As a woman, I think what I most gravitate towards when I'm looking for a "strong female character" is agency. The ability to make her own choices, knowing the consequences, and then continue to make them for better or worse in a way that feels like they're actually real choices a person would make. There are a surprising number of these kinds of characters in the classics (though they have a not-unfair reputation for being dominated by men's stories), and some of my favorite have been found in the work of Thomas Hardy. In his Far From The Madding Crowd, our central character is Bathsheba Everdene, who we watch grow from an inexperienced but capable young woman to owning and running her own farm and learning some brutally hard lessons about relationships, through her own effort and largely by her own hand. Bathsheba isn't without flaws, and some of the choices she makes are bad ones, but you never lose the sense that she's in control of her own destiny.

Bathsheba catches the eye of young farmer Gabriel Oak when she's on her way to live with a cousin to help out on the farm, and he soon grows besotted with her beauty. He proposes, but through they've built a friendly acquaintance, she shoots him down because she doesn't love him. She leaves when she inherits a farm of her own, and after financial disaster strikes and Gabriel loses his own toehold in the landed class, he winds up working for her as a shepherd. Unlike many owners (particularly female ones), she insists on being an active part of the operation of her land, and she and Gabriel become trusted allies to each other. When a silly joke with an older, eligible bachelor neighbor, Boldwood, leads to the other man's obsession with her, Bathsheba resists making a marriage with him as well but is under tremendous pressure to accept his suit. And then Sergeant Troy happens...he's young and hot and even though his heart belongs to his childhood sweetheart, he and Bathsheba have a whirlwind fling that ends in holy matrimony. Drama ensues.

If you can read Hardy without feeling a passionate longing to go spend some time out in the middle of nowhere for a while, you're a stronger person than I am. He doesn't gloss over the very real toil of rural life, but he presents it so persuasively as the most harmonious way to live that it makes you think about what it would be like to chuck it all and go buy a little piece of land and work it yourself. I would never do that, I know I'd hate it about 48 hours in, but Hardy was very concerned with growing industrialization and his preference to maintain traditional pastoral lifestyles is obvious. But his real strength lies in his complicated, multifaceted characters. While Gabriel Oak is a little on the idealized side, Bethsheba, Boldwood, and Troy are all painted in shades of grey that give them nuance and interest, and the drama derives from circumstances that mostly feel organic, giving real weight to their choices and interactions.

The more classics I've read in my late 20s and beyond, the more convinced I am that we do young readers a disservice by insisting on reading them in high school. While there's nothing going on here at a conceptual level that a reasonably intelligent teenager couldn't grasp, there's also so much more that you can bring into the novel of your own experience once you have some under your belt that gives it so much more life. If I'd tried to read this at 16, I doubt I would have cared for it, but at 32 (which is how old I was when I read it) it's got full layers of meaning that I really responded to. It's lengthy, but it moves along pretty well, and I would definitely recommend giving it a read! ( )

Købt i Kolding, som en trio af engelske bøger: Great Expectations, Frankenstein, Far from the Madding Crowd.

It’s probably some failing of mine; I don’t understand the connection of the title. I mean, yes, the story takes place in a rural setting, but that doesn’t seem to be a factor any character dwells upon. I also don’t understand concluding with an unlofty Biblical quote which seems to me derisive.
But that’s not to say I didn’t love this story. I did.
The story is a bit rife with men who are overwhelmed by youthful beauty. And, at least for me, begs the question: Why is it that so often people, when they have an overwhelming passion for another, will insist on a union, believing that they have enough love for both, as though it were some shortcoming on the other’s part which they imagine themselves capable of compensating for? They will beg for the union regardless of denouncements of any reciprocal feeling, and presume they, who love so deeply, would have the hardest part of such a union. They seem to presume that to be showered with compliments, attention, gifts, and affection (as these wooers imagine they can do without resentment for its absence toward themselves) is all the joy and value of love that the loved one could require. Where, in reality, the value of love comes far less from being a recipient of its expression, and far more from it simply and naturally bubbling up from within one’s own heart. To expect someone, let alone the person held above all others as the dearest creature living, to live a life in fear of never being able to conjure that natural wellspring of outpouring joy from their own hearts in any form other than gratitude, is to expect the person you believe worthy of your love to be content as a lifelong miser. If that person could do so, how is it they would be worthy? Oughtn’t that passionate soul to think twice about the inspiration of passion? If it is not the beauty of the soul it likely cannot endure with or without reciprocation.
Trying here, not to give too much away, though perhaps I'm the last to read (or rather, listen to) this 1874 classic; It seems the story progresses beyond this, to the telling of something developed toward harmony and equality, but those final lines give me pause for second thoughts. ([Possible spoiler coming?] Which would be most sad if the author thought to tell me that a beautiful woman can only ever be idolized.)
Speaking of "listening to", I've said it before and will say it again, John Lee is an excellent narrator!
( )

I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn't do it for me. Coming from Thomas Hardy, I was looking for much more morbidity and darkness, and this youthful, devil-may-careish style just doesn't suit him very well. I thought Bathsheba far too wavering a character to take her headstrong attitude seriously, and Boldwood was anything but his namesake, sauntering about with a stick up his ass the majority of the time. I sympathized for Gabriel at first, but as time went on, he became too self-righteous and I stopped vying for him. I honestly think a tragic ending for all of them would have been more suitable, and brutally ironic. ( )

Reason read: TBR takedown
This book was Hardy's fourth published novel. It is set in Wessex (rural sw England) and the idyllic but hash life of a farming community. The time period is Victorian England. The main female character is Bathsheba Everdene. She is not your typical female in that she is an independent female farmer. She does not want to lose her independence. The three male characters, all suitors of Bathsheba, are William Boldwood (gentleman farmer), Gabriel Oak, (hired hand), and Sergeant Troy (Don Juan in uniform).

The themes are love, honour, and betrayal. I found myself at times disliking Bathsheba and other times liking her. Gabriel is the loyal faithfaul friend, William Boldwood is the obsessive, Troy is a false horse and Bathsheba, usually so smart and careful fails to see the danger.

This book is unlike other Hardy books that I've read. It was the happiest. There are references to characters of this book in Mayor of Castlebridge. It is not as tragic as Tess nor as depressing and nihilistic as Jude the Obscure. It can be called a romance with three suitors. ( )