Summary
Bathsheba is increasingly distracted by her feelings for Troy, and Gabriel notices what is going on. He finds an opportunity to join her on an evening walk, and mentions the possibility of her marrying Boldwood. Bathsheba now asserts that she is not going to marry him, and that she will tell him so when he returns at harvest time. Gabriel expresses concern that she is toying with Boldwood’s feelings, and his dislike of her relationship with Troy. He tells her that he does not think Troy is a good or trustworthy person, but Bathsheba defends him. Becoming more desperate, Gabriel tells her that he loves her, and that while he knows he has no chance of marrying her, he would much rather see her with Boldwood or anyone else other than Troy.
Bathsheba becomes angry and tells Gabriel he cannot work for her any longer. He tells her that she needs him if the farm is going to continue to run successfully, and that he will only consent to leave if she agrees to hire another man as a bailiff. Since she refuses to do so, he insists on staying and she reluctantly agrees. She then asks Gabriel to leave her alone, and as he slips away, he sees that she is meeting up with Troy.
Bathsheba returns from the meeting with Troy and writes a letter to Boldwood saying that she has decided she cannot marry him. She then overhears Liddy and other female servants gossiping about the possibility of her marrying Troy. She becomes very angry and swears that she hates Troy, but then becomes very emotional and confides to Liddy that she is in love with Troy and agitated by all the bad things people seem to say about him. She behaves so erratically that Liddy is hurt and says she does not want to work for Bathsheba anymore, but Bathsheba quickly persuades her to stay.
After Bathsheba sends her letter to Boldwood, she is worried that he might try and come to discuss it with her, so she arranges to go away for a few days to visit Liddy’s sister. However, as she is walking on her journey, she runs into Boldwood. He tells her how upset he is, and begs her to reconsider. Bathsheba pleads that she never truly had feelings for him, and that she has done nothing wrong. Boldwood becomes angry about the fact that she loves Troy and not him, and accuses her of letting Troy kiss her. Bathsheba defiantly refuses to deny this. Boldwood storms into a jealous rage, claiming Troy has seduced and manipulated her, and that he will punish him if he ever catches him.
After Boldwood leaves, Bathsheba is very anxious, because while Boldwood and most of the other townspeople think Troy has returned to his regiment permanently, she knows that he is only away on a brief visit to Bath and is going to be returning the next day. She is fearful of what might happen if Boldwood runs into her lover. Bathsheba is unsure about whether she should tell Troy to remain in Bath but decides she needs to get there to tell him not to return before he sets out. The only way to accomplish this is for her to drive through the night. She decides to go home, get the horse, drive to Bath, end the relationship with Troy, and then continue on to visit Liddy’s sister as she had originally planned.
That night, Bathsheba’s servant Mary-Ann wakes up to the sound of someone taking one of the horses and driving away with it. Believing that a theft has happened, she wakes up the men and Gabriel determines that he and Jan Coggan should pursue the thief on horseback. They go after the thief and eventually are shocked to find that it is Bathsheba herself with the horse and wagon. She explains that she suddenly needed to go to Bath. She continues on her journey, and Gabriel and Coggan go home after agreeing not to discuss what they saw.
Analysis
Up until beginning her relationship with Troy, Bathsheba has largely operated from a rational and balanced perspective. She is capable of making good decisions about business and the future of the farm, and has shown herself to be a good manager and supervisor. But as her feelings for Troy deepen, Bathsheba behaves more irrationally and erratically. In some ways, as Bathsheba becomes more feminized by her first genuine experience of attraction and desire, she also moves away from the emphasis on logic that had previously characterized her. As Joanna Devereux observes, “the narrator typically attributes the qualities of logic and thoughtfulness to men, and then notes the unusual circumstance of a woman possessing these traits” (23).
One sign that her relationship with Troy is not on a good track is that it alienates her from people she cares about. Her volatile moods disrupt her relationship with Liddy, who is essentially Bathsheba’s only friend. More seriously, it leads to a confrontation with Gabriel. In both cases, these conflicts end with the risk of Bathsheba’s employee leaving her service. While Bathsheba’s elevated social and economic position gives her status and power, it is also a lonely situation for her. The only people she is close to still work for her, and that makes this emotional relationships even more complicated. The way in which her friendship with Gabriel has become atypical is made clear when, after she tries to fire him, he simply tells her that he won’t leave because he knows she needs him in order for the farm to run.
While the possibility that Bathsheba would marry Boldwood was clearly personally painful to Gabriel, he never attempted to interfere with the courtship because he respected and trusted Boldwood to be a good husband. Gabriel’s concerns about the fact that Troy does not seem to attend church show that he is a traditional, even conservative, character; for a character like Troy who is not used to being part of tightly-knit community, it would not seem important to publicly demonstrate his integrity and values in this way. What is more significant than Troy not attending church is the fact that he lies about it. When Gabriel suspiciously goes to investigate Troy’s story that he enters by the back door, he becomes clear that Troy has not been telling truth Bathsheba the truth, but instead telling her what she wants to hear. This relatively small deception foreshadows the bigger secrets he will turn out to be keeping.
Bathsheba’s confrontation with Boldwood echoes these themes of other characters mistrusting Troy and trying to protect her. However, while Gabriel and Liddy both seemed genuinely concerned about Bathsheba’s welfare, Boldwood is primarily motivated by his jealousy and desire to possess and control her. While it might not seem provocative to modern readers, Boldwood’s accusation that Bathsheba has allowed Troy to kiss her, and her refusal to deny this, would have been quite striking in the Victorian era. Boldwood interprets this as evidence that Troy is not a gentleman, and that he will manipulate women to get whatever he can without caring about the consequences to their reputation. Boldwood will turn out to be partially correct, but he overlooks the significant factor of Bathsheba’s own desire and agency. He assumes she could only be pursuing a relationship with Troy because the soldier is coercing her, not because she actually wants him.
