Chapter LV The March following: “Bathsheba Boldwood”

We pass rapidly on into the month of March, to a breezy day without sunshine, frost or dew. On Mellstock Hill, about a mile and a quarter out of Casterbridge on the London road, a numerous concourse of people had gathered, the eyes of...

Chapter LIV After the shock

Boldwood passed into the high road, and turned in the direction of Casterbridge. Here he walked at an even steady pace over Yalbury Hill, along the dead level beyond, mounted Mellstock Hill,* and between eleven and twelve o’clock crossed Durnover*...

Chapter LIII Concurritur: horÆ momento

Outside the front of Boldwood’s house a group of men stood in the dark with their faces towards the door, which occasionally opened and closed for the passage of some guest or servant, when a golden rod of light would stripe the ground for...

Chapter LII Converging courses

i. Christmas-eve came, and a party that Boldwood was to give in the evening was the great subject of talk in Weatherbury. It was not that the rarity of Christmas parties in the parish made this one a wonder, but that Boldwood should be...

Chapter XLIX Oak’s advancement: a great hope

The later autumn and the winter drew on apace, and the leaves lay thick upon the turf of the glades and the mosses of the woods. Bathsheba having previously been living in a state of suspended feeling which was not suspense now lived in...

Chapter XLVIII Doubts arise: doubts linger

Bathsheba underwent the enlargement of her husband’s absence from hours to days with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling of relief; yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the level commonly designated as indifference. She belonged to him: the...

Chapter XLVII Adventures by the shore

Troy wandered along towards the south, though not to Budmouth as was reported.* A composite feeling, made up of disgust with the, to him, humdrum tediousness of a farmer’s life, gloomy images of her who lay in the churchyard, remorse, and a...

Chapter XL On Casterbridge highway

For a considerable time the woman walked on.* Her steps became feebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road, now indistinct amid the penumbræ of night. At length her onward walk dwindled to the merest totter, and...

Chapter XXIX Particulars of a twilight walk

We now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the varying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba Everdene. It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. Introduced as lymph on the dart of Eros,* it eventually permeated and coloured...

Chapter XIX The sheep-washing: the offer

Boldwood did eventually call upon her. She was not at home. “Of course not,” he murmured. In contemplating Bathsheba as a woman he had forgotten the accidents of her position as an agriculturist: that being as much of a farmer and as extensive a...