“Taint a master, it’s a mistress.”
Bathsheba breaks into power and choice. She tells her workmen and maids that just because she is a woman, they will not get away with anything and that she will be up before them all. Again, this demonstrates her power. Fanny moves in the opposite direction to Bathsheba. Fanny enters the sub stratum of the workhouse where homeless and destitute people go. She dies in the workhouse after being rejected by Troy. The tragedy of her life is cut short. For Bathsheba the novel moves towards happiness, but for Fanny the novel moves towards tragedy. Yet not everybody agrees that Bathsheba is happy at the end of the novel. She works to a period of happiness after great sadness, but her conscience still plagues her with guilt, as Troy is dead. Moreover, Boldwood is in a lunatic asylum all because of her unthinking valentine prank “Marry Me.” I believe Bathsheba does achieve happiness with Gabriel but it is hard won, and this happiness is not unalloyed. There is a shadow over it,
“and Bathsheba smiled (for she never laughed readily now),
Bathsheba is exceedingly unconventional and ahead of her time. She is not a Victorian woman she is more a modern woman. We can see her lack of conventional behaviour when she rides on horseback and her lack of conventional views when she refuses Gabriel’s proposal. Bathsheba does not want to be dominated by a man she wants to be independent. To do this Bathsheba had to overcome a great deal of male prejudice, as males believed that only males could become farmers. To become a mistress Bathsheba had to overcome the rustics. Whenever they met in Warren’s Malt house they criticized her for not having a bailiff. To overcome this Bathsheba had to show courage and be astute. She had to make decisions, for example hiring and sacking those working for her. She showed financial astuteness when she decided to visit the Corn market and would not be cheated. Bathsheba excites a good deal of interest and admiration in the Corn Exchange but Hardy reminds us that it was “unquestionably a triumph to her as the maiden” and not as a result of her bartering skills. Bathsheba had determination to involve herself,
“I shall be up before you awake; I shall be afield before you
are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield.
In short, I shall astonish you all.”
Bathsheba chose to dispense with the bailiff and decided that she would go round the farm each night checking that everything was secure. This was very courageous of Bathsheba.
However, she thought that she did not need masculine aid but this was not the case as she had to have help from Gabriel when the sheep were blown up from eating the clover, when the ricks were on fire and when the ricks needed protecting during the storm. But Bathsheba is successful as she dominates the lives of the men and she has power over them. The men are always talking about her; she dominates their conversations as well as their lives,
“ A headstrong maid, that’s what she is and won’t listen to no advice at all“
and
“ I don’t see why a maid should take a husband
when she’s bold enough to fight her own battles, and don’t
want a home; for ‘tis keeping another woman out. But let it
be, for ‘tis a pity he and she should trouble two houses.”
The gossip is lively but embraces her virtues as well as her faults.
We have a new type of woman here, a modern woman, who Hardy admires for her audacity, but there is no sacrifice to her femininity. She is still flirtatious, capricious, charming, sensitive and vain but she is headstrong. For example we see the flirtatious side of her when she rescues Oak from near –suffocation as a result of his carelessness in leaving the ventilation shutters of his lambing shed closed. She says to him,
“ I would just as soon not tell it –rather not. There is no reason either why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with me.”
Bathsheba would not tell Gabriel her name. She told him that he would have to find out from her aunt. We see how vain Bathsheba is when she is gazing into her looking glass whilst on the back of a moving wagon. She is surrounded by “tables and chairs with their legs upwards,” but when no – body is looking “and the only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up and down the perches of its prison.” she took the time to unwrap the package and surveyed herself attentively,
“She parted her lips and smiled.”
It is, then, this vanity, which makes Bathsheba want to break Boldwood’s reserve – he is the only man in the Corn Exchange who pays her no attention. This is also what makes her succumb so easily to Troy’s flattery. Hardy speaks of vanity as “woman’s prescriptive infirmity”: that is, a weakness, which only women suffer from. Yet, we also see Bathsheba sensitivity, as she is genuinely sorry when she realises the damage she has done by sending the valentine to Boldwood and is prepared to sacrifice herself to him in a marriage that, at best, would be founded on guilt and duty. We see Bathsheba’s charm at the end of the novel when she goes to apologise to Gabriel and ask him to marry her,
Bathsheba: “But you will never know,”
Gabriel Oak: “Why?”
Bathsheba: “Because you never ask.”
Bathsheba has the best and the worst of femininity. She is a woman ahead of her time but she is still very much a woman.
By Contrast, Fanny’s course is downward while Bathsheba’s is upward. Fanny breaks the sexual laws and pays the harsh price for this; this is that she herself is broken. Fanny is helpless when she traipses to the barracks to convince Troy that they must get married and when she waits at the wrong church for Troy. Fanny knows that if Troy does not marry her she will be a social outcast; this results in her begging Troy. Here Hardy is showing how helpless women were in Victorian times. Hardy is also telling us that there was a double standard in Victorian times. This is that sexual looseness is a source of amusement and admiration for men, in this case Frank, but for women, in this case Fanny it wrecks their life.
Fanny becomes a person of no account, which shows society’s coldness. She disappears and to get to the workhouse Fanny has to depend on a dog. Fanny was dependant on a dumb creature. This is a very visual chapter as the dog is the only thing that helped Fanny and then it was stoned away,
“”I stoned him away,” said the man.”
The dog that helped Fanny is a stray just like her. Hardy uses the dog as a symbol for Fanny because the are both rejected and badly treated: the dog was stoned, Fanny was left by Troy.
There is the utter desolation of the barracks and the workhouse in these scenes. Hardy sympathises with Fanny but has great contempt for Troy and the workhouse officials who treated her so badly. Hardy has no contempt for Fanny’s loss of her virginity but he says that Fanny was too trusting to the wrong man.
There are various views of marriage discussed in the novel at first, which affect Hardy’s portray of women. Bathsheba sees marriage in terms of the battle of the sexes, marriage and triumph for the woman. This is a very immature view:
“People would talk about me and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that.”
It is immature as a battle may only be a short-lived victory. Oak on the other hand has a very different view of marriage. He sees it as constancy and stability,
“Whenever you look up, there I shall be – and whenever
I look up, there will be you.”
Oak does not think of marriage as a competition like Bathsheba. He believes that it is much more serious. Hardy sees marriage as changing a distraction into strength. He thinks that in pursuit one cannot think about anything else. All one thinks about is capture and leading him on. This then changes from a distraction to strength and support. Yet Frank Troy sees marriage in a cynical light; he thinks that all romance ends in marriage. The rustics see a husband as someone to fight the battle for women, as stereotypical women are frail, fragile, caring, in need of looking after and that their main role in life is as a housewife. They believe that the main reason for marriage was for strength; so that the man could protect the woman, make her decisions and work to bring money into the family. To the men Bathsheba’s marriage will mean surrendering her independence,
“I don’t see why a maid should take a husband when she’s
bold enough to fight her own battles,”
Bathsheba herself knows this and it disturbs her. Bathsheba does not feel ready for marriage. She wants to be independent. Bathsheba receives her first proposal from Boldwood,
“I come to make you an offer of marriage.”
Yet Bathsheba does not want to be married. In Victorian times when his novel was written marriage was viewed as a highly desirable state in most women’s view, but this was not the case for Bathsheba. She did not want to get married. The novelty of her position had not yet worn off. Bathsheba shared the view of the rustics and treasures her independence. She sees no need to marry. Moreover Bathsheba would be reluctant to marry without love, she would not settle for status alone.
Three suitors, each of whom is very different from the other, pursue Bathsheba Everdene and shape her life as a woman. These three men are Farmer William Boldwood, owner of the farm adjacent to Bathsheba’s, Gabriel Oak, bankrupt farmer who becomes Bathsheba’s shepherd, and later, bailiff, and Sergeant Francis Troy, a young soldier. All three of these men want to conquer Bathsheba’s independence, though all three claim that it is in the name of love. Yet Love means different things to each of these suitors. To Gabriel, love means putting Bathsheba first and being faithful and loyal to her; to Boldwood love means satisfying his obsession and his own needs and to Troy love means using Bathsheba. He wants to enjoy her physically and spend her money. First it is a challenge, then a desire for her body and finally her money which motivates him. Initially with Gabriel Bathsheba some girlish qualities are well depicted. For example when she was edging around the holly bush when
Gabriel proposed to her,
“Miss Everdene. Will you marry me?”
She is very flirtatious,
“But I suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it?
You may if you want to.”
Bathsheba is very immature and not serious. This is shown when she tells Gabriel that she wants a marriage so that she can have her name put in the paper, but that she does not want a husband! She is a headstrong employer, as she likes to dictate to Gabriel and all the other employees. Bathsheba also has an ambivalent attitude: she does not love Gabriel but she doesn’t like it if she feels that he no longer loves her. This is a little perverse. Bathsheba is no longer an object of affection, Gabriel wins her respect. Boldwood sees the best and worst of Bathsheba’s womanliness. He sees her flirtatiousness the caprice of the valentine but he also sees Bathsheba’s good points. Bathsheba sent the letter to Boldwood on impulse; she did not what the consequences of this act would be,
“So very idly and unrelentingly was this deed done. Of
love as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge;
but of love subjectively she knew nothing.”
Here Hardy is suggesting that Bathsheba, like all women, is governed by an unthinking impulse. She has the intelligence to reason things out but too often allows impulsive behaviour to override it – hence the valentine and her ill –advised marriage to Troy because she was (as she confessed to Oak) “jealous and distracted”. Hardy calls this kind of behaviour “womanly impulse”.
Bathsheba’s good points are her strength: after the inanity of the valentine Boldwood sees that she has enough conscience and principle to stand by it. Few women would trouble themselves with this,
“she had a strong feeling that, having been the one who
began the game, she ought in honesty to accept the
consequences. Still the reluctance remained. She said
in the same breath that it would be ungenerous not to
marry Boldwood, and that she couldn’t do it to save her life.”
Bathsheba is a girl of strong moral beliefs. She knew that she must make the forfeit and say that she will marry him. She was prepared to live a life of self - sacrifice.
However, with Troy, a new aspect of Bathsheba is revealed. We learn that she has strong passionate sexual desires. The unusualness of Hardy’s treatment of this at this time in history was astounding. Victorians could not believe that Hardy found it acceptable for women to have sexual desires. They also would not believe that he then treated this with sympathy.
Troy, to show his feelings to Bathsheba performs the sword – play in the hollow amidst the ferns. This scene contains phallic symbolism. This is Hardy’s way of getting around the conventions of the time. At the beginning of the novel Bathsheba said,
“I need someone to tame me.”
Here Bathsheba was boasting that she is a strong woman. The irony is that she did not mean what she said but Troy got the better of her. Troy has power over her because of the physical attraction,
“I love you better than she did: kiss me too, Frank – kiss
me! You will, Frank, kiss me too!”
Bathsheba is being tamed by Troy,
“He turned to Fanny then. ‘ But never mind, darling,’
he said; ‘in the sight of heaven you are my very wife.’”
and
“’You are nothing to me – nothing.’ Said Troy heartlessly.
‘ A ceremony before a priest doesn’t make a marriage.
I am not morally yours.’”
At this point Bathsheba has been truly tamed and beaten into submission. Troy’s power over Bathsheba is her love and physical attraction for him. On the night of revelation over Fanny’s coffin there is a sympathetic description of Bathsheba’s suffering. Bathsheba was so horrified by what Frank had said that she could not bear to stay in the house. She left the house and spent the night in a damp, wet and cold swamp. If the dog is a symbol for Fanny, a “caged leopard” is the symbol for Bathsheba. A leopard (Bathsheba) is meant to be free and it is wrong for one to be caged up. It is morally wrong just like it is morally wrong for Troy to trap Bathsheba in a marriage only for lust and money. Bathsheba shows great desperation at being conquered and she realises the full force of being tamed. She has lost her independence to a man whom she knows is not worthy of her. Bathsheba was proud of her chastity and she thought that she was superior to other girls, who were silly for men and willing to submit to them,
“a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of
a maiden existence to become the humble half of an
indifferent matrimonial whole.”“
At the end of the novel we wonder whether it is triumph or defeat for Bathsheba. Bathsheba likes Gabriel but unlike Boldwood and Troy she learns to cope with suffering and to profit from it. Bathsheba grows up in this novel and in the course of the novel she encounters much pain and suffering. For example she experiences long months of loneliness when Troy has gone away and when he died. During these times she simply stayed in her room. By the end of the novel Bathsheba is very different from the beginning. She becomes a more serious, thoughtful and caring girl. She has to learn to swallow her pride and tell Gabriel that she wants him. Bathsheba is rewarded with a good man and a good marriage, which is built on friendship, trust and extensive knowledge of each other, including the best and worst of each other’s character. Hardy’s point is that they know each other in a practical way as they are work partners and so they can trust each other. They can depend on each other and have the security that Bathsheba needs,
“This good –fellowship – camaraderie – usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely …… that loves which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.”
Bathsheba’s marriage is a good marriage as there are no illusions and romantic notions. In Victorian times a woman status depended on her marriage, this shows us that luck is in Bathsheba’s way. On the other hand there is something inescapably sad. She only smiles, she does not laugh now. Bathsheba is truly in a traditional role now: she is dependent on a man (Gabriel), she has long since lost interest, in the farm which she used to check each night and she takes no part in the farms running. Hardy’s words point towards Bathsheba in triumph but the mood points towards Bathsheba in defeat. Still, for all that, Hardy is remarkable in his treatment of women, his understanding, compassion, respect and equality for the most part. But perhaps the implications of the final ambiguous image show him a Victorian at heart. Bathsheba has a lightweight personality and is lucky indeed to have won Gabriel.
