Far From the Madding Crowd

by

Thomas Hardy

Bathsheba Everdene Character Analysis

Bathsheba, the orphaned daughter of townspeople, is raised by her aunt in the countryside. From a young age, she is used to managing things on her own: for example, her aunt has her take charge of milking cows and fetching supplies for the house. She is handsome and can be vain about her appearance. In many ways, even though Bathsheba is already independent and determined at the beginning of the novel, she matures over the course of the book. At first, she insists on her independence to the detriment of others’ feelings, as when she pursues Gabriel Oak without the intention of marrying him. Through the careless game that she later plays with Mr. Boldwood, she comes to recognize that independence is not necessarily the greatest good, and that it can be important to rely on others, just as it is crucial to understand the implications of one’s own actions on others. In some ways Bathsheba conforms to Victorian stereotypes about women; for example, she can be thoughtless and emotional. But she also defies such stereotypes by running the farm herself and learning to manage her emotions and face an often hostile, gossipy world outside.

Bathsheba Everdene Quotes in Far From the Madding Crowd

The Far From the Madding Crowd quotes below are all either spoken by Bathsheba Everdene or refer to Bathsheba Everdene. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Epic Allusion, Tragedy, and Illusions of Grandeur Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do any one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in a feminine direction—her expression seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part—vistas of probable triumphs—the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“What I meant to tell you was only this,” she said eagerly, and yet half-conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself: “that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen as my aunt said; I hate to be thought men’s property in that way—though possibly I shall be to be had some day.”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene (speaker), Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Among these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided—the single one of her sex that the room contained. She moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard after them as a romance after sermons, and was felt among them like a breeze among furnaces. It had required a little determination—far more than she had at first imagined—to take up a position here, for at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every face had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned rigidly fixed there.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. Of love, as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Related Symbols: The Valentine
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

“Our mis’ess will bring us all to the bad,” said Henery. “Ye may depend on that—with her new farming ways. And her ignorance is terrible to hear. Why only yesterday she cut a rasher of bacon the longways of the flitch!”
“Ho-ho-ho!” said the assembly, the maltster’s feeble note being heard amid the rest as that of a different instrument: “heu-heu-heu!”

Related Characters: Henry (Henery) Fray (speaker), Bathsheba Everdene, The maltster
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Boldwood’s blindness to the difference between approving of what circumstance suggests, and originating what it does not, was well matched by Bathsheba’s insensibility to the possible great issues of little beginnings.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Mr. Boldwood
Related Symbols: The Valentine
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

In every point of view ranging from politic to solicitous it was desirable that she, a lonely girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well to do, and respected man. He was close to her doors: his standing was sufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory. Had she felt, which she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him as a woman who frequently appealed to her understanding for deliverance from her whims.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Mr. Boldwood
Page Number: 113-114
Explanation and Analysis:

Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was loving her at the same time: the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes; there is a triumph in the humiliation and tenderness in the strife. This is what she had been expecting, and what she had not got.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 117-118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

Though in one sense a woman of the world it was, after all, that world of daylight coteries, and green carpets, wherein cattle form the passing crowd and winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on the other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody in the tything, and where calculation is confined to market days. Of the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but little, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

“You are taking too much upon yourself!” she said vehemently. “Everybody is upon me—everybody. It is unmanly to attack a woman so! I have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me, but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I will not be put down!”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene (speaker), Mr. Boldwood
Page Number: 179-180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

Having from their youth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider or mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed one and all with extraordinary uniformity after the lapse of about one hour.
Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that wilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt within him as the eidolon of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 215
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

Her pride was indeed brought low by this despairing perception of spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard, her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man’s on earth, that her waist had never been encircled by a lover’s arm. She hated herself now.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Sergeant Francis Troy
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

The one feat alone—that of dying—by which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved. And to that had destiny subjoined this reencounter to-night, which had, in Bathsheba’s wild imagining, turned her companion’s failure to success, her humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendancy; it had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon all things about her an ironical smile. But even Bathsheba’s heated fancy failed to endow that innocent white countenance with any triumphant consciousness of the pain she was retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic law: “Burning for burning; wound for wound; strife for strife.”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Fanny Robbin
Page Number: 260
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 52 Quotes

“I don’t know—at least I cannot tell you. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene (speaker), Mr. Boldwood
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 55 Quotes

The household convulsion had made her herself again. The temporary coma had ceased, and activity had come with the necessity for it. Deeds of endurance which seem ordinary in philosophy are rare in conduct: and Bathsheba was astonishing all around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom thought practicable what she did not practise. She was the stuff of which great men’s mothers are made.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Page Number: 333
Explanation and Analysis:
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Bathsheba Everdene Quotes in Far From the Madding Crowd

The Far From the Madding Crowd quotes below are all either spoken by Bathsheba Everdene or refer to Bathsheba Everdene. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Epic Allusion, Tragedy, and Illusions of Grandeur Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do any one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in a feminine direction—her expression seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part—vistas of probable triumphs—the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“What I meant to tell you was only this,” she said eagerly, and yet half-conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself: “that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen as my aunt said; I hate to be thought men’s property in that way—though possibly I shall be to be had some day.”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene (speaker), Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Among these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided—the single one of her sex that the room contained. She moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard after them as a romance after sermons, and was felt among them like a breeze among furnaces. It had required a little determination—far more than she had at first imagined—to take up a position here, for at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every face had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned rigidly fixed there.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. Of love, as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Related Symbols: The Valentine
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

“Our mis’ess will bring us all to the bad,” said Henery. “Ye may depend on that—with her new farming ways. And her ignorance is terrible to hear. Why only yesterday she cut a rasher of bacon the longways of the flitch!”
“Ho-ho-ho!” said the assembly, the maltster’s feeble note being heard amid the rest as that of a different instrument: “heu-heu-heu!”

Related Characters: Henry (Henery) Fray (speaker), Bathsheba Everdene, The maltster
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Boldwood’s blindness to the difference between approving of what circumstance suggests, and originating what it does not, was well matched by Bathsheba’s insensibility to the possible great issues of little beginnings.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Mr. Boldwood
Related Symbols: The Valentine
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

In every point of view ranging from politic to solicitous it was desirable that she, a lonely girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well to do, and respected man. He was close to her doors: his standing was sufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory. Had she felt, which she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him as a woman who frequently appealed to her understanding for deliverance from her whims.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Mr. Boldwood
Page Number: 113-114
Explanation and Analysis:

Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was loving her at the same time: the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes; there is a triumph in the humiliation and tenderness in the strife. This is what she had been expecting, and what she had not got.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 117-118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

Though in one sense a woman of the world it was, after all, that world of daylight coteries, and green carpets, wherein cattle form the passing crowd and winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on the other side of your party-wall, where your neighbour is everybody in the tything, and where calculation is confined to market days. Of the fabricated tastes of good fashionable society she knew but little, and of the formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

“You are taking too much upon yourself!” she said vehemently. “Everybody is upon me—everybody. It is unmanly to attack a woman so! I have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me, but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I will not be put down!”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene (speaker), Mr. Boldwood
Page Number: 179-180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

Having from their youth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider or mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed one and all with extraordinary uniformity after the lapse of about one hour.
Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that wilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt within him as the eidolon of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak
Page Number: 215
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

Her pride was indeed brought low by this despairing perception of spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard, her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man’s on earth, that her waist had never been encircled by a lover’s arm. She hated herself now.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Sergeant Francis Troy
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

The one feat alone—that of dying—by which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved. And to that had destiny subjoined this reencounter to-night, which had, in Bathsheba’s wild imagining, turned her companion’s failure to success, her humiliation to triumph, her lucklessness to ascendancy; it had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon all things about her an ironical smile. But even Bathsheba’s heated fancy failed to endow that innocent white countenance with any triumphant consciousness of the pain she was retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic law: “Burning for burning; wound for wound; strife for strife.”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene, Fanny Robbin
Page Number: 260
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 52 Quotes

“I don’t know—at least I cannot tell you. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene (speaker), Mr. Boldwood
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 55 Quotes

The household convulsion had made her herself again. The temporary coma had ceased, and activity had come with the necessity for it. Deeds of endurance which seem ordinary in philosophy are rare in conduct: and Bathsheba was astonishing all around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom thought practicable what she did not practise. She was the stuff of which great men’s mothers are made.

Related Characters: Bathsheba Everdene
Page Number: 333
Explanation and Analysis: