Far from the Madding Crowd Ch. 15 Summary

Summary

In Warren’s malthouse on a snowy morning, the old maltster, who has lost his teeth and hardly noticed, is eating bread and bacon cut up on his knife. Henery Fray stamps in with the carters, who have been at the horses since four, and shakes his head over the mistress. She will rue having no bailiff, he says, and he soon admits that he himself deserved the place. “Pride and vanity have ruined many a cobbler’s dog.” Mark Clark and Joseph Poorgrass nod along, and the talk moves to Bathsheba’s new piano and her heavy chairs, her great watches and her looking-glasses “for the pretty”, and her “lying books for the wicked”. It is the kind of gossip that has no victim in the room, which is why it is so easy.

The door is kicked open and Gabriel Oak comes in steaming, with hay-bands round his ankles and four lambs over his shoulders and his dog George behind. The lambing is “terrible trying”, he says, and he has had no hut and no sleep. He wraps the lambs in hay by the fire and teaches them to drink milk from a small tea-pot. When he learns what has been said about his mistress, quiet Gabriel puts his fist on the maltster’s table and says the first man to prophesy bad of her will taste it. Joseph hides behind the bedstead. Then Gabriel owns he had hoped to be bailiff himself, and says Miss Everdene has every right to keep him a common shepherd, and the sigh he gives has little to do with lamb skins.

Boldwood comes in and asks pardon for opening a letter in mistake. It is from Fanny Robin, who thanks the stranger for his kindness on the night she left, returns his money, and says she is to marry Sergeant Troy, “a nobleman by blood”. She begs him to keep it secret. Boldwood is grieved, doubts that the marriage will come, and tells Gabriel what he knows of Troy: a clever clerk who threw away a career by enlisting. Cainy Ball runs in, short of breath, to say two more ewes have twinned, and Gabriel marks the new lambs with “B. E.” and goes.

Boldwood follows him up the field, turns back, follows again, and opens his pocket-book on the valentine. “Whose writing is this?” Gabriel answers at once, with a flushed face, “Miss Everdene’s”, and the flush is only from saying her name. Boldwood reads it as something else, and talks of privy inquiries and “fun” in a voice that sounds like torture. Gabriel goes back to his ewes with a new and uneasy thought that the letter must have been sent unsigned. Boldwood goes home ashamed, puts the valentine back on the mantelpiece, and sits down to think about it by the light of what Gabriel has told him. Neither man has asked Bathsheba.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Speaking Up for Someone Who Is Absent

It is easy to run someone down when nobody present will answer for them. In the malthouse Henery Fray and the others criticise Bathsheba's pride and her new piano, until Gabriel puts his fist on the maltster's table and says the first man to prophesy bad of their mistress will taste it.

This week, when you hear someone being criticised in their absence, say one calm, true thing in their defence or ask the speaker whether they have said it to that person's face.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Gabriel

He comes in carrying newborn lambs, wet from a season with no proper hut, while the malthouse prices her piano and her pride. His body is still in the work. Their talk has already moved her into a marriage story. He hears the joke becoming weather and has no sentence that can put the seal back in the drawer.

Continue this thoughtThe Parish Watches, and the Narration Knows It

Coming Up in Chapter 16

On a week-day morning in a mouldy barrack-town church, a few women and girls will rise from their knees at the end of a service without a sermon. Then spurs will clink up the aisle, and a young sergeant in scarlet will walk straight to the altar rail.

PreviousPrevious Chapter NextNext Chapter

Original text

3,538 wordscomplete

Chapter 15

Gabriel Defends Bathsheba, Boldwood Shows the Valentine

A MORNING MEETING—THE LETTER AGAIN The scarlet and orange light outside the malthouse did not penetrate to its interior, which was, as usual, lighted by a rival glow of similar hue, radiating from the hearth. The maltster, after having lain down in his clothes for a few hours, was now sitting beside a three-legged table, breakfasting off bread and bacon. This was eaten on the plateless system, which is performed by placing a slice of bread upon the table, the meat flat upon the bread, a mustard plaster upon the meat, and a pinch of salt upon the whole, then…

Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.

Master this chapter. Complete your experience

Purchase the complete book to access all chapters and support classic literature

Buy atAmazon.com

Available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book formats

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

Also by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy

Also by Thomas Hardy

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë

Explores love & romance

Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen

Explores love & romance

Love & Relationships Identity & Self-Discovery Social Class & Status

Lessons from Far from the Madding Crowd

Theme-by-theme analyses that connect this book to modern life skills.

Deep diving the literary elements.

Gabriel Defends Bathsheba, Boldwood Shows the Valentine

Summary

Why This Matters