Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy A love pentagon- Frailty thy name is woman

 Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

A love pentagon- Frailty thy name is woman

 

I love the name of this novel, even if positive psychology has demonstrated that we must stay close to the crowd. Isolation is worse than smoking; in fact it is twice as bad. I grew up thinking that to live Far From The Maddening Crowd is the ideal. It is not, and even in the novel, it is not all wine and roses.

We are used with love triangles, but here we deal with a pentagon.

There is poor Fanny, who is a servant and in love with Sergeant Frank Roy. He had promised to marry her, but then changed his mind.

For sergeant Roy is the evil character of the story, even if I would say that he is superficial, not that wise and therefore somehow irresponsible. Yes, he broke Fanny’s heart, but he had been infatuated with her. Even long after the relationship had been broken, he still has deep feelings for her.

Well, as deep as a shallow man can have.

The intriguing and main personage of the book is Bathsheba. She saves a life at the beginning and then moves on to become the mistress of a rather large inherited farm. She is at the center of the plot and all roads lead to her. People die because of her, even if she does not plot, or indeed –even desires it.

Besides, one of those who “die” shows up with shock and awe.

I remember seeing the film based on the book, many, many years ago. The scene that stayed with me was the one where the dead man…comes to the party, only to have another unexpected fate. I will not say more, for I did not place any spoiler alerts and who knows, maybe someone has come so far.

Oh, and there is another image that stuck from the movie- that of a huge bunch of sheep coming off a cliff. I can’t remember what the owner did to the dog who chased them there….did he shoot him? I hope not, even if he was responsible for the ruin of the personage, who somehow turns his fate around, like in that story of the Zen master who keeps saying

-          We shall see.

What looks like a tragic, downhill course of events has a surprising finale.

Bathsheba is at times even worse than the evil character. Hamlet said about his mother:

-          Frailty thy name is woman.

The heroine of this novel alters the lives of four other people, involved in the love pentagon that I have mentioned. Three men get involved with her, to various degrees. The fourth character is the poor servant, who is swept by the tide of the feelings of the others.

Sergeant Roy wins the heart of Bathsheba, with his arrogance, dashing acting, macho behavior. He kills a worm on her chest and she falls for him. Instead of choosing the steady, resilient, solid, reliable other pretenders, Bathsheba makes the worst choice.

But hey, who am I to judge? “All is fair in love and war”.

The heroine pays the price for her mistakes and so do the others involved in a complicated and interesting plot.

One challenger offers money to another in order to let his would-be fiancée alone.

Then he changes his mind, within minutes, and offers the same in order to have the competitor marry …the woman he loves. This goes to prove the strange ways of love, but also the attached complications in this story which deals with pride, honor, moeurs and more.

I am not sure though how much more (or less?) I would have liked the original version. The one I comment on is the adaptation for Romanian National Radio, with some echoes from the movie that I had seen.

There was one odd aspect in listening to an adapted, translated version of Far From The Maddening Crowd:

Gabriel Oak addresses the woman he loves in the second person singular, in translation. In the original, we would be unable to distinguish, for “you” works for the polite form and the friendly, informal one.  Gabriel is employed by Bathsheba and it sounds somehow inappropriate to hear the employee addressing the mistress in a familiar way.

With this caveat, I enjoyed being Far From The Maddening Crowd and listening to the adapted play.