Far from the madding crowd - Show how Hardy helps his readers to understand Gabriel's character and his relationship with Bathsheba through the way he deals with disasters in the novel.

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G.S.C.E. English / English Literature Prose Study

Show how Hardy helps his readers to understand Gabriel's character and his relationship with Bathsheba through the way he deals with disasters in the novel

   The name Thomas Hardy gives to the hero of his novel, Far From the Madding Crowd, is not merely accidental.  Hardy deliberately means to associate Gabriel Oak with the Angel Gabriel.  God's hero lit up the darkness, and it is important for the reader to note that when Hardy's hero saves a situation from having disastrous consequences, nearly every time he does so in darkness.  Gabriel's name is very significant in relation to his character, but he is not just meant to be a holy saint, whose sole purpose is to pour oil on troubled waters.  He is a very real person with very human feelings, and this becomes obvious as his relationship with Bathsheba grows.

   To understand how the relationship between the two main characters has changed at the end of the novel, I need to explain how their relationship began.  Previous to chapter four, Gabriel has seen and talked to Bathsheba on quite a few occasions, not least when she saves him from suffocation in chapter three.  By chapter four, Gabriel has developed a deep love for Bathsheba and waits for her presence in strikingly the same way as "his dog waited for his meals".  He is so captivated by her that he changes his opinion of an attractive woman to suit her features - such as "turning his taste over to black hair, though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy."  Gabriel decides that marriage is better than his life of solitary isolation, a life which he has always lived quite comfortably before the arrival of Bathsheba, and declares "I'll make her my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!"

   Using a motherless lamb as an excuse to visit Bathsheba to ask for her hand in marriage, he sets off for her aunt's house on "a fine January morning" having made "a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind".  He arrives in hopeful spirits, but it is not Bathsheba that he talks to - it is her aunt, Mrs Hurst.  Gabriel's modesty comes through in his conversation with Bathsheba's aunt, and he leaves, mistakenly believing that Bathsheba has "ever so many young men" after her.

   However, as he is walking back along the down, he turns around to discover Bathsheba running after him.  Erroneously he believes that she has chased after him to accept his proposal, so when she only wants to tell him that her aunt had made a mistake in saying she had several young sweethearts, he is understandably dismayed.  

   Bathsheba has quite a flirtatious disposition and toys with Gabriel's feelings.  She likes the fact that Gabriel has asked her to be his wife and leads him to believe that she will marry him, but rejects him when he starts to talk about the more serious aspects of a marriage.  She would love the frills of a wedding, such as "nice flowers" and the church, but would only want to be a bride "if I could be one without having a husband."  This is rather similar to the attitude of Maggie in the more recent film, Runaway Bride.  

   In comparison to Bathsheba, Gabriel stays true to his feelings the whole time.  We can see that he is genuinely in love with Bathsheba and is being completely honest with her - "I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die."  It would take a lot of courage for a woman to say this to the person she loves, let alone a man, and Bathsheba replies by basically saying he isn't enough of a man to tame her.  She only sees Gabriel as an "every-day sort of man", neither attractive enough nor exciting enough to be with.  She cannot yet see that, ultimately, the only man who will be able to tame her is an "every-day sort of man".

   They are saying all of this to each other while standing either side of a hollybush, which acts as a barrier between the two.  The prickly holly leaves represent how prickly their relationship is at this point in the novel.  When you touch a holly leaf, you invariably hurt yourself, and this compares to Gabriel and Bathsheba.  Whenever one of them says something to the other, they always end up hurting them.

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   The main difference between Gabriel and Bathsheba at this point in their relationship is that Gabriel respects Bathsheba and her feelings.  Bathsheba does not take into account how much she is hurting Gabriel by laughing at him when he tells her how much he loves her.  But although this offends Gabriel, he still has the manners to respect the fact that she doesn't want to marry him.

   Gabriel is dejected by Bathsheba's refusal and when he learns that she has left Norcombe to go to Weatherbury thinks that nothing else can go wrong, but the worse is ...

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