Book Review of Far From the Madding Crowd

The book Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy is about a group of rich people and poor people where some marry and some abandon others. The story starts with a girl named Bath who saves a farmer's life and then asks to marry her. She rejects him and then inherits a prosperous farm from a relative and moves away. Gabriels farm has a disaster so he moves and becomes a shepherd of Baths. On valentines day, Bath sends a card saying “Marry Me” to Boldwood on whim and he becomes obsessed with her but Bath doesn't love him. Bath meets a soldier named Troy and he falls in love with her, enraging Boldwood. Troy convinces her to marry him but after the death of Fanny who was giving birth to Troy's child, Troy runs away and is thought to have drowned. Boldwood holds a christmas and invites Bath where he then proposes marriage and after she agrees, Troy comes to claim Bath but she screams and Boldwood shoots him. Boldwood is sentenced to life in prison and Bath marries Gabriel. This book teaches us about social class, marriage, and the role of the female. 

Social classes can impact your life in numerous ways, either providing advantages or creating challenges, and there are many different classes to consider. Social classes include the rich, middle class, and poor. While people typically remain within their class, some experience upward or downward movement, known as social mobility. The rich people in this story are Bath-inherited it from uncle, William- started off rich, Troy- got rich in the middle of the story, and Gabriel who got rich at the end because of Everdone and Boldwood. These people in the upper class can often be arrogant to the issues in the middle and poor classes that they don't face. The middle class people are only Gabriel Oak at the beginning when he was just a farmer. Even though he had a solid life as a farmer, people in the middle class can face economic instability like when a disaster happened and his sheep disappeared. Finally, Fanny- was always poor, and Troy who was poor at the beginning. People in this lower class have trouble with unemployment and usually face social immobility. These social classes usually face some sort of social mobility between them. The people that were blessed with social mobility are Troy who got it from a marriage, Bath who got it from an inheritance, and Gabriel who worked hard among other things to be rich in the end. Social classes play a significant role in your life, influencing the opportunities available to you. However, social mobility may provide you the possibility to rise and access new options.

One of the quickest paths to social mobility is through marriage. Factors such as love or financial stability contribute to this decision, with the latter often helping individuals from the middle or lower class to move up in their life.The normal type of marriage is when poor people marry poor people and rich people marry rich people. This is the commonly accepted way of marriage. Love is also another factor going towards marriage like when Troy left Fanny for weird reasons and how Bath chose Troy for love. This type of marriage can be unstable to the people in the relationship. Finally, money is one of the most influential factors in marriage which caused Troy to leave Fanny and go for Bath who had lots of money. Even though this method is stable, there can be consequences like how Fanny died at the end, born poor and died poor. Attractiveness contributes to the money factor and it is a reason for social climbing not only because it is effective, but because it is also easy to accomplish. Marriage can stem from various motivations and while some can be true and pure like love, others like money can be superficial and fake.

The role of the female both in life and the household is what is expected from women at the time of the story. Factors like appearance, love, and money can  significantly affect how people view women. The two most important women in this story are Bath and Fanny. Bath is rich , beautiful, believes in love, and is hard working enough to be rich. She is an anomaly from the stereotypical women doing work on the farm that looks suitable for me. On the other hand, Fanny is all of these but isn't rich and instead is poor. This slight difference causes Troy to abandon her and go for Bath because she has more money although Troy loves Fanny more. This is one of the main factors separating levels of women from each other. Fanny has no money for her illness so she dies poor. Bath on the other hand is rich so she marries Gabriel and lives a happy life. Her previous refusals to marry the men shows that she doesn’t believe in thought of as someone else’s wife, but as a independent woman that she is. The traditional role of women during that time was primarily as housekeepers for men, but these two women demonstrate the strength of women who are constrained by financial circumstances.

The book Far from the madding crowd by Thomas Hardy is a very inspirational book. This book talks about two independent women who fall in love with the men in the story. This story teaches us about social classes, marriage and the role of the female. There are many social classes that can determine how you live your life and these classes are rich, middle, and poor. People in the rich class don't have the same issues the lower class people have. Marriage is one of the ways people move up and down the classes which is most commonly known as social climbing. Even though this type of marriage can be good for people, it is not common and the most common type of marriage is people in the same social class marry each other. Finally, the role of the female is the stereotypical thought that women should be housewives and cater to the children and the husband. This is not shown in the book because the women are independent and self made.