SOURCE: Carpenter, Richard. “Fiction: The Major Chord.” In Thomas Hardy, pp. 80-152. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1964.

In the following excerpt, Carpenter presents an overview of Far from the Madding Crowd.

I Far from the Madding Crowd

The most representative and balanced of the Wessex novels is the fourth one Hardy wrote, following A Pair of Blue Eyes. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) combines the typical features of the other major novels without developing any one of them to an extreme: the vividly realized setting of field and farm without the overpowering grim majesty of Egdon Heath, a capricious heroine who does not demonstrate the neurosis of Eustacia Vye or of Sue Bridehead, and the influence of Chance and Time without the dominance they have in Tess of the D'Urbervilles or The Mayor of Casterbridge. Far From the Madding Crowd is not, however, a mere museum of Hardy...