The Valentine That Changed Everything — Far from the Madding Crowd

On Sunday the thirteenth of February, Bathsheba and Liddy sit in the dreary mouldy farmhouse before candles are lit, the new piano sloping on warped boards, trying Bible-and-key fortune telling until Liddy mentions that Boldwood never once looked at Bathsheba in church though every other eye did and his pew sits directly opposite hers.

Boredom turns to valentine mischief. Bathsheba holds a gilded card she bought for little Teddy Coggan, but Liddy's joke about sending it to solemn Boldwood takes hold; a hymn-book toss addresses the envelope to him instead of the child. Bathsheba seals it with the only funny wax stamp at hand, discovers the motto reads MARRY ME, and laughs at the uproar it would cause a parson and clerk before sending it on with deliberate frolic. That evening the letter goes to Casterbridge post to return in the morning. Hardy ends with damning clarity: Bathsheba knows love as spectacle, not subjective risk, and the deed is done very idly, without reflection or second thought, by a woman who cannot yet imagine how a reserved bachelor will read a red seal in a silent parlour where even frivolity sounds like divine law on Valentine's night.