Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy · 1874
Hardy's most hopeful novel, which still means it contains heartbreak and obsession on the way to a love that feels earned through extraordinary suffering. Bathsheba Everdene is a great Victorian female character; Gabriel Oak's patient love for her remains deeply moving.
The case against
Hardy punishes Bathsheba for three hundred pages because she mailed a valentine as a joke, and the moral arithmetic (her independence humbled, Oak's doormat patience rewarded) reads worse every decade. The rustic chorus scenes stop the story cold while shepherds philosophize, and coincidence does the plotting whenever Hardy needs it: Troy presumed drowned, Troy back from the sea on cue.
Romance · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
