Far from the Madding Crowd

"He that is accursed, let him be accursed still."

Context: Troy finds Fanny's grave destroyed by the gargoyle's stream—his night's careful planting washed to nothing—and this phrase rises as 'the pitiless anathema written in this spoliated effort of his new-born solicitousness.'

The phrase echoes Revelation 22:11 ('He that is unjust, let him be unjust still'). Hardy uses it to capture Troy's recognition that fate has closed against him at the precise moment he attempted reform. It is the novel's starkest statement of Hardyan determinism: the universe offers no reward for belated virtue. Troy's response—to walk away and never attempt repair—is both self-pitying and tragically coherent.

In Today's Words:

Whoever is cursed will remain cursed—there is no redemption available, so why try.

"He simply threw up his cards and forswore his game for that time and always."

Context: Hardy describes Troy's final response to finding his floral tribute destroyed: he makes no effort to replace the flowers or fill the hollow, but turns and walks away from Weatherbury for good.

The gambling metaphor is telling—Troy has always treated life as a game of chance rather than a matter of character. His capacity to abandon everything when luck turns against him is the defining feature of his moral failure. He could not sustain love for Fanny when alive; he cannot sustain even grief for her dead. The symmetry is precise: just as he left Fanny at the altar (metaphorically), now he leaves her grave.

In Today's Words:

He simply gave up and walked away from everything—that was the end of it, for that time and for always.

"With the superfluous magnanimity of a woman whose narrower instincts have brought down bitterness upon her instead of love, she wiped the mud spots from the tomb as if she rather liked its words than otherwise."

Context: Bathsheba, after discovering the inscription Troy had erected to Fanny Robin, quietly replants the flowers and cleans the splattered tombstone before going home.

Hardy's phrase 'superfluous magnanimity' is one of his most compressed moral observations. Bathsheba has no practical reason to be generous to Fanny's grave—it is the monument to her own humiliation. That she cleans it anyway, 'as if she rather liked its words,' is a measure of how completely her pride has been defeated and replaced by something harder and quieter: simple human decency. The scene is her true moral turning point.

In Today's Words:

With the excessive generosity of a woman who has received only bitterness where she deserved love, she wiped the mud from the tomb as though she had no objection to what was written on it.