Lust Versus Love: Marriage and Agency in Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd”

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Bathsheba Everdene, Far from the Madding Crowd’s tragically beautiful heroine, is the figure around whom revolves the passions and intrigues of the novel. She is the magnet that attracts and binds all the characters, most notably the humble shepherd Gabriel, the gentleman farmer Boldwood, and the dashing soldier Troy. Yet Bathsheba’s beauty is as much her source of pride and power as it is her fatal vulnerability. She draws confidence from her graceful form, which elevates her above the common crowd of humanity; and yet it is this very superiority that captivates Boldwood and Troy, the men whose selfish desire to possess such beauty can only be achieved by forcing her into a submissive role. Only Gabriel loves Bathsheba purely and truly, for her own self, and thus empowers her even while she depends upon him.

Though the third to ask for her hand in marriage, Troy is the first to wed the coveted Bathsheba. He succeeds where Gabriel and Boldwood have failed because he is able to awaken in her a sexual attraction that is as startling as it is new. Her body responds unreservedly to his, elevating passion beyond reason: “That minute’s interval had brought the blood beating into her face, set her stinging as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet, and enlarged emotion to a compass which quite swamped thought… The circumstance had been the gentle dip of Troy’s mouth downwards upon her own. He had kissed her” (185). His touch electrifies Bathsheba, whose heightened pulse and fiery tingling reflect her aroused desire. And yet that is only part of Troy’s fascination: equally novel and exciting is his ability to outwit and outshine her. Bathsheba has been accustomed to being the most admired and composed person in the room, but Troy’s charm and flashy chivalry shift the balance of power (164, 169, 173–4). She is disarmed by his charisma and loses her own will in the face of his, “powerless to withstand or deny him. He was altogether too much for her, and Bathsheba seemed as one who, facing a reviving wind, finds it blow so strongly that it stops the breath” (185). However, rather than being frightened by this unexpected vulnerability, she is thrilled by the danger and continues to seek it, exposing her inclination for the adventure that Troy personifies.

And yet Troy’s seduction would have failed had he not appealed to Bathsheba’s vanity: it is her admission to caring about people’s opinion of her looks that inspires Troy to expound upon her beauty, and Boldwood’s conspicuous silence on the matter that grants him victory (165, 171). By making Bathsheba feel that she is the most gorgeous and exceptional woman, he wins her heart and then her hand in marriage. Unluckily for Bathsheba, Troy’s affection for her is short-lived: based as it is upon lust, it loses its flame once he is able to possess her. When Bathsheba tries to appeal to his love for her after they are wed, he dismisses her coldly and explains his indifference by telling her, “‘All romances end at marriage’” (265). Having won her and gained the upper hand as her legal husband, Troy no longer has an incentive to please her. Bathsheba has given him her heart, but their union has no life or future since Troy has not bestowed his own in return.

While Bathsheba marries Troy out of desire, she later agrees to marry Boldwood out of a sense of moral obligation. She believes it to be her duty to redeem her insensitive conduct toward Boldwood, whom she has thoughtlessly teased and then severely disappointed; as a result, though she feels no romantic attraction to him, Bathsheba conditionally acquiesces to Boldwood’s passion and pressure as “‘the rendering of a debt’” (363). She is tormented by the fact that in trying to be just to Boldwood, she wrongs herself by committing the rest of her life to a man she does not love. In fact, she believes that such a marriage would result in “breaking the commandments” decreed in the Bible: in Bathsheba’s eyes, matrimony in which love on her part would be lacking would be a union that is neither true nor sacred, empty without a bond between hearts and souls (363). However, Boldwood’s crazed ardor will not accept refusal, leading him to verbally beat the once proud and spirited Bathsheba into submission. Despite her protests and even tears of distress, the gentleman farmer forces a promise from her mouth and a ring onto her finger (364). He calls the bejeweled band the “seal of a practical compact”: in contrast to Bathsheba, Boldwood is satisfied by an idea of marriage that is binding in the legal sense, even if it lacks the warmth of mutual love (364). The importance of matrimony is the contract that founds it, the capacity for him to possess the woman of his fancy and obsession. As Boldwood’s deafness to Bathsheba’s feelings and desires demonstrates, he is not motivated by love but rather by a yearning to own her, even though the fulfillment of such a goal requires her to surrender her own will and wishes. Bathsheba pleads for mercy, but Boldwood’s mad lust, so far removed from the unselfish promptings of a pure love, does not value her interests above his own.

Indeed, it is lust and not love that motivates Boldwood, despite his impassioned declarations to the contrary. “‘Promise yourself to me,’” he urges her, “‘I deserve it, indeed I do, for I have loved you more than anybody in the world’” (363). But Boldwood cannot love Bathsheba as he claims because he does not know her: to him, she is simply the figure that he has created in his imagination. When he receives her whimsical valentine, he pictures the feminine hand responsible, but “The vision of the woman writing, as the supplement to the words written, had no individuality. She was a misty shape,” made real only by Boldwood’s reveries (100). In fact, at this moment in which his obsession with Bathsheba begins, he has never even met her. He therefore only falls in love with a fiction, with his own image of the letter writer, which he then imposes on the supple form that he sees and wants in the market-place (118).

Thankfully, Bathsheba’s fate does not ultimately lie with either Troy or Boldwood, who have demonstrated that they want her chiefly as a means of satisfying their lust and male ego. Since their infatuation is an unsettling source of vulnerability, they seek satisfaction in the form of mastery over Bathsheba in order to restore their sense of masculine superiority. As a result, with them Bathsheba is disempowered: she is either overwhelmed by Boldwood’s unyielding determination or abused by Troy, who takes advantage of her love for him. By becoming Troy’s wife, Bathsheba has sacrificed her independence and “become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole”: she has been conquered, degraded, “brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own” (268). Her purity and self-reliance, which have long been her great source of pride, have thus been taken without the wholesome love of a worthy man to compensate for that loss of strength.

Only Gabriel’s affection empowers Bathsheba because he truly knows and loves her. Gabriel is the only one who recognizes her strength and appreciates her spirit, the only one whose pure and unselfish love has made him her steadfast companion “through bright times and dark times” (21, 379). Their love, in fact, runs deeper than romance: Gabriel’s is “the only true friendship she had ever owned,” her only source of honest guidance and sincere support (380). Bathsheba therefore relies heavily on him (“‘And what shall I do without you?’”), but in a way that preserves her dignity and is natural to those whose lives and interests have been so intertwined (379). Though dependent on Gabriel’s stable and capable nature, she is simultaneously empowered by his unconditional love for her, which seeks to please and protect her (383, 385). As a result, their relationship creates an ideal marriage: they are lovers and equals, stronger together than by themselves. Between them lies understanding and harmony: they do not need “pretty phrases” to express their feelings, nor do they hide their faults since they are already acquainted with the “rougher sides” of each other’s character (383). Such love, which is neither blind nor false, neither naive nor untried, is “the only love which is strong as death — that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam” (384). The source of their relationship and compatibility lies in the heart, not in the body: Gabriel and Bathsheba love each other in a spiritual sense, which grants their union strength and a sacredness that is noble and lasting.

Works Cited: Hardy, Thomas. Far from the Madding Crowd. 1874. Oxford University Press, 2002.