The meaning of, Far from the “madding” crowd
A home is a refuge, a place we wake up to at the start of the day with a warm cup of coffee and a loved one at our side, a place “far from the madding crowds” we return to and leave our troubles outside.
In Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowds, home is Wessex, a fictional but historically real part of southwest England. The central character in the novel is a young woman, Bathsheba. She inherits a farm in Wessex, but nearly destroys her life navigating the complexities of love and marriage. The story is simple – man and woman against nature complicated by human betrayal.
“The sky was clear — remarkably clear — and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. The North Star was directly in the wind’s eye, and since evening the Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of color in the stars — oftener read of than seen in England — was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgeuse shone with a fiery red.
To one standing alone on a hill on a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch one’s stately progress through the stars.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
I confess to being a Thomas Hardy fan, both his novels and his poetry. I further confess to being a book lover. There is something to the feel and smell of a paper book, that no Nook can replace.
The word “maddening” is itself both a bit vague and confusing. It is meant in the Victorian sense of frenzied, but one always has the underlying sense that it is a crazy world, inhabited by crazy individuals. What sense can we make of seemingly random events? The title comes from Thomas Gray’s 18th-century poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
One must also give a nod to Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland, and the zany world of Alice and the Mad Hatter. It is all too clear now that mercury poisoning played a part in the hatter’s madness. Luck and chance play a part in the fortunes of life, but so too does society.
Country life, city life
One of Hardy’s themes was that rural culture was threatened with extinction at the hands of ruthless industrialization. The theme repeats itself today in this era of digital-ization. And so, we must de-stress ourselves and find a way to escape the global barrage of constant digital information. Disconnect those iPhone and computers, retreat to a Stressless recliner, far from the maddening crowds.
Let me be so bold as to give one final thought to mull o’er:
“We color and mold according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
