Far from the Madding Crowd

"Six years were a long time, but how much shorter than never, the idea he had for so long been obliged to endure!"

Context: After extracting from Liddy the information that Bathsheba had once said she might remarry after seven years, Boldwood calculates that six years remain and begins to treat this as a firm foundation for hope.

The logic is ironic in its precision: Boldwood measures emotional probability with the exactness of a business contract, as if love were a term he could hold Bathsheba to. Hardy reveals the dangerous distortion at the core of Boldwood's obsession—his capacity to convert the vaguest social remark into a binding obligation. The contrast with Jacob serving for Rachel adds biblical grandeur but also hints at the self-deception involved: Jacob at least had an agreed promise.

In Today's Words:

Six years was a long time, but infinitely shorter than never—which was the prospect he had lived with for so long.

"Jacob had served twice seven years for Rachel: what were six for such a woman as this?"

Context: Boldwood draws a biblical parallel to console himself for the years he must wait before Bathsheba might legally remarry.

The allusion flatters Boldwood by casting him as a patient patriarch and Bathsheba as a prize worth any sacrifice. But it also reveals how entirely he has abstracted her into an ideal. The real Bathsheba—grieving, managing a farm, still uncertain whether her husband is alive—is irrelevant to Boldwood's vision of six years of 'intangible ethereal courtship.' Hardy signals that Boldwood's hope is not love but a sustained act of private mythology.

In Today's Words:

Jacob worked fourteen years for Rachel—what is six years for a woman like Bathsheba?

"My mistress did certainly once say, though not seriously, that she supposed she might marry again at the end of seven years from last year, if she cared to risk Mr. Troy's coming back and claiming her."

Context: Liddy, being gently questioned by Boldwood in the hayfield about her mistress's views on marriage, passes on this casual remark—prefacing it carefully as 'not seriously.'

The qualifying phrase 'though not seriously' is everything, and Boldwood hears it. Hardy emphasises the gap between what Liddy means (an offhand speculation) and what Boldwood receives (a quasi-contractual statement of intent). This misreading will have fatal consequences by the novel's end. It also establishes that Bathsheba's casual words have weight she cannot control—a recurring feature of her situation, where speech always commits her further than she intends.

In Today's Words:

My mistress did once say—not as a serious intention—that she thought she might marry again after seven years, if she wasn't worried about Mr. Troy coming back to claim her.