Far from the Madding Crowd · Chapter
LVI: Beauty in Loneliness; After All explained
Bathsheba, now a widow, feels isolated and believes everyone, including Gabriel Oak, has turned against her.
What happens
Bathsheba, now a widow, feels isolated and believes everyone, including Gabriel Oak, has turned against her. She receives a notice from Oak that he will not renew his engagement as her farm manager, which devastates her. In desperation, she visits him at his home, where they awkwardly reconcile their feelings. As summer arrives, Bathsheba begins to recover and visits Fanny Robin's grave, now also bearing Troy's name. While listening to the choir practice, she is overcome with emotion and is discovered by Oak, leading to a tentative reconnection.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Marriage
Explores the deep, enduring affection between Bathsheba and Gabriel, which transcends romantic passion and is rooted in mutual respect and shared experience.
Independence and Gender Roles
Bathsheba's struggle with relying on her own resources after Oak's withdrawal highlights the limited independence of women in Victorian society.
Pride and Humility
Bathsheba's pride is wounded by Oak's perceived rejection, but she humbles herself by visiting him and later weeping openly in the churchyard.
Characters to notice
- Bathsheba Everdene
Suffers from loneliness and a sense of being despised; visits Gabriel's home and later the churchyard where she weeps at Fanny and Troy's grave.
- Gabriel Oak
Has decided not to renew his farm management; receives Bathsheba at his home and later finds her weeping in the church porch, showing continued care.
- Frank Troy
Deceased; his name is now inscribed on Fanny Robin's tombstone, marking his burial in the same grave.
- Fanny Robin
Deceased; her grave, originally marked by Troy, now also contains Troy's remains.
- Liddy Smallbury
Mentioned as someone Bathsheba shuns during her period of isolation.
Key passages
“Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other’s character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality.”
Their love was built on a solid foundation of knowing each other's flaws first, with romance slowly emerging from the everyday realities of life.
Describes the unique, mature love between Bathsheba and Gabriel.
“She was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had grown to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way.”
She felt hurt that Gabriel's constant, unrequited love, which she had taken for granted, was suddenly taken away.
Bathsheba's shock at losing Gabriel's devotion.
“She would have given anything in the world to be, as those children were, unconcerned at the meaning of their words, because too innocent to feel the necessity for any such expression.”
She envied the children's innocence, wishing she could sing without understanding the painful emotions behind the words.
Bathsheba's longing for emotional simplicity.