Some Victorian readers condemned Bathsheba as a ‘hussy’ who did not deserve to win Gabriel as a husband. Do you agree?
Rachael Crewe 11Mt
Some Victorian readers condemned Bathsheba as a 'hussy' who did not deserve to win Gabriel as a husband. Do you agree???
In the dictionary, a 'hussy' is defined as: "woman of light or worthless character; pert girl." This definition, though being from a modern dictionary, I do not believe describes Bathsheba at all. Her character, being far from worthless, is strong, determined and often very stubborn.
At the beginning of the novel, Bathsheba is naïve and childish, thinking only of herself and her immediate future. She shows this in her rejection of Gabriel Oak in the fourth chapter:
'I hate to be thought of as men's property in that way, though possibly I shall be had someday.'
She does not think of Gabriel's feelings when she chases after him, but her own reputation. Not noticing his feelings and trying desperately to clear her name. Her lack of forward thinking is apparent and she later realises what she has done, trying to correct herself:
'There was no harm in hurrying to correct a piece of false news that had been told you'
She is trying to excuse her rashness in chasing Gabriel up the hill. Although she meant no harm, she realises what she has done. Bathsheba may, in this case be thought of as slightly to free willed for society's liking, as she shows throughout the novel. However, she is merely strong willed and passionate about her beliefs:
'It [marriage] would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant and all that. But a husband...'
What battle Bathsheba talks about is quite radical and rebellious for the era and her lack of the want of a husband was thought of as absurd by the readers of the time. A woman's place was in the home, her goal being to marry as soon as possible to a wealthy man and produce many children. She was expected to play the piano, read, go to tea parties and make polite conversation with her husband's friends. Boredom was a sign of wealth in early Victorian middle-class Britain and the more bored the lady of the house was, the wealthier and more successful the family were. Hardy must have foreseen a slight ripple in the conformity of this social requirement and put it into play in his novel. Far From The Madding Crowd was written in 1874 prior to the women's suffrage movement of 1897 onwards. Bathsheba would have been one of the first of its' kind.
However, in the working classes of Victorian Britain, views on marriage and women were very different. Sex before marriage was accepted and men would often not marry until the woman became with child so as not to risk marrying 'a pig in poke'. Bathsheba, being brought up by her aunt in a farming community, would more be familiar with this method of courtship than with the middle to upper class way of thinking.
She believes in marriage for love and not for social standing or wealth:
'"I cannot [marry you]"
"But why?"
"Because I don't love you."
Bathsheba does have a conscience and, however unthinking she was in chasing Gabriel after his proposal, she feels guilty for her actions:
'It seems dreadfully wrong to not have you when you feel so much. How I wish I hadn't run after you!'
But Bathsheba sticks to her word of not wanting marriage and gives an acceptable but unwanted excuse to her suitor:
'It wouldn't do, Mr. Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you would never be able to, I know.'
She admits to her fiery, out of sync nature and explains what kind of a suitor she is looking for. The fact that she gives reason for the rejection of her suitor defends her innocence at the charge of her being a 'hussy'. She is honest to him and does not lie for her own good.
Bathsheba's behaviour is, however, radical at times. For example, when Gabriel watches her from behind a hedge. She lies flat on her pony's back to ride under some low branches and proceeds to ride astride: considered an extremely unladylike way to ride suggesting actions of a sexual nature, unbecoming of a young woman.
The undoubtedly fiery spirit of Bathsheba is appreciated by her uncle who, on his deathbed, leaves his farm and it's running in her charge. On arriving in Weatherbury, she is met by many challenges that a lesser woman, even a man, may have been defeated by. In the first few days, she catches the bailiff stealing grain and she sacks him on the spot. Undaunted, she proceeds to oversee the running of the farm single handedly, much to the shock and surprise of her workers. She uses her initiative to put her employees at ease:
'Now, here are ten shillings in addition as a small present, as I am a newcomer.'
This grants her acceptance as the new young farmer and all of her workers stay loyal to her, believing that she can run the farm on her own without the help of a bailiff.
Another reason, perhaps, for the accusations put against her, is the Valentine she sent to neighbouring farmer Mr. Boldwood. After a visit to the corn market- Bathsheba's first duty as farmer, she is dismayed to find that the only man who did not look and admire ...
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'Now, here are ten shillings in addition as a small present, as I am a newcomer.'
This grants her acceptance as the new young farmer and all of her workers stay loyal to her, believing that she can run the farm on her own without the help of a bailiff.
Another reason, perhaps, for the accusations put against her, is the Valentine she sent to neighbouring farmer Mr. Boldwood. After a visit to the corn market- Bathsheba's first duty as farmer, she is dismayed to find that the only man who did not look and admire her there was her neighbour and well respected farmer Mr. Boldwood. She considers the idea, egged on by her servant and companion Liddy:
'What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how he would wonder.'
The idea put into her head, Bathsheba tossed a hymnbook to decide who would receive the valentine; open for little Teddy Coggan, shut for Farmer Boldwood. The book falls shut and she sends off the card with the seal 'Marry Me'. Again, Bathsheba's lack of forward thinking is apparent as she does not think of the consequence of her doings, she is determined that Farmer Boldwood will notice her like all the other men of the area so that she can be the centre of attention. Again, like the time when Gabriel proposes to her and she says:
'I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry- at least yet.'
Bathsheba loves to be the whole centre of attention and, while Farmer Boldwood is not noticing her, she is not. She sets about to make him notice her. Sending a valentine was unheard of at the time for a middle-class Victorian lady and proposing marriage thought of as even more absurd. However, she does not realise the problems she will face as a direct result of her actions:
'Women deprived of the company of men pine, men deprived of the company of women become stupid.' Chekhov
Boldwood, a confirmed bachelor, becomes infatuated with her throughout the rest of the novel, proposing marriage and not leaving her alone even when she declines:
'I feel, Mr. Boldwood, that though I respect you much, I do not feel - what would justify me to - in accepting your offer.'
Again, Bathsheba declines an offer of marriage: two suitors in one year and she is married to neither. Bathsheba feels that she does not love Boldwood. Her head is telling her to marry this man; gaining a respectable reputation, financial security, an honest, caring husband and greatly increased income due to the merging of the two farms- a practical business agreement. However, in her heart, she wants the man she described to Gabriel: a man to tame her fiery spirit. She craves excitement, unpredictability, glamour. This leads Bathsheba into troubles as she meets a man fitting these three criteria:
'His sudden appearance was to darkness what the sound of a trumpet is to silence.'
On meeting Sergeant Troy, a young cavalryman, Bathsheba is immediately transfixed and thrown into lust. After turning two men away with the coolness of a pharaoh, she becomes irritated and seemingly helpless at the close presence of this dashing young soldier. As he woos her with compliments, gifts and regular, unannounced visits, she does not consider the future of being with such a man, preferring contentment in what she believes to be love. 'Love yields to circumstance' Troy's motto, says a lot about his character, though Bathsheba does not read this.
Bathsheba, in her distraction, turns repeatedly to Gabriel, seeking his counsel as a trusted friend. His honesty plays a great part throughout the whole novel, in this case, showing a different perspective on the character of the heroine:
'I like soldiers, but this one I do not like. What is mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman.'
Gabriel is trying to tell Bathsheba of his distrust for Troy and how she should be more wise. Bathsheba's gullibility shows again as she promptly recites a string of tails told to her by Troy to endorse his reliability.
''Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.' William Makepeace Thackeray
As Gabriel tries to show how she is blinded by her love for him, she dismisses him from her service, as she had done once before when Gabriel's honest opinion was not the one she wished to hear:
'I wish you to go elsewhere. Do not remain on this farm any longer. You shall go, sir- your lecturing I will not hear! I am mistress here.'
Bathsheba knows in her head that Troy would not be the right husband for her but she has waited so long for a man she loved in her heart not her head that this blinds her. The thrills and excitement Troy gives her now overshadow the future and her considerations for it.
Bathsheba does regain some of her admirable grace and coolness when faced once more with Boldwood and his pressing proposals of marriage:
'Mr. Boldwood, I promised you nothing. Would you have had me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest, highest compliment a man can pay a woman- telling her he loves her? I was bound to show some feeling, if I would not be a graceless shrew. Yet each of those pleasures was just for the day- the day just for the pleasure. How was I to know that what is a past time to other men was death to you?'
However, she dissolves into her emotions when Troy's name is brought up in the conversation.
'Don't, don't, O, don't pray down evil upon him! Anything but that- anything. O, be kind to him, sir, for I love him true!'
This is the first time that Bathsheba has admitted her love to anyone other than Liddy. In no way can Bathsheba be damned as a hussy for her actions. She does this, not in any way maliciously towards Boldwood, but out of sheer despair that the man she loves is being cursed by a man who loves her. Even if, in the past, she was not quite trusting of Troy, she now submits to the overwhelming power of blind love on a young, impressionable woman. She shows no contempt towards Boldwood, quite the contrary; the utmost respect. She is firm with her declination but not rude.
Bathsheba does try to heed Gabriel's warnings of Troy's untrustworthy aspirations and heads for Bath with the intention of calling off the affair. However, her lover makes use of her emotional vulnerability to blackmail her into marrying him:
'I was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his...And I was grieved and troubled-' She cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. 'And then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!'
Bathsheba is taken in by this tale and believes her lover to be in total innocence and honesty. She does not marry Troy to spite Gabriel, or Boldwood, but because of her oblivion of such men in society. It is described of Troy early on in the novel:
'He could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the husband to view the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe.'
This description is fitting to Troy and was seen by many of Bathsheba's workers and associates. Bathsheba, however, is not experienced in dealing with men, let alone untrustworthy ones.
She almost immediately regrets marrying Troy, but is mild and civil towards him. When he asks for money for gambling, she briefly questions him then gives him what he asks. It is only when they meet a figure on the Casterbridge highway that Bathsheba quizzes Troy about her. He brushes off her inquisitions. Even when she finds a lock of Fanny's hair in his watch, she retains some composure, but inwardly is ashamed of herself:
'But she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own.'
Bathsheba is a woman of high morals and good standards. She never intended to marry a man of lower morals than hers, but in the heat and swiftness of love, she is swept off her feet and into marriage. She regrets it but cannot resolve her deeds, and decides to bear her burden for the rest of her marriage. Bathsheba was a proud woman who did not believe in marriage to the first handsome, eligible bachelor who caught her eye. However, she now fears that her self-belief has been desecrated. She did just what she vowed she would never do: marry out of jealousy and distraction.
The next paragraph is key to the explanation of Bathsheba's character. The following morning, after their dispute over the owner of the lock of hair, Bathsheba hints at the thought of marrying Gabriel and also Boldwood. She thinks, only briefly, about life with Gabriel as a husband but swiftly corrects herself and assures that she only thinks like this in times of Troy's suspected infidelity. Bathsheba is clearly having second thoughts and the fact that she thinks to Gabriel in her time of trouble is telling. She knows that Troy has had other lovers, Fanny being one of them and even after she dies under suspicious circumstances, Bathsheba is determined to find out the truth. Gabriel, knowing of her distress should she discover the truth, deletes all evidence of Fanny's secret. But the stubborn, love-torn mistress steals down to the coffin in the dead of night to satisfy the rumour she has heard. She considers going to see Gabriel, her most trusted friend, but loses heart and decides to see for herself the grisly truth:
'It was best to know the worst, and I know it now!'
Fanny and her child lay in the coffin, a sight that Bathsheba almost knew to be true. Maybe she now thinks of herself as someone along the lines of a hussy, but it is unworthily judged. Her actions were that of a woman, a girl in love. Troy discovers Bathsheba at Fanny's coffin and openly admits his surviving love of the dead maid. He runs away and is lost at sea while attempting to swim in strong current. At the reported loss of her husband, Bathsheba is comforted by Gabriel again. Gabriel seems to be always her first option and closest confident when she needs advice or help. Throughout the novel, whenever Bathsheba is troubled, whether by her own accord or otherwise, Gabriel is the one she trusts and looks to for advice. She feels safe with him and not hassled or improper and tells Gabriel about her fears for Boldwood's state of mind, should she not marry him:
'The most mournful reason of all to my agreeing to it [promise of marriage] and the true reason why I think to do so for good or evil, is this- and it is a thing I have not breathed to a living soul as yet- I believe that if I don't give my word, he'll go out of his mind.'
Bathsheba is, as in other cases, shouldering more responsibility than she needs to but she feels such remorse for her rash acts of her past life that this is all she can think. Gabriel is honest with her but advises her on the best and proper route forward, to agree on a conditional promise. He does this, even though he loves her, brushing aside all personal envy and emotion. He does, however, subtly hint to her to marry the man she loves:
'The real sin, ma'am, in my mind, lies in thinking of ever wedding wi' a man you don't love honest and true.'
Gabriel's gift of frank language and speech is what makes him the ideal hero of this novel. I feel that it is not Bathsheba who is the hero of this book, but Gabriel. Even though he is less of a flamboyant character than Bathsheba Everdene, his character and role in the tale are of great interest to the reader who finds his part just as compelling as that of the heroine. All the time, Gabriel is there in the background, watching the ways of his mistress of heart and occupation with reserved compassion. He involves himself only when prompted or, on the one occasion, when he fears for his mistress's future: when she appeared distracted by Troy. Unlike Bathsheba's other suitors, Gabriel never pursues the point of marriage with her and advises her on matters concerning it. Bathsheba is 'ruffled' by this and, from being unable to hear the words she expected (that Gabriel still loved her) she begins to toy with the idea of marriage to her bailiff again.
'Absence diminishes commonplace passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire.' Rochefoucauld
In the absence of her husband, Bathsheba has time to reflect upon her situation and consider, for the second time, the relative merits of marrying Gabriel. However she is determined to stay positive and believe that her husband is still alive.
When Troy turns up at the Christmas party of Boldwood, Bathsheba is so shocked at her confirmed aspirations that she does not know how to react. Only when Boldwood, who she had momentarily promised to marry in return for him letting her alone until that time, shot and killed her husband, did she finally realise her loss, knowing this time, that her husband was really dead:
'Gabriel, ride to Casterbridge instantly for a surgeon. It is, I believe, useless, but go. Mr. Boldwood has shot my husband
She acts with conduct only obtainable in a crisis and states, more to herself, than to the many shocked onlookers, that this time, her husband really is dead. Bathsheba tends to her dead husbands needs with incredible strength of mind and 'super human strength' before collapsing into a state of sleep for several days. Her conduct as a wife is admirable as many, again, would be defeated by such challenges.
Gabriel, throughout the novel, is described as a 'Malignant star', illustrating how his character grows on people, causing them to wonder how they ever got by without him. He is consistent in his routine throughout the novel, continuing, even when in sole control of both farms:
'Occupying the same cottage, paring his own potatoes, mending his stockings, and sometimes even making his bed with his own hands.'
Perhaps, then, it is fitting that Bathsheba wins Gabriel as her husband at the end of the novel. At the beginning, when he proposed to her, she claimed that he could not tame her fiery spirit:
'I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you would never be able to, I know.'
It is ironic in that case that Gabriel seems, at the end of the novel to be the ideal suitor after all. He is so set in his familiar ways that Bathsheba, after the turmoil of past years, would probably quite willingly adapt to his manner. Throughout the novel, mistress and servant became firm friends; often debated as the best grounds for love and marriage. At the start of the novel, when Bathsheba was a young, naïve girl, it was said:
'Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of honesty.'
Now it seems that Bathsheba has obtained, through trial and great error, those one-and-a-half more characteristics that make Gabriel. The book, it seems, was a learning curve for the heroine and it's soul purpose, to strengthen her character sufficiently so as to deserve Gabriel at the close. Gabriel had to prove his honesty many times throughout the course of events but only to guide Bathsheba along the right path. She learns humility, honesty, modesty and, most importantly, to love, not only with her heart, but the rest of her countenance as well.
They marry in quiet modesty quite unlike the bride's previous aspirations of marriage:
'I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman cant show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry- at least yet.'
It seems that, whence previously Bathsheba had wanted to be a bride without a husband, she now wants to have a husband without being a bride:
'Bathsheba has a great wish that all the parish shall not be in church, looking at her- she's shy-like and nervous about it, in fact.'
The change in Bathsheba over the course of the novel is a remarkable one. She proves the saying wrong:
'Whereas nature turns girls into women, society has to make boys into men.' Anthony Stevens
The tale of Bathsheba and her three suitors has shown that women too, must be shaped and educated by society. Condemning her as a hussy before analysing her actions and the circumstances is a mistake. I therefore disagree with the statement: 'Some Victorian readers condemned Bathsheba as a 'hussy' who did not deserve to win Gabriel as a husband.' Because, as illustrated in my arguments above, Bathsheba is not immoral in her behaviour, merely unlearned and naïve.
