Gabriel Oak Research Articles

Listening to “the Squirrel's Heart Beat”

Listening to “the Squirrel's Heart Beat”

Kairos and Mistiming: Clocks, Watches in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd and Joseph

Both Hardy and Conrad are fascinated by the concepts of timing and mistiming, of kairos (acting at the right time), delayed recognition (belatedness) and event (the irreversible split between before and after). In Far from the Madding Crowd and Lord Jim, timepieces stand out as misplaced or incongruous, like the chronometer watch Brierly leaves hanging on his ship’s rail, the broken clock Jim mends in Patusan, or Gabriel Oak’s momentous one-hand watch. Such timepieces might seem comedic; in fact, they embody representations of time, such as the strict timing of imperial trade and standardized Victorian Britain, as opposed to a more embodied, natural and intuitive perception of time. Jim mends Time when tinkering with a broken clock, while with his broken watch Gabriel Oak must peer through his neighbours’ windows and steer by the stars or the clues given by Nature. In both cases, Conrad and Hardy engage with kairos, the right time, the moment when an action should be performed, an opportunity seized. The inability to act in time triggers the irreversible split between before and after, the wound of that which cannot be changed, materialized by the imp of the clock when Fanny waits in the wrong church, or by the gold watch hanging in Lord Jim, signalling a temporality of despair and chaos rather than measured order.

An Ecocritical Reading of Thomas Hardy’s <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>

This article aims to analyze Thomas Hardy’s novel,Far from the Madding Crowd, from the perspective of ecocriticism and study where Hardy’s ecological consciousness originates from and how it is represented and interwoven in the characters, setting and plot of the novel. It also focuses on such questions as how Gabriel Oak can be the voice of harmony in nature and what does the portrayal of this character tell us about today’s ecological crises? Ecocriticism, a newly found theoretical framework, explores the ways in which how environment is illustrated in literature and, by so doing, examines and proposes possible solutions concerning our contemporary environmental situation. In an era where a long-established rustic order are giving way to the giants of technology and industrial capitalism, there remains no more appealing vision than that of England’s pastoral and green land. In his Wessex, a part real and a part dream country which is the setting for most of his works, Hardy vividly and skillfully describes his vision and longs for the rustic nature of England. He lays stress to the intrinsic values of nature where men establish a harmonious relationship with their environments.

Face, linguistic (im)politeness and polyphony in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd

Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd provides a stark contrast in how the characters project their face (Goffman 1967) and how they seek approval from others. Such a contrast can be analysed in terms of Bakhtin’s polyphony – the many voices found in a text which includes the author’s portrayal of his protagonists and how they interact with each other. In order to highlight this contrast and its way of coming across, I examine how three key characters in the novel, Gabriel Oak, Sergeant Frank Troy and William Boldwood, present themselves interpersonally. I use the concept of linguistic (im)politeness to demonstrate how the protagonists try to further themselves, especially in their pursuit of Bathsheba Everdene. I argue that a linguistic (im)politeness approach can also be applied to other novels of Thomas Hardy and indeed to a wider range of literature.

Far from the Madding Crowd: How Good a Shepherd is Gabriel Oak?

Far from the Madding Crowd: How Good a Shepherd is Gabriel Oak? Charles Swann Charles Swann University of Keele Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 39, Issue 2, June 1992, Page 189, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/39.2.189 Published: 01 June 1992

Frontiers of Misunderstanding

HERE is a scene in one of Hardy's novels which illustrates one end of a scale in human understanding and communication, at the other extreme of which may perhaps be found Sir Edgar Whitehead and Mr. Joshua Nkomo-or let us for the moment avoid controversy and say Cortes and Moteczuma. The barn is 400 years old and as big as a church. They are shearing the sheep; the people concerned in the work-Bathsheba, Gabriel Oak, Temperance Miller, Cainy Ball-vary widely in economic circumstance, intelligence and personal integrity. But all know perfectly what they are about and what has to be done. Some organisation is needed and considerable skill, but a word, a gesture, is enough to convey meaning. Bathsheba, it is true, chatters, but the chatter 'tells nothing '; the work goes forward with a maximum of understanding, a minimum need for communication. The purpose is clear and there is no clash of will; each person concerned knows everyone else and almost without speech knows how the other will act. It is a scene that could be paralleled from many utterly different cultures and circumstances, the parallel lying in the common purpose, the narrow circle of acquaintance, the slight need for overt, formal, communicationthough in some cultures there may be plenty of chatter that tells nothing. But as the circle expands, as direct knowledge of persons is reduced, understanding shrinks and the need grows for formal communication, eventually for mass media. And this need surely reaches its maximum where the cultures concerned are alien to each other and their basic assumptions are widely separated. It is a formidable journey from Oak organising his sheepshearers to Mr. Macmillan leading Britain into the Common Market, another at least as arduous from the tribesman calling his friends to join him in clearing the bush, and Julius Nyerere summoning the people of Tanganyika to a campaign against igniorance and poverty. But surely a problem of quite a different order confronts Mr. Winston Field and Dr. Verwoerd? It may of course here be objected that theirs are not really problems of communication at all, that Dr. Verwoerd and Chief Luthuli in fact understand each other very well, each being perfectly aware that the other wants power and means to have it. And in this there is much truth; there is not only a minimum of communication but probably also a minimum of desire for communication. This is clearly an important factor also in Southern Rhodesia, where Church leaders last summer urged Sir Edgar Whitehead to meet Mr. Nkomo but he refused. It would, then, be naive to suppose in cases like this, that if the Premier understood the leader of revolt, conflict would be resolved, but it is surely possible to believe that misunderstanding arising from a complete failure to communicate has been partly responsible for the present situation? Indeed, one may go further and believe that even at this late hour, even in these extreme cases, communication of a kind does exist and that each learns from the other, even if the relationship is

The Dance Under the Greenwood Tree: Hardy's Bucolics

THE FACT that Hardy returns frequently to same bucolic themes and situations suggests not so much poverty of imagination as a problem that refuses to be permanently solved. The usual situation involves someone attempting to transcend or escape his inherited position or environment: Grace Melbury's father (in The Woodlanders) educates her beyond simple needs of her environment so that to marry Giles Winterborne would be wasting her; Jude Fawley tries not to be obscure; and Michael Henchard sells his wife in order to get ahead, which he does only to discard finally the shabby-genteel suit of cloth and rusty silk that stands for his rise and decline, to take up again the old hay knife and wimble, and to go an outcast and a vagabond to a disinherited death in which he asks only that he not be buried in consecrated ground, that no sexton toll bell for him, and that no man remember him. In most cases, security and simplicity of bucolic life are forsaken for social or intellectual gains, and unhappiness nearly always results. Love triangles intensify social antagonisms into dramatic conflicts. Ethelberta, daughter of a butler, must choose between potential husbands at opposing ends of social scale; Bathsheba Everdene (in Far from Madding Crowd) is attracted both by flashy, unstable Sergeant Troy and by shepherd Gabriel Oak, who prevents disasters and restores equilibrium to bucolic community; Fancy Day can have Dick Dewy, Vicar Maybold, or Farmer Shiner, each representing a different level of social and economic life; Giles Winterborne could accept Marty South and remain in his own class, but

A Shakespeare Allusion in Far From The Madding Crowd

Although Hardy's indebtedness to Shakespeare has been carefully studied,' some stray allusions doubtless remain to be noted. One such is Hardy's quotation of a line from The Two Gentlemen of Verona (I. iii. 85) in Far from the Madding Crowd (Chapter i8).2 Everdene and Gabriel Oak, her shepherd, are working with the young lambs, when Farmer Boldwood, driven out-of-doors by the fine day and his love for Bathsheba, approaches. Bathsheba looked up . . . and saw the farmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in full bloom. Gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of an April day [my italics], was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantly discerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in the form of a keenly selfconscious reddening. He turned and beheld Boldwood. Hardy does not put the line in quotation marks, and he may well have employed it unconsciously. It is, in any case, exquisitely appropriate, for it not only conveys Bathsheba's beauty and her changeableness but also reflects Gabriel's anxious situation in his spring of love, a situation similar in its unsettledness and uncertainty to Proteus' in the Two Gentlemen. As only a great writer can, Hardy assimilates Shakespeare and makes him his own.