NovelVictorian · 1874Study guide · no full textSteady

Far from the Madding Crowd

Hardy's warmest novel: rural work is described with real attention, and Bathsheba's independence is treated as a fact rather than a problem.

Love Nature Gender Class

Study guide

This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language chiefly made by men.”

The cast, in the Character Atlas →Literary devices →Where it sits in time →

Go deeper

Class — how other works handle it →Love — how other works handle it →

Now read the first page with all of this in mind.

The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.

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