When Crisis Reveals True Character — Far from the Madding Crowd

Boldwood walks steadily through the night to Casterbridge gaol, rings the porter, and gives himself up while Weatherbury wakes to Troy's body and Bathsheba's sudden return to commanding action amid screaming women and bewildered men. She sits on the floor with his head in her lap, stanches the wound that barely bled, and sends Gabriel for a surgeon though she names the shot useless with quiet force that steadies the room better than any speech. Oak rides at once; Boldwood's name is already fixed to the deed and the parish will talk of nothing else. Bathsheba's temporary coma yields to the philosophy she now practises: deeds of endurance that astonish the household, the stuff of great men's mothers hated at tea parties yet indispensable in crisis. Fainting fits follow through the night, and she moans that it is her fault and she cannot live, prostrate with guilt though outwardly competent when anyone can see her. Hardy shows her at her gravest strength when catastrophe finally gives her a role that matches her temperament, while Boldwood's measured walk to the prison contrasts with the chaos left in the candlelit hall where female guests huddled like sheep and Troy lay recumbent in his wife's lap as the sole spectacle.