finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_17_part_0.txt
Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 18
chapter 18
{"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-18", "summary": "Mr. Boldwood comes home to his farm, thinking of Bathsheba and pacing around. Like we said: he's crazy in love. The narrator informs us that this is the first time in his life that Boldwood has ever let his defenses down and allowed himself to love someone like this. Oh, jeepers. We feel bad for him now. Finally, he decides to march right across the fields to her door and declare his intention of courting her. He finds Bathsheba working in the field with Gabriel Oak, trying to get a sheep to adopt an orphaned lamb as her own. These lambs are just too cute. Oak notices Bathsheba blushing at the sight of Boldwood. This, combined with the letter Boldwood showed him, tells him that Bathsheba has been flirting and joking around with the farmer. Instead of walking up to Bathsheba, Boldwood tries to pretend that he was just passing by. As he walks away, Bathsheba decides that she probably shouldn't mess with him any more, and that she doesn't want him in her life. Unfortunately, it may no longer be up to her.", "analysis": ""}


BOLDWOOD IN MEDITATION--REGRET


Boldwood was tenant of what was called Little Weatherbury Farm, and
his person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter
quarter of the parish could boast of.  Genteel strangers, whose god
was their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this
nook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see
good society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very
least, but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the day.  They
heard the sound of wheels yet once more, and were re-animated to
expectancy: it was only Mr. Boldwood coming home again.

His house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are
to a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower
portions being lost amid bushes of laurel.  Inside the blue door,
open half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails
of half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls;
and as thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay,
in shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the
midst of each.  Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from the
outer light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busily
sustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oats
and hay.  The restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a
loose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was
occasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a
foot.

Pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer Boldwood
himself.  This place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, after
looking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibate
would walk and meditate of an evening till the moon's rays streamed
in through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the
scene.

His square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in the
crowd and bustle of the market-house.  In this meditative walk his
foot met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his fine
reddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscure
the still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent and
broad chin.  A few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the
only interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large
forehead.

The phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was not
an ordinary nature.  That stillness, which struck casual observers
more than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so
precisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect
balance of enormous antagonistic forces--positives and negatives in
fine adjustment.  His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at
once.  If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling
not mastering him was entirely latent.  Stagnant or rapid, it was
never slow.  He was always hit mortally, or he was missed.

He had no light and careless touches in his constitution, either
for good or for evil.  Stern in the outlines of action, mild in the
details, he was serious throughout all.  He saw no absurd sides to
the follies of life, and thus, though not quite companionable in the
eyes of merry men and scoffers, and those to whom all things show
life as a jest, he was not intolerable to the earnest and those
acquainted with grief.  Being a man who read all the dramas of life
seriously, if he failed to please when they were comedies, there was
no frivolous treatment to reproach him for when they chanced to end
tragically.

Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon
which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic
intensity.  Had she known Boldwood's moods, her blame would have
been fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable.  Moreover,
had she known her present power for good or evil over this man, she
would have trembled at her responsibility.  Luckily for her present,
unluckily for her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yet
told her what Boldwood was.  Nobody knew entirely; for though it was
possible to form guesses concerning his wild capabilities from old
floodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides
which caused them.

Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth across the
level fields.  Beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on the
other side of this a meadow belonging to Bathsheba's farm.

It was now early spring--the time of going to grass with the sheep,
when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid
up for mowing.  The wind, which had been blowing east for several
weeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come
abruptly--almost without a beginning.  It was that period in the
vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the
season.  The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to
rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless
plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the
bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united
thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the
powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy
efforts.

Boldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three figures.
They were those of Miss Everdene, Shepherd Oak, and Cainy Ball.

When Bathsheba's figure shone upon the farmer's eyes it lighted him
up as the moon lights up a great tower.  A man's body is as the
shell, or the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous,
overflowing or self-contained.  There was a change in Boldwood's
exterior from its former impassibleness; and his face showed that he
was now living outside his defences for the first time, and with a
fearful sense of exposure.  It is the usual experience of strong
natures when they love.

At last he arrived at a conclusion.  It was to go across and inquire
boldly of her.

The insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years,
without a channel of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked its
effect.  It has been observed more than once that the causes of love
are chiefly subjective, and Boldwood was a living testimony to the
truth of the proposition.  No mother existed to absorb his devotion,
no sister for his tenderness, no idle ties for sense.  He became
surcharged with the compound, which was genuine lover's love.

He approached the gate of the meadow.  Beyond it the ground was
melodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low bleating of
the flock mingling with both.  Mistress and man were engaged in the
operation of making a lamb "take," which is performed whenever an ewe
has lost her own offspring, one of the twins of another ewe being
given her as a substitute.  Gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, and
was tying the skin over the body of the live lamb, in the customary
manner, whilst Bathsheba was holding open a little pen of four
hurdles, into which the Mother and foisted lamb were driven, where
they would remain till the old sheep conceived an affection for the
young one.

Bathsheba looked up at the completion of the manoeuvre and saw the
farmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in full
bloom.  Gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of an
April day, was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantly
discerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in the
form of a keenly self-conscious reddening.  He also turned and beheld
Boldwood.

At once connecting these signs with the letter Boldwood had shown
him, Gabriel suspected her of some coquettish procedure begun by that
means, and carried on since, he knew not how.

Farmer Boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they were aware
of his presence, and the perception was as too much light turned upon
his new sensibility.  He was still in the road, and by moving on he
hoped that neither would recognize that he had originally intended
to enter the field.  He passed by with an utter and overwhelming
sensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt.  Perhaps in her manner
there were signs that she wished to see him--perhaps not--he could
not read a woman.  The cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed to
consist of the subtlest meanings expressed in misleading ways.  Every
turn, look, word, and accent contained a mystery quite distinct from
its obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him until
now.

As for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that Farmer
Boldwood had walked by on business or in idleness.  She collected
the probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herself
responsible for Boldwood's appearance there.  It troubled her much
to see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle.
Bathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a
trifler with the affections of men, and a censor's experience on
seeing an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feeling
of surprise that Bathsheba could be so different from such a one,
and yet so like what a flirt is supposed to be.

She resolved never again, by look or by sign, to interrupt the steady
flow of this man's life.  But a resolution to avoid an evil is
seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance
impossible.




Chapter 18
Mr. Boldwood comes home to his farm, thinking of Bathsheba and pacing around. Like we said: he's crazy in love. The narrator informs us that this is the first time in his life that Boldwood has ever let his defenses down and allowed himself to love someone like this. Oh, jeepers. We feel bad for him now. Finally, he decides to march right across the fields to her door and declare his intention of courting her. He finds Bathsheba working in the field with Gabriel Oak, trying to get a sheep to adopt an orphaned lamb as her own. These lambs are just too cute. Oak notices Bathsheba blushing at the sight of Boldwood. This, combined with the letter Boldwood showed him, tells him that Bathsheba has been flirting and joking around with the farmer. Instead of walking up to Bathsheba, Boldwood tries to pretend that he was just passing by. As he walks away, Bathsheba decides that she probably shouldn't mess with him any more, and that she doesn't want him in her life. Unfortunately, it may no longer be up to her.