, had such excellently and particularly structured parts. Each of the final paragraphs of the chapters was almost as exquisite as a masterful prose poem, and, while I admit the progress of the story from the beginning is a little slow, the last few chapters were truly juicy. Thomas Hardy does that often in his books, begins to stall a bit while seeming to try and figure out how to make the next big event boom, but he always finds inspiration somehow. I think he deserves his place among the great ones certainly.

So far as characters go, I think there have been better Hardy heroines that Bathsheba, but she's still not one you see every day. For having only just broken into maturity, Hardy did quite a job at making a character that believably undergoes transformation. Her relationship with Gabriel is truly touching, even if she isn't sensible enough to give herself completely to him in the first place. I see in it some ambience of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." I don't think that's a stretch... Vain and proud she certainly is, though, unlike, say, Madame Bovary, she learns her lesson before it's too late. In the last ten chapters or so she actually becomes quite lovable, even if not so much as little Gabriel Oak is throughout the story, and though she doesn't earn quite so much sympathy from a reader as Boldwood so obviously deserves, one can't help but feel for her loss. I think the scene in which she stands in front of Troy's grave and gives way to tears for the song smoking out into the night air is particularly powerful, made especially so by the preceding events during which she all but beats herself into a state of complete feigned sobriety. All in all, she keeps the story alive, and it's a great story that lives through her.

Lms526 · Post by **Lms526** » 26 Mar 2014, 19:50

I read this book in college and absolutely fell in love with it. I love Hardy's biting wit and often humorous writing style. The characters are well developed and easy to relate to.

hopeingod · Post by **hopeingod** » 08 Apr 2014, 03:57

Thomas Hardy is my favorite Victorian era writer, although I was more impressed with "Tess" and "Jude," than I was "Far From." His short stories are a great read as well. The last ten or so that I completed were all about romances won and lost, complete with descriptions and/or portrayals of the societal mores of those days. The one character thought by the reader to surely become the best, brightest, and more successful is not always the case in his books, and always, one must keep in mind his obsession with life's predestined situations and circumstances that were absolutely impossible to escape. An ever-present toiling against society's disapproval and lack of acknowledgement seems to be one of his themes.

Most appealing about Hardy is his strength of vocabulary. I find it a welcome challenge to list his use of words that are new to me, and look forward to uncovering them again in later pages. In another post, I provided a list of around twenty such words. The irony, of course, is that there were wonderfully educated and well read writers whose works were filled with an immense vocabulary in those days, all while illiteracy existed everywhere. A great gulf was fixed between the two, readers and non-readers, it appears. Plus, caste was a concern, which Hardy does a good job in presenting. Then, nobility was dying a slow death as a freer society and middle class crept onto the scene.

Sarah_Khan · Post by **Sarah_Khan** » 04 Apr 2016, 12:56

I just finished reading this book and I have to say once I got over the tedious descriptions and the kind of hard to comprehend dialogue of Bathsheba's workers, I really enjoyed the story. Personally for me, I thought the plot was well paced and I didn't find it boring. I couldn't quite make out if I actually liked or disliked some of the main characters but either way I enjoyed reading about them.

Also, throughout the book, Thomas Hardy wrote entertaining wittisms that I will probably end up quoting some time in the future.

VSuraj · Post by **VSuraj** » 10 May 2020, 11:06

This is one book that has mentioned a lot by my literature colleagues at university in T&T. Some of them aren't big on classics but they seem to like this one by Hardy. I haven't read it yet but I'll definitely include it on my list after seeing the good reviews here.