Far from the Madding Crowd · Chapter
VI: The Fair; The Journey; The Fire explained
Two months after his proposal to Bathsheba, Gabriel Oak attends the Casterbridge hiring fair seeking work as a bailiff, but his honesty about having been a farmer himself drives away potential employers.
What happens
Two months after his proposal to Bathsheba, Gabriel Oak attends the Casterbridge hiring fair seeking work as a bailiff, but his honesty about having been a farmer himself drives away potential employers. He buys a shepherd's crook and smock, plays his flute to earn money, and learns of another fair at Shottsford near Weatherbury. He decides to walk there, stopping to sleep in a wagon, but wakes to find the wagon moving. Overhearing the wagoners discuss a vain, handsome woman who plays the piano, he suspects they might be speaking of Bathsheba. He slips out unseen and notices a fire in the distance, which he approaches to find a rick-yard ablaze.
Themes in this chapter
Fate and Free Will
Gabriel's misfortunes and his decision to adapt—buying a crook, playing his flute, and traveling to Weatherbury—highlight the interplay between chance and his own choices in shaping his path.
Social Class and Ambition
Gabriel's fall from being a pastoral king to a common laborer, and his struggle to find work despite his skills, underscores the rigid class structures and the ambition required to navigate them.
Characters to notice
- Gabriel Oak
Gabriel, now destitute after losing his flock, attends the Casterbridge fair seeking work as a bailiff but is rejected when he admits he was once a farmer. He buys a shepherd's crook and smock, plays his flute to earn money, and decides to travel to Weatherbury, eventually discovering a fire at a rick-yard.
- Bathsheba Everdene
Bathsheba is mentioned indirectly by the wagoners as a vain, handsome woman who plays the piano and looks in the mirror before bed, leading Gabriel to suspect they are speaking of her.
- Billy Smallbury
Billy Smallbury is one of the wagoners whose conversation Gabriel overhears; he comments on the vanity of a woman he believes to be Bathsheba.
- Joseph Poorgrass
Joseph Poorgrass is the other wagoner, who responds to Billy Smallbury's remarks about the woman's vanity and expresses his own shyness.
Key passages
“He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.”
Gabriel had fallen from his comfortable life as a shepherd-owner to a state of utter poverty, yet this ordeal gave him a serene composure and a detachment from destiny that, while sometimes corrupting, can also elevate a person.
This passage reflects Gabriel's inner transformation after his losses, emphasizing the theme of fate and free will.
“It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it.”
It is better to seize whatever opportunity comes your way and adapt on the spot than to develop a perfect plan and wait for the right moment to use it.
This aphorism captures Gabriel's pragmatic shift in attitude after his misfortunes.
“This information was like coming from night into noon.”
Hearing that Weatherbury was nearby felt like a sudden, bright revelation after a period of darkness.
Gabriel's emotional response to learning he is near Bathsheba's location.