Free Thomas Hardy by Andrew Norman Page A

humble means but nevertheless honourable, steadfast and industrious, who finds himself in the seemingly impossible position of having fallen in love with a woman above his station. This, of course, is a reflection of his inferiority complex in respect of Emma.
    The novel is set in and around Puddletown (‘Weatherbury’), and it is said that during the writing of it, when Hardy remembered to carry a pocket notebook, ‘his mind was [as] barren as the Sahara [Desert]’. And yet when he did not, and ideas came thick and fast, he was obliged to search for ‘large dead leaves, white chips [of wood] left by the wood cutters or pieces of stone or slate that came to hand’ on which to write. 7
    Gabriel Oak, Known as ‘Farmer Oak’, Is the lessee of a sheep farm on which he keeps 200 sheep. One day, he encounters an attractive young lady riding in a cart. She approaches a toll gate but refuses to pay the gatekeeper the full fare requested. Oak offers to make up the difference, which is tuppence. When he receives no thanks for his pains, he considers the young lady to be vain.
    However, he is determined to make her his wife, and to this end he calls at her house with the gift of a lamb. ‘I am only an every day sort of man,’ he tells her, self-deprecatingly, but he has a ‘nice, snug little farm’, and when they are married, he promises to work ‘twice as hard as I do now’. Music is introduced into the story, when Oak tells Bathsheba Everdene – for that is her name – that if she marries him, she shall have a pianoforte ‘in a year or two’, and he, for his part, will practise on the flute and play to her in the evenings. He will love her, he says, until he dies.
    Oak’s offer is refused. Bathsheba says she does not love him, and throws in the fact that she is better educated than he;she advises that he find someone to provide him with the money with which to stock a larger farm. ‘Then I’ll ask you no more,’says Oak. Another disaster befalls Oak, when an overzealous sheepdog chases his flock over a precipice.
    In the hope of finding work, Oak journeys to Casterbridge to attend a ‘hiring fair’ – where workers would assemble in the hope of being taken on by an employer – but without success. He then travels onward by waggon to Shottsford, where another hiring fair is being held. En route, he hears the waggoner discussing a woman, evidently a farmer, whom he describes as a ‘very vain feymell [female]’ who can ‘play the peanner [piano]’. Oak deduces, correctly, that this woman is none other than Bathsheba.
    Having alighted from the waggon, Oak sees a hayrick which is on fire. This is an opportunity for the author, Hardy, in his description of burning hayricks, to display his deep knowledge of country matters. He states that in such an eventuality: ‘the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to the eye.’ By the judicious placement of tarpaulins around the base of the stack to stop the draught, and with the application of water, Oak saves the day. His actions do not go unnoticed, and the lady farmer (who, as it happens, is Miss Bathsheba Everdene), agrees to employ him as her shepherd. A deputy is required to assist Oak – the person chosen being ‘Young Cain Ball’.
    ‘How did he come by such a name as Cain?’enquires Bathsheba. The answer: because his mother was not ‘a Scripture-read woman’, and believing that it was Abel who killed Cain, Instead of the other way round, a mistake was therefore made at his christening. As always, the Bible is never far from Hardy’s thoughts.
    Bathsheba catches her farm bailiff stealing barley; she dismisses him, but instead of seeking a replacement, swears that she will attend to everything herself. At the same time, Fanny Robin, the youngest of her servants, goes missing. In fact, impatient to be married, she has gone to see her ‘young man’, Sergeant Troy of the