Far From The Maddening Crowd

Far From The Maddening Crowd
Author: Thomas Hardy 1874 470pp
My rating: 4*
Started February 8 2008, Finished February 15 2008

Reviewing the this novel upon its publication, the apparently post-modern Henry James in an opinion which dissented from what was otherwise a consensus, wrote “that the only thing we believe in are the sheep and the dogs.” While I more or less agree with James’ point, for this modern reader, the charming milieu, particularly the plethora of what are now long bygone agrarian procedures, and other period details that transport the reader to another age more than compensated for two-dimensional characters and a preposterous plot. Further warning: much of the prose requires a lot of unraveling, being convoluted, often even obfuscated, rife with anachronistic and/or obscure diction (gawkhammer?) and sometimes just downright incomprehensible; then again, unraveling such sentences came to be part of the book’s appeal. Another centrally winsome aspect of this work is its depiction of the western world shortly before the pace of change accelerated to the point where today, the trappings of each generation are nearly unrecognizably different than those of the preceding. After describing a communal sheep shearing in a centuries old barn, Hardy writes:

This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which is implied by the contrast of date. In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen's Then is the rustic's Now. In London, twenty or thirty years ago are old times; in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair. Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase. In these Wessex nooks the busy outsider's ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity