Stumbling weakly, she comes to a haystack and falls asleep beneath it. Upon waking, she thinks she may be dead by the time she is to meet Troy.
In the meantime Bathsheba and Troy argue she notices a curl of yellow hair in his watch and asks him about it. He explains that it belongs to "a young woman I was going to marry before I knew you." After she demands that he burn it and he refuses, Bathsheba bursts into great sobs, hating herself for being so weak as to fall for Troy.
Poorgrass then approaches Bathsheba with the news that Fanny Robin is dead from an unknown cause. As the chapter continues, Bathsheba begins to suspect that Fanny Robin is the woman Troy had loved and that she has died giving birth to a child.
The chapter also shows Troy and Bathsheba at arguing. Troy asks for gambling money, and Bathsheba begs him not
to go to the races. He clearly indicates he will do what he wants, despite her wishes. The marriage between the two is then seriously threatened by Bathsheba's discovery that Troy is Fanny's lover. Ironically, the dead Fanny is a more successful rival of Bathsheba than the living Fanny. As the living Fanny was too weak to stand in Bathsheba’s way. Fanny becomes the final wedge into the crack that has been widening in the marriage between Bathsheba and
Troy.
Chapter 42 describes Joseph Poorgrass's journey from Casterbridge with the body.
Gabriel is eager to keep the truth from Bathsheba, but by the time he reaches the farm, the parson has postponed the funeral to the following morning and asks Gabriel to leave the coffin in the farm for the night; Gabriel reluctantly brings it to a sitting room for the night. Before he leaves, he partially rubs off the chalk marks on the coffin, which read "Fanny Robin and child," leaving only the name "Fanny Robin."
Ironically, Bathsheba’s kindness and charity to a woman she does not know result in her learning about her husband's involvement with the woman. In contrast to Bathsheba, Troy has not accepted responsibility and his postponement of helping Fanny has had tragic results. Troy's realisation and remorse are yet to come.
Hardy waits until this section to give his readers any insight into the workings of Troy and Bathsheba's marriage. He leaves us to imagine for ourselves the quality of their life together, based on a few conversations. Through Troy's harsh words to her, we see how weak she has become after maintaining such independence for so long. However once Bathsheba and Troy see Fanny, I think the physical positions of the characters is very symbolic. Bathsheba is high up on the horse while Troy is below her holding the reins and the whip and fanny is on the floor. I think this shows their status in society and I think Hardy is also implying that even thought Troy is know Bathsheba’s husband he still only looks like a “well made young man” in a “farmers marketing suit.”
Chapter 42 is notably slower in pace than other chapters in this novel, and Hardy's description of Fanny's intense exhaustion painstakingly depicts every step that Fanny has to take, as well as the heaviness of her body, making us feel them with her. Throughout the novel, the sections dealing with Fanny talk about her as the type of person who one should feel for and help but due to the way society was at the time people treated her terribly and at the end it was a dog that helped her before she died.
But much of this section centres on Bathsheba's attempt to solve the mystery of Fanny Robin's relationship to Troy, and Hardy carefully structures the narrative to keep his readers in suspense, as well. We do not know of Fanny's death until Bathsheba does: The narrative leaves Fanny in Casterbridge, and on Monday morning, Troy leaves, presumably to meet Fanny, but we hear nothing more of him even once we know that Fanny is dead. Hardy's most powerful tension-building device is his plodding description of Poorgrass' trip with the coffin: He gives us detailed accounts of the men's conversation at Buck's Head, which does nothing to advance the . While the whole time the reader must wait, waiting to hear how Fanny died, wondering if something might happen to her untended coffin outside, wondering where Troy is, whether he yet knows of Fanny's death, and anticipating Bathsheba's imminent discovery of Fanny and Troy's previous relations.
In addition to building tension, by describing every step of her journey. For example when she made herself crutches “she placed one of these forks under each arm as a crutch, tested them, timidly threw her whole weight upon them-so little that it was-…” Poorgrass' comic drinking scene offers insight into the leisure time of the labourers. On a more profound level, this episode analyses the effect of chance and circumstance on human lives. Had Poorgrass gone straight home, the funeral would have occurred that day, the coffin would never have lay waiting in the sitting room, and Bathsheba might never have suffered under the knowledge she is about to attain: that Fanny died giving birth to Troy's child.
Because is not only is she independent in spirit, she is independent financially; this allows Hardy to use her character to explore the danger that such a woman faces of losing her identity and lifestyle through marriage.
At the beginning of the novel she is an independent woman, but by falling in love with Troy, she nearly destroys her life. Similarly, Hardy presents us with many couples in which one partner is more in love than the other is, for example Bathsheba and Boldwood. He also shows what disastrous events result from this inequality.
In contrast fanny is a young orphaned servant girl at the farm yet troy managed to capture both their hearts. I think the only similarity between the two girls is their innocence and naivety which made them both fall for troy as they could not see past his “nice boy” exterior.
Likewise Bathsheba catches the hearts of three very different men due to her beauty and individuality.
Troy is the less responsible male equivalent of . He is also handsome, vain, and young. I think because of the two characters similar nature there was an initial attraction between them but as their marriage progressed this became their weakness, as they are both very strong characters it caused many arguments between them. For example Bathsheba did not give up when asking about the blonde hair that she found finally Troy says, “yes, there now that you have wormed it out of me I hope that you are content.” This shows that both characters like to get their own way, which will never allow the relationship between them to continue.
However, I think the reason why Fanny and Troy continued to love each other throughout the novel despite everything they both went through is the fact that Fanny’s character is not so strong so Troy becomes the leader of the relationship and she is the follower. As they both know their place within the relationship thus avoiding many disagreements that I would imagine Troy and Bathsheba to have had. Another difference between Troy and Fanny’s relationship, and Bathsheba and Troy’s relationship, is that Troy and Fanny were truly in love for a reasonable time before they made the decision to get married. Whereas when Troy began to know Bathsheba it was simply because of her beauty and wit and like wise she fell for him because he quickly realised that she is extremely susceptible to flattery (and jealousy) she has a deeply emotional nature and a highly romantic temperament. Therefore knew exactly how to act around her and what to say.
Unlike the less experienced farmer oak and Boldwood who could not capture Bathsheba’s heart due to their lack of confidence around women. Troy thought he could be the leader in the relationship and saw the marriage as a good way to raise his status in society and for him to live comfortable. Unfortunately Bathsheba had truly fallen in love with him despite the warning she received from farmer oak, who we later on discover was her saviour in many ways. I think the fact that Bathsheba ends up marrying farmer oak and at the end we also discover that after everything Troy was still in love with Fanny emphasises to the reader one of Hardy’s main themes that true love persists and wins.
