finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_0_part_0.txt
Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 1
chapter 1
{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-1", "summary": "Meet Farmer Gabriel Oak, a nice young man with a big smile. And if he wasn't already adorable, the dude spends his days taking care of a flock of cute little sheep. Awwwww. The members of Oak's community have mixed opinions about him, but these opinions seem to be more connected to their own moods than anything Oak does. Hardy's narrator continues to describe Oak as an overall good guy. He might be a little clueless about certain things--like buying a watch that actually works--but the important thing to know is that Oak is 28 and still single. While walking through some fields one day, Oak sees a pretty woman sitting on top of a horse cart and waiting for a man to repair part of the cart. After looking around to see if anyone's watching, the woman unwraps a little parcel and pulls out a mirror, which she uses to check her appearance. In other words, she's self-consciousness enough to know that this is a vain thing to do, but too proud to resist. Oak sees her do it, though, and he knows that she's not doing it for any purpose other than to look at herself. It turns out that the woman isn't willing to pay the full fee to go through a toll booth, but the toll booth guy is holding firm on his price. After watching for a while, Gabriel steps forward and pays the remaining amount of her fee himself. When the cart rides off, the tollbooth guy mentions to Gabriel that the woman was very pretty. Gabriel agrees, but also says that he thinks the woman is very vain.", "analysis": ""}


DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK--AN INCIDENT


When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they
were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were
reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them,
extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch
of the rising sun.

His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young
man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good
character.  On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to
postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the
whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space
of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of
the parish and the drunken section,--that is, he went to church, but
yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene
creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to
be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood
in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in
tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased,
he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose
moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.

Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's
appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own--the mental
picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always
dressed in that way.  He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at
the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds,
and a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased
in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording
to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might
stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp--their maker
being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any
weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.

Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a
small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and
intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being
several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of
going either too fast or not at all.  The smaller of its hands, too,
occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes
were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour
they belonged to.  The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied
by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the
other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of
the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his
neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the
green-faced timekeepers within.  It may be mentioned that Oak's fob
being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation
in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height
under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by
throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a
mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and
drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.

But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one
of his fields on a certain December morning--sunny and exceedingly
mild--might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these.
In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of
youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter
crannies some relics of the boy.  His height and breadth would
have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been
exhibited with due consideration.  But there is a way some men have,
rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than
flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their
manner of showing them.  And from a quiet modesty that would have
become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he
had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and
with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the
shoulders.  This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he
depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his
capacity to wear well, which Oak did not.

He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to
be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one.  He was at the brightest
period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were
clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence
of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse,
and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united
again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and
family.  In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.

The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe
Hill.  Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster
and Chalk-Newton.  Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming
down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, painted
yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walking
alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly.  The waggon was laden with
household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat
a woman, young and attractive.  Gabriel had not beheld the sight for
more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill
just beneath his eyes.

"The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss," said the waggoner.

"Then I heard it fall," said the girl, in a soft, though not
particularly low voice.  "I heard a noise I could not account for
when we were coming up the hill."

"I'll run back."

"Do," she answered.

The sensible horses stood--perfectly still, and the waggoner's steps
sank fainter and fainter in the distance.

The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by
tables and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle,
and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses,
together with a caged canary--all probably from the windows of the
house just vacated.  There was also a cat in a willow basket, from
the partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and
affectionately surveyed the small birds around.

The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the
only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up
and down the perches of its prison.  Then she looked attentively
downwards.  It was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an
oblong package tied in paper, and lying between them.  She turned her
head to learn if the waggoner were coming.  He was not yet in sight;
and her eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to run
upon what was inside it.  At length she drew the article into her
lap, and untied the paper covering; a small swing looking-glass was
disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively.  She
parted her lips and smiled.

It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the
crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright
face and dark hair.  The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed
around her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they
invested the whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl
with a peculiar vernal charm.  What possessed her to indulge in
such a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and
unperceived farmer who were alone its spectators,--whether the smile
began as a factitious one, to test her capacity in that art,--nobody
knows; it ended certainly in a real smile.  She blushed at herself,
and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more.

The change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an
act--from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out
of doors--lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically
possess.  The picture was a delicate one.  Woman's prescriptive
infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the
freshness of an originality.  A cynical inference was irresistible by
Gabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would
have been.  There was no necessity whatever for her looking in the
glass.  She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a
dimple into shape, or do 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 the feminine kind, her
thoughts 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.
Still, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions was
so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any
part in them at all.

The waggoner's steps were heard returning.  She put the glass in the
paper, and the whole again into its place.

When the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of
espial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the
turnpike-gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where the
object of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll.
About twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when he
heard a dispute.  It was a difference concerning twopence between the
persons with the waggon and the man at the toll-bar.

"Mis'ess's niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that's
enough that I've offered ye, you great miser, and she won't pay any
more."  These were the waggoner's words.

"Very well; then mis'ess's niece can't pass," said the turnpike-keeper,
closing the gate.

Oak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell into
a reverie.  There was something in the tone of twopence remarkably
insignificant.  Threepence had a definite value as money--it was an
appreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higgling
matter; but twopence--"Here," he said, stepping forward and handing
twopence to the gatekeeper; "let the young woman pass."  He looked up
at her then; she heard his words, and looked down.

Gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the
middle line between the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of Judas
Iscariot, as represented in a window of the church he attended, that
not a single lineament could be selected and called worthy either of
distinction or notoriety.  The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden
seemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and told
her man to drive on.  She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on
a minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably she felt
none, for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and we
know how women take a favour of that kind.

The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle.  "That's a
handsome maid," he said to Oak.

"But she has her faults," said Gabriel.

"True, farmer."

"And the greatest of them is--well, what it is always."

"Beating people down? ay, 'tis so."

"O no."

"What, then?"

Gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller's
indifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance
over the hedge, and said, "Vanity."




Chapter 1
Meet Farmer Gabriel Oak, a nice young man with a big smile. And if he wasn't already adorable, the dude spends his days taking care of a flock of cute little sheep. Awwwww. The members of Oak's community have mixed opinions about him, but these opinions seem to be more connected to their own moods than anything Oak does. Hardy's narrator continues to describe Oak as an overall good guy. He might be a little clueless about certain things--like buying a watch that actually works--but the important thing to know is that Oak is 28 and still single. While walking through some fields one day, Oak sees a pretty woman sitting on top of a horse cart and waiting for a man to repair part of the cart. After looking around to see if anyone's watching, the woman unwraps a little parcel and pulls out a mirror, which she uses to check her appearance. In other words, she's self-consciousness enough to know that this is a vain thing to do, but too proud to resist. Oak sees her do it, though, and he knows that she's not doing it for any purpose other than to look at herself. It turns out that the woman isn't willing to pay the full fee to go through a toll booth, but the toll booth guy is holding firm on his price. After watching for a while, Gabriel steps forward and pays the remaining amount of her fee himself. When the cart rides off, the tollbooth guy mentions to Gabriel that the woman was very pretty. Gabriel agrees, but also says that he thinks the woman is very vain.