Throughout the novel Hardy often relates his characters to their surroundings, using nature to mirror their moods and comment on their characters. He does this two ways, firstly for the character i.e. Bathsheba when she meets Troy ‘ it was gloomy there at cloudless noontide…black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight’. It is no coincidence that they meet in the dark, as it represents that Troy is a man of the night, and very mysterious, some of his less respectable qualities hidden in the dark from Bathsheba, coming out only after their marriage.
Secondly he also use large, impressive scenes, for important chapters, like the fire when Gabriel meets Bathsheba again, ‘individual shows in the fore ground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms’ and also at the storm, when Troy has let Bathsheba down, and Gabriel is risking his lie to save her fortune, ‘light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent wings crossing the sky’ each word is carefully picked to add drama, and bring attention to the important chapters.
Each character represents a type of Victorian woman, Fanny represents what was the called a ‘fallen’ woman. These were the women who strayed off the track before marriage and generally speaking, were depicted as sitting under a bridge clutching a baby, to their chest. This could possibly have been placed as a warning or in sympathy to female readers. Fanny’s name is also significant, in the way it is used to illustrate another part of her character. A robin (Fanny’s last name) is a vulnerable bird associated with winter, which could possibly be how Hardy wished us to think of her. Although it seems Hardy only compliments Bathsheba, he does recognize Fanny’s honesty and bravery although in a more backhand way. At the beginning when Hardy makes references to Fanny she is depicted only as a name or mainly just the girl, ‘“yes” said the girl’ She is treated by Troy as an infant ‘don’t cry now! It is foolish. If I said I’d marry you of course I will’ this could be another reference to Fanny’s vulnerability.
Bathsheba contains a very rare quality of that time, independence. She is well aware she shall have to marry but will keep trying to delay the inevitable. The name Bathsheba also has a biblical origin: in the Old Testament, she is the wife of Uriah, a soldier of King David. From his rooftop, David admired her beauty and seduced her while her husband was away. When his attempt to make Uriah seem responsible for the child, failed, he arranged for him to be killed, David then married Bathsheba. In many ways this is very closely linked to Bathsheba’s own story. Boldwood is most like king David, eying her beauty, and Troy like Uriah, Boldwood’s only obstacle in getting to Bathsheba, whom he does kill in the end.
Colour, is referred to in Bathsheba and Troy’s marriage like when they meet ‘was brilliant in brass and scarlet’ scarlet can represent many things like lust or blood or most prominent of all impending danger. It is also from when they first meet we see how shallow they are ‘he caught a view of her face… with new born gallantry’ the first thing they take in is looks as though nothing else matters. It is through their relationship with Troy that we see they are not so different after all they both fall for the same man happy and content with the boyish charming face he offers them, none of them knowing anything really about the men they were or are destined to marry.
The male characters also present three different personalities, each offering a different lifestyle. Gabriel offers a partnership; Boldwood offers a marriage of convenience and Troy one of lust. Again through the men and the women’s choices we do begin to have an insight into what drives these women. It is through these relationships you get the feeling that Hardy sympathizes with the woman, though by our standards they do put up with more than their fair share of sexism and chauvinism. But in the end (despite Fanny’s death) Bathsheba does fall in love with the right man; and through all that happens it is never really the women’s fault, it is just the men and they way they grieve over such matters, the only fault the women have, is that they are too trusting.
The novel presents an almost tainted view of the social reality of the 1840s, as Hardy is writing in the 1870s, but even through this we do see what it was like to live in that period as a woman. It was the women that were the oppressed, that faced more challenges, unable to earn a decent living just because they were born a female. And in many countries facing death from their first breath, being left upon the hillside to die and although in England things were never so drastic Hardy highlights the un fairness.
Speaking in a language made for men, was a very difficult thing, it is through Hardy’s novel we see this. Life was hard for women, the men being able to spend their money, like Troy and his squandering of Bathsheba inheritance, and he can because she is, for lack of a better word, his property. Even through the action of the characters, especially the males, you can see how difficult it was for a female in the 1840’s society, the stir Bathsheba cause when she walks into the farmers market ‘for at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every face turned towards her’ and again at the farmers market your attention is brought to the fact she is the only woman there ‘the single one of her sex that the room contained’ a sign that woman were not readily accepted in the farming world, or any place that had money as its bases.
So in conclusion to be a woman in 1840’s based on Hardy’s description would have been a very trying experience, a woman’s role was to be dressed up in pretty clothes and displayed, never to do anything but sit at home and do the needle work, never to go and try something different. To be seen and not heard.