Standing Out in a Man's World — Far from the Madding Crowd

The first public proof that Bathsheba will farm in her own person, not by proxy, is her appearance at the Casterbridge corn market: the only woman in the exchange, dainty among hot farmers with ash saplings, pouring grain into her palm and bargaining with elastic firmness while strangers ask who the new mistress of Weatherbury Upper Farm can be.

Twice during the morning her instinct nearly makes her turn to see whether Farmer Boldwood is watching; each time he gives no glance though other men stare and whisper that the shapely maid will soon be picked up. When trading ends she hurries to Liddy and the yellow gig, overtakes Boldwood on the road, and watches him pass with eyes fixed ahead as if she were thin air.

In the carriage Bathsheba calls him interesting; Liddy repeats the parish story that a woman jilted him long ago. Bathsheba prefers a mixed reading, wounded and reserved together, but Liddy insists he must have been cruelly used and may take her word for it. Curiosity about the one man who will not stare has already begun to rankle, preparing the idle valentine that will soon convert indifference into obsession on both sides of the Weatherbury parish.