The role of nature in Far from the Madding Crowd.

 Nature : Its role in the Novel: Imaginary Wessex comes alive in the novel with its rich pastoral setting, the simple rustic, jolly characters and old traditions. Hardy goes back to early English history to understand the rural myths and beliefs, their traditions of farming and transposes them on to 19th century England under the reign of Queen Victoria. Hardy seeks a continuity of the past and the present. Hardy captures the age-old serenity and peace through his Wessex where society and Nature are in harmony. In this novel, Wessex is yet to come under the impact of the industrial revolution and Nature and man still live in close proximity to each other.

     Hardy also employs the Nature in the characters. For example, Gabriel Oak has the nature’s animated presence and its pristine purity its abundant generosity and its energy. Bathsheba also has the same, rooted in the rural soil, self-confident, vivacious and beautiful but an impulsive act makes her restless, agitated and thus needs the calming influence that Gabriel Oak offers.

     In the early part of the novel, Boldwood also represents the best of Nature in his disciplined and confident way of living far from the madding emotions of love and passion, jealousy and vengeful rage but Bathsheba’s playful and thoughtless note expressing her interest in changes him and in the later part he surrenders to passionate jealousy and kills Troy for coming in the way of his marriage to Bathsheba. He goes against his natural traits and gets out of tune with Nature.

     Oak remains calm and seeks nothing after Bathsheba rejects his proposal. He works for her selflessly, looks after her personal interest and her farm. On the other hand, Boldwood gets jolted out of his calm and gentle nature when he starts loving Bathsheba mistaking her impetuous request to marry her as genuine and turns violent which is against the Nature. He shoots Troy when he returns, perhaps thinking that he will hinder his proposed marriage to Bathsheba. Tray is the anti-thesis of nature showing the city-country clash as he represents the city’s superficiality and shallowness in contrast to the country’s naturalness and wholesomeness. His agitation, his restlessness and flirtatious behaviour are a contrast to the quietness, tranquility and serenity of the Nature.

     The title of the novel, “Far from the Madding Crowd”, has been taken from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” ‘Madding’ means frenzied and the tile implies that the countryside presented in the novel is far from the hurly burly of the city. Hardy shows the peace in the countryside, which gets breached by the man from the town who intrudes into the lives of Bathsheba, Boldwood and Fanny. All the characters get wrecked by Troy. Nature’s tranquility represented by Gabriel Oak later restores peace at the end making the novel complete.

     Gabriel remains the same despite ups and downs. He faces disasters like the loss of his entire flock of sheep, rejection of his marriage proposal by Bathsheba and his instinctive anxiety about her relationship with Troy. Despite all these, he continues to work and remains loyal to Bathsheba and feels responsible for her wellbeing.

     The calm pastoral landscape is set against the turmoil and conflict among men. Hardy shows how the one who is able to navigate through vicissitudes of natural disaster triumphs at the end. It was a sudden disaster for Gabriel Oak when he loses all his sheep and he is forced out of his home to go in search of a job. He gets a job when he puts out a fire in Bathsheba’s farm and later he saves a group of lambs from being poisoned by clover. He is depicted a man of the soil and is skilled to navigate around natural disasters.

     Troy is a contrast as he cannot face Nature’s storm that washes away the flowers he had planted over Fanny’s grave. He is dissatisfied after his marriage to Bathsheba. He is surprised at Bathsheba’ willingness to marry him and marries her not out of genuine feelings of love, but to show off to the poor, innocent villagers his prize catch and that too won by outsmarting Boldwood. After the wedding, he celebrates by getting drunk along with the wonderstruck workers in Bathsheba’s farm. Troy’s behaviour leads to a tragic disaster.

     When the storm breaks out when Troy and the farm labourers are in a drunken stupor, Bathsheba joins Gabriel to race against time and safeguard all their farm produce. Hardy uses nature as a premonition, as a clue to understand the future of some relationships between different characters. For example, most of the time, Fanny appears alone. When she meets Gabriel for the first time, she is alone at night, she is fleeing Bathsheba’s house to ask Troy to marry her. She can be described as ‘darkness visible.’ She is no doubt betrayed by Troy but she is a victim of her fate as she misses out the church where she is supposed to marry him.

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