Summary
In June, it is time for the sheep shearing. While shearing in the barn, Gabriel notices that Boldwood has come to speak with Bathsheba. He is distracted by speculating about the nature of their conversation and wounds one of the sheep, leading Bathsheba to rebuke him. After Boldwood and Bathsheba ride off together, the other farmworkers speculate that the two of them will soon marry. After the shearing is finished, Bathsheba and her workers celebrate with a traditional shearing-supper. At the end of supper, when Boldwood and Bathsheba are alone together, she tells him that she is willing to consider marrying him but wants more time to think about it. She tells him that she expects she will be able to give him a definitive answer by harvest time.
That night, Bathsheba follows her nightly routine of walking around the property and inspecting it before going to bed. As she passes through the fir plantation, a man in military dress walks up behind her, and her skirt gets accidentally hooked onto the spur of his boot. He tries to free her and during the time spent untangling the knot, he identifies himself as Sergeant Troy. Troy also compliments Bathsheba’s beauty and flirts with her, making her uncomfortable. When she is freed, she hurries home and asks Liddy if she knows anything about this man. Liddy explains that Troy is well-educated and from a good family, and that he also has a reputation as a flirt and a ladies’ man.
A week after the shearing, Bathsheba goes to supervise her workers as they load hay and finds that Troy has come to help them. He approaches her and the two flirt with each other, although Bathsheba is somewhat guarded and skeptical. She is shocked when Troy impulsively gives her a watch that belonged to his father. The next day, he comes to the farm again and helps her with her beehive. She mentions that she would like to see him perform his sword exercises and they make a plan to meet that evening in secret. When they meet, Troy dazzles her with his skill as a swordsman and his bold charm. He kisses her before he leaves, leaving Bathsheba overwhelmed and confused by her feelings.
Analysis
Bathsheba’s situation was already complicated as she tried to come to a decision about Boldwood’s proposal, but the encounter with Troy throws another suitor into the mix. With both Gabriel and Boldwood, Bathsheba could be detached and rational about what was in her best interest. With Troy, it is immediately clear that she is going to be led by her emotions and desires. The scene in which they meet is rich with symbolism: as a woman walking alone at night, Bathsheba is to some extent in a dangerous situation, and the sudden presence of a man walking near her has the initial possibility of being threatening.
When her dress catches on his spur, she is symbolically ensnared or captured by him. Paradoxically, Bathsheba seems to find this vulnerable and relatively helpless situation to be exciting and arousing. The scene is one of the rare moments in the novel where she embodies a more traditionally feminine role of being dependent on a man to resolve a situation for her. The idea that this dependency might have destructive consequences becomes clear when she pleads with Troy to rip her dress in order to set her free: this moment foreshadows the future in which she will endure suffering and damage in order to try and escape from her unhappy marriage.
In her subsequent interactions with Troy, Bathsheba wavers back and forth between being somewhat conservative and traditional, and quite reckless in her behavior. She is curious about his reputation, which she reveals by seeking information from Liddy. In a world where reputation and an honorable public identity were major parts of what made someone worthy of respect, Bathsheba is anxious to find out how Troy is perceived. She is also conservative enough to be shocked and somewhat distressed by Troy giving away his father’s watch. In a more traditional worldview, an expensive item that is also a family heirloom would not be discarded lightly.
However, by agreeing to meet Troy alone in the woods at night, Bathsheba takes a significant risk. This action reflects the precarious freedom of her independent and autonomous position; because she is effectively the head of her own household, Bathsheba has no one to supervise or try and control her behavior. This means that she can do things it would be difficult for other young women of her social position to get away with. Not only does she sneak off alone with him, Bathsheba allows Troy relatively intimate access to her body as he practices his sword exercises with her as a target. There is a literal danger in terms of the injury she could sustain if his sword were to slip, but there is also the symbolic danger of what this sexually charged flirtation could lead to. Troy’s sword takes on a clear phallic symbolism in this scene; it is a source of danger for Bathsheba, but she is entranced and seduced by it.
