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In This LitStack Rec of Far From The Madding Crowd and The Past Is Red
Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy
First published in 1874, Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd is a novel of romantic entanglements and agrarian life set in a fictional county Wessex of its day, though its heroine is distinctly out of her time. Even before Bathsheba Everdene finds herself in a station of authority and wealth, she’s prone to saying things like, “Well, what I mean is that I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.”
Gabriel Oak, a wandering salt-of-the-earth young man, is a somber foil to Bathsheba. They first meet when his prospects appear good, but as in so many of Hardy’s novels, bad luck as much as bad timing serves to come between principals. And so it goes with Gabriel and Bathsheba.
When a flock of sheep Gabriel is tending is accidentally driven over a cliff, he is instantly ruined. When next Gabriel and Bathsheba meet, he is the wandering hero who appears suddenly, one night when a barn on her land has caught fire. When the veiled landowner comes to thank him, Hardy skillfully calibrates events to portray the differences between what we might call authentic love and the varieties of infatuation and obligatory feeling that can get in the way.
Sergeant Francis Troy is another obstacle, a means for Hardy to expound on the kind of relationship that is of the moment, but clearly not meant for the long term:
Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.
Far From the Madding Crowd is also about what constitutes attraction, the push and pull of desire, and the traits that attract or repel:
We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.
Personal, financial, and moral ruin tends to divide Hardy’s characters, as do entanglements, missed signals, and tragic separations. These are as much a part of this story as the marking of the seasons, the spirituality of nature, and the agrarian world of mowing hay and shepherding and harvest.
—Lauren Alwan
About Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth.
Other Titles by Thomas Hardy
The Past is Red, by Catherynne Valente
It’s pretty obvious that I love Catherynne Valente’s work. I recommended her “mythpunk” (her word) novella, Comfort Me With Apples. I truly enjoy when she takes a known tale, or a known trope, and puts her unique spin on it.
But I really fan gurrl out when she does something completely original – such as in her novel, The Past is Red. It’s simply amazing.
Born out of a short story penned for Jonathan Strahan’s 2013 collection Drowned Worlds (“The Future is Blue”), Valente imagines a post-apocalyptic world where all the land we know is now under water, and humanity exists on an enormous floating mass of societal detritus known as Garbagetown, made up of dedicated places such as Scrapmetal Abbey, Toyside, Pill Hill and Candle Hole.
Is such a future possible? It doesn’t matter. To the people that inhabit The Past is Red, it’s all they know so it’s all we see – and it’s astounding. The people of Garbagetown are close enough to the apocalypse to know at least by anecdote the world we think of as real, but far enough away from it to put a strange, almost naïve and often bitter (the people from pre-apocalyptic society – you and me – are almost always referred to as “Fuckwits”) twist on life.
But the true delight of this slim novel is the central character, Tetley. She is, in a word, a hoot. She loves Garbagetown, often calls it the most beautiful place there is, and for her, the world shines, despite how it uses and abuses her. Her optimism, despite the ruin and savagery that surrounds her (Valente calls her “a kind of postapocalyptic Candide, always seeing the disaster of her existence as the best of all possible worlds”) reminds us that life is what we make of it, even as the effects that define the environment we find ourselves in may be out of our control. (Or is it?)
Candide, not Pollyanna. There’s an important difference there. Tetley can definitely show anger, and can lash out; she’s not unfamiliar or uncomfortable with violence or cruelty, but she’s also not chained to hate or a particular ideology, no matter how comfortable falling in line and joining the masses may be. And gosh darn it – she’s funny. Truly charming, even as you shake your head over what she encounters, over what befalls her, at what she accepts and what she holds unto herself as precious.
The Past is Red is yet again, a unique book. One that will deceptively make you think and feel even while you enjoy just blasting through it. Even while you appreciate the turn of phrase and laugh at the strange yet wholly genuine perspective. One that will stick with you, in all the good places.
In other words, just like you can expect from an author such as Catherynne Valente. Amazement – and delight. Simply too good not to read.
—Sharon Browning
About Catherynne Valente
Catherynne Morgan Valente is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Andre Norton Award, and Mythopoeic Award. Wikipedia
Other Titles by Catherynne Valente
Other LitStack Resources
Be sure and look at our other LitStack Recs for our recommendations on books you should read, as well as these reviews by Lauren Alwan, and these reviews by Rylie Fong, Allie Coker, and Sharon Browning.
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