Far from the Madding Crowd

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Far from the Madding Crowd is a novel by 19th century English novelist Thomas Hardy, published in 1874. The title is apt, as the life of the book's heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, living in the quiet rural village of Weatherbury is indeed disrupted by the "madding crowd". After shunning the first man to love her, the shepherd Gabriel Oak, she is courted by two others: the lonely and repressed farmer Boldwood, and the charming but faithless Sergeant Troy. The role of fate is clearly established, with each twist and turn in the book being more luck than the choice of one of the characters. The book is widely seen as Hardy's first masterpiece.

The title is taken from Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:

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.

Far from the Madding Crowd is arguably Hardy's only non-tragic novel. It has a relatively happy end for the lead character, in sharp contrast to the endings of The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and his last novel Jude the Obscure. It might also, perhaps, be described as an early piece of feminist literature, since it deals with the life of an independent woman.

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