Far from the Madding Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

just as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his dog George.

Feminine energy responding to undesired masculine energy

Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure.

his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of opening.

(Calling one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs from a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and announcements, have no notion whatever.)

Seeing his advance take the form of an attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her person, she edged off round the bush.

He regarded the red berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that holly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposal of marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him. "No; 'tis no use," she said. "I don't want to marry you."

But a husband—" "Well!" "Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there he'd be."

Like Whoopi Goldberg saying she doesn't want someone living in her house

Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of honesty.

"Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?" she said, almost angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek. "I can't do what I think would be—would be—" "Right?" "No: wise."

He acknowldges that their marriage would not be wise. And yet... Yes, the narrator was correct in labeling love a weakness

I don't love you—so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with a laugh. No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of skittishness.

was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever.

Men are so fatalistic about unrequited or spurned love

the more emphatic the renunciation the less absolute its character.

Fuck. Ain't that the truth

It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail. Separation, which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain humours, is apt to idealize the removed object with others—notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long.

the fall of lambs

:(

The dog came up, licked his hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. The ewes lay dead and dying at its foot—a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more.

Youth, impulsivity, bravado

Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in mutton—that a day came and found every shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep. His first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs.

The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a phosphoric streak upon the water. All this Oak saw and remembered.

How could he ever forget?

George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day—another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Gabriel was paler now. His eyes were more meditative, and his expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away.

But it still gave him more than it took away. It tested his resilience and strength of character.

there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate

thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain.

Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose Shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the Weatherbury quarter.

This reminds me of Anne Hatheway's character in Interstellar, wanting to investigate her dead lover's planet because "love must mean something"

Inward melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present untoward page of his history.

It is impossible for introspective people to banish inward melancholy. "If you're conscious, you must be depressed/Or at least cynical"

Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to be more serious than he had at first imagined.

He has often been a spectator or voyeur thus far. This fire seems his call to action

Gabriel found that, far from being alone he was in a great company—whose shadows danced merrily up and down,

tarpaulin—quick!"

"Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?" She lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all astonishment. Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba Everdene, were face to face. Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed and sad voice,— "Do you want a shepherd, ma'am?"

So they have met twice around fire. Fate? Chance? Passion?

All was practical again now. A summer eve and loneliness would have been necessary to give the meeting its proper fulness of romance.

Ashtoreth

The fire before them wasted away.

Indeed, a return to the practical and away from passion/romance

some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.

"Only a shepherd," Gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality.

She extended her hand; Gabriel his. In feeling for each other's palm in the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident occurred which told much. Gabriel's fingers alighted on the young woman's wrist. It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity. He had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery of his lambs when overdriven. It suggested a consumption too great of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was already too little. "What is the matter?" "Nothing." "But there is?" "No, no, no! Let your having seen me be a secret!" "Very well; I will. Good-night, again." "Good-night."

Let this be the love story, please. Bathseba doesn't need to be seen or understod by Oak. But if Oak does not see this girl, she may just as well not exist

He fancied that he had felt himself in the penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile creature. But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this.

a young man about sixty-five,

Jacob

It may be observed that such a class of mug is called a God-forgive-me in Weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons; probably because its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of himself when he sees its bottom in drinking it empty.

Mark Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for.

"Don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at all. Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!"

Henry did not refuse. He was a man of more than middle age, with eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of the world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners at the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination. He always signed his name "Henery"—strenuously insisting upon that spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the second "e" was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply that "H-e-n-e-r-y" was the name he was christened and the name he would stick

Characterization of Henry: stubborn

Mr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man with a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose name had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and neighbouring parishes as best man and chief witness in countless unions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled the post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.

Characterization of Jan Coggan, maybe a popular guy with some dubious friends "baptisms of the subtly jovial type"

He secreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular parties.

Characterization of Mark Clark

"No—I've hardly looked at her at all," simpered Joseph, reducing his body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue prominence. "And when I seed her, 'twas nothing but blushes with me!"

Joseph Poorgrass is a simp

"Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?"

Can you stop "bashfulness"?

For ye see, shepherd, though 'tis very well for a woman, dang it all, 'tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?"

Women are expected to be timid and bashful... Which is why these traits are taboo in the man, Joseph Poorgrass

"Nater requires her swearing at the regular times, or she's not herself; and unholy exclamations is a necessity of life."

The pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would. He spoke to me in real tribulation about it once. 'Coggan,' he said, 'I could never wish for a handsomer woman than I've got, but feeling she's ticketed as my lawful wife, I can't help my wicked heart wandering, do what I will.' But at last I believe he cured it by making her take off her wedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name as they sat together after the shop was shut, and so 'a would get to fancy she was only his sweetheart, and not married to him at all. And as soon as he could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh, 'a got to like her as well as ever, and they lived on a perfect picture of mutel love."

Interesting. Like sinful desire is more tantalizing. We like to do the wrong thing

"The man's will was to do right, sure enough, but his heart didn't chime in."

"Crooked folk will last a long while," said the maltster, grimly, and not in the best humour.

Double meaning? Crooked also meaning corrupt/unethical?

ye must have a wonderful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?"

a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as "Susan Tall's husband."

Lol