After being beaten down, Gabriel Oak continues his daily life in the village, always being there for anyone who needed help, and watching patiently as Boldwood and Troy queue up for marriage with Bathsheba. This carries on for most of the book, until Oak lets on to Bathsheba that he is to depart to California, and asks her whether she would allow him to love her and to marry her eventually. At the end of the book, the wedding arrangements were being made, and Bathsheba says she would like "The most private, secret, plainest wedding that is possible to have", which I am sure Oak would have been happy with.
The second character in the novel which I shall look at is Farmer William Boldwood who is a great contrast to Troy, a first he seemed not to care for Bathsheba at all. From the time when Boldwood had ignored her in the market-place, until he sent the Valentine card he had no interest whatsoever in Bathsheba. He was perceived as a cold, distant figure who had become cynical about women. But when the card was sent, he found himself falling wildly, and eventually madly, in love with her. He talked to Bathsheba for long periods at a time, often interrupted by a jealous Gabriel, but he was mistaken in thinking that she really did want to marry him. She discouraged him as gently as possible, her heart ‘swelling with sympathy for the deep-natured man who spoke so simply’. Bathsheba’s simple Valentine card joke had tragically triggered off deep and dangerous passions which neither she nor Boldwood were aware of.
She eventually told him to wait and he would tell him her answer in a month or two and before this time was up, she had come to like him and enjoy his company so much that she might possibly have married him, until Troy arrived. When he heard that this man had taken ‘his Bathsheba’ away for him, he swelled with anger. He often confronted and challenged Troy, barely able to control his rage. In all he was too serious about his relationship with Bathsheba, believing that she should be his, and paying no attention to her private feelings. He was basically utterly selfish in his love for her. The intensity of his passions for her was very strange and some people feared for his mental health, especially since his grand-father was said to be a bit ‘queer in the head’.
When Bathsheba did finally become involved with Troy, Boldwood confronted Bathsheba, pleading with her to reverse her decision not to marry him, but she obstinately refused.
After Troy disappeared, being presumed dead, Boldwood saw this as his big chance to win back Bathsheba, his obsession for her reaching a peak. Up until six months before Christmas Day, he pestered her, urging her to accept that she was a widow and now free to marry him. When she said that she would think about it until the day she agreed to give her decision, he steered well clear of her, feeling that being in the way more could affect the outcome of her decision. Unknown to her, he was making secret wedding plans as if he was certain of what her decision would be, or perhaps his obsession with her would not allow there to be any other answer.
When Troy finally returned that fateful night, Boldwood’s desperation for Bathsheba caused him to reach for his shotgun, his mental instability clearly showing itself. After this, Boldwood was promptly arrested, charged with murder and sentenced to death, though this sentence was later quashed on the grounds of insanity. I think that Boldwood would have made a very good husband for Bathsheba if it were not for Troy’s ‘interfering’ causing him to feel rejected and finally cause him to lose his sanity completely.
Francis Troy was the third of the men to propose to Bathsheba. Troy lacks all understanding of time and exists in a brilliant immediacy which either dazzles people, or makes them suspicious of him. He siezes upon Fanny's unpunctuality as an excuse to abandon her at the altar and arrives in Bathshebas life instantaneously. He is central in the most exciting chapters of the book, 'The Hollow amid the Ferns' and 'Fanny's Revenge'. They are a dazzling display of literary prowess and present perfect symbolism and complete melodrama. 'The Hollow amd the Ferns' is one of the greatest seduction scenes in the history of English writing. Troy is good at seduction but no good at saving himself from the result of it. Pure callousness saves him from marriage to Fanny and little more than greed attracts him to Bathsheba. But he does not come across as all bad in the book, every year he would come home and help with the harvest, was always very charming to the women, and was a great swordsman. Troy says to Bathsheba while showing off his skills as a swordsman, "They are rather deathy. Now I'll be more interesting, and let you see some loose play-giving all the cuts and points, infantry and cavalry, quicker than lightning, and as promiscuously - with just enough rule to relegate instinct and yet not to fetter it. You are my antagonist, with this difference from real warfare, that I shall miss you every time by one hairs breadth, or perhaps two. Mind you don't flinch, whatever you do." That was his type of flirting, and it made her feel threatened, putting Troy in control - where he wanted to be. Although he is charming he would never let people know what he was really like.
Troy and Bathsheba's secret and hasty marriage shocked many of the village people who had not known that they were together and genuinely believed that she should have married Boldwood instead. She dismissed all talk that the marriage was to be doomed, and even stopped Gabriel from saying a word about it - "now I don’t wish for a single remark from you upon the subject - indeed, I forbid it."
Troy also had frequent outbursts with Boldwood on the subject of Bathsheba, before and after the marriage. In fact, while he was playing around with Bathsheba, even after the marriage, he failed to realise that both Blodwood and Gabriel were deeply serious about Bathsheba and would never treat her the ways in which Troy would never have thought of. This shows Troy’s over-confidence in how he treats women, thinking that what he does is the best any man can do.
Fanny followed him to Casterbridge, where she eventually died at the gates of the workhouse she was struggling to reach. Her body, weak and thin as it was, was taken to Bathsheba’s house and laid there for the night, child and all. When Bathsheba eventually did discover, she was too shocked to do anything and when she finally did talk to him, some truths about him had become apparent. She began to notice, even though she was been told before by her friends, that he had a number of vices, one of which was his gambling, something which she didn’t notice until they got married.
He often borrowed money from her to spend at racehorse tracks and almost always lost. Another was his drinking problem, which led to his irresponsibility. On return to the farm as its new owner, he organised a wedding celebration at which he got himself and all the simple rustics drunk. As a result, it was up to Bathsheba and Gabriel to save the ricks from burning while everybody was sleeping. These showed his true nature as an inadequate husband, thinking that he didn’t have to bother flirting with Bathsheba anymore now that they were married.
His final vice, and it turned out to be the most important, was his love of women. As Liddy has told Bathsheba, he was a "womaniser" who had "countless women under his thumb" and didn’t care a bit about how they felt, as long as he got what he wanted, especially when it came to leaving them. It became apparent later it the novel that his one true love was indeed Fanny Robin, the girl he had left for dead. When he tried to pay back the debt he felt he owed her by buying a gravestone for her, as well as laying flowers by her graveside, the weather destroyed what he had done, leaving him to believe that because of his abandonment of her he had been damned forever, and even worse he now abandoned a second woman, his wife Bathsheba.
When he disappeared after he had been presumed dead, he did not return for at least seven months and this shows his lack of concern for Bathsheba. At one point before this, he had become bored with her, and even said this to her face, "You are nothing to me - nothing," showing that he was not serious enough about their marriage.
In conclusion, it is obvious which one of these three male suitors was right for Bathsheba and that man is Gabriel Oak, who loved her genuinely, tenderly and patiently from the moment he first saw her to the very last line of the book. He had never given up on her, had never let her be harmed in anyway and always gave her advice which was sound and right, even if she refused to accept it. In the end, Bathsheba admitted to him that if he had only been more forward then he would have been he first choice if it had even come to that.
Troy was obviously the worst possible husband for her because of his gambling, drinking and womanising vices, but mainly because he still loved Fanny Robin. Bathsheba had just been a passing fancy whom he quickly tired of. Boldwood’s relationship with Bathsheba was much more genuine and acceptable at the start but tragically it became a fatal obsession for poor desperate Boldwood. Gabriel’s relationship with her was a lengthy one, tried and tested, totally unselfish. Bathsheba was indeed very fortunate that Gabriel was patient enough to wait until she matured enough to recognise his good qualities. As in most good stories, the best man wins in the end.
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