<i>Et in Arcadia Ego</i>: Death, Fortitude and the Birth of Wessex in Thomas Hardy’s <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>

As has long been recognized, Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd transcends simple pastoral idealization by integrating the harsh realities of labour, economic instability, and mortality into its narrative. The early episodes of the novel, in which the chief characters, Gabriel and Bathsheba, are introduced as potential lovers, culminates in the catastrophic loss of Gabriel’s entire flock of sheep. Other key scenes of the novel also feature untimely deaths – of Fanny Robin and Sergeant Troy – highlighting the persistent shadow of mortality over pastoral life. Written during a period of personal turmoil when Hardy was mourning the suicide of his friend Horace Moule while beginning marriage with Emma Lavinia Gifford, the novel serves as both a pastoral tale and a meditation on death. To keep his promise to the editor of Cornhill of ‘a pastoral tale’, such as would fit with the magazine’s usual fare and tenor required careful management of scenes like the death of the sheep and the opening of Fanny’s coffin. Repeatedly we see the narrator deflect away from the abject and toward the beauty of the surrounding natural world in a narrative strategy often enhanced through allusions to the visual arts. This psychological work in the novel during Hardy’s bereavement is put under pressure in the treatment of Troy, whose life (emerging in the wake of Moule’s death) closely corresponded with that of Moule. Troy’s elimination from the narrative to make way for the pastoral conclusion is brought about by clearly differentiating him from Anglo-Saxon natives of Wessex. Troy, as an ‘outsider’ due to his French lineage that is linked with his flaws, contrasts sharply with the local characters’ Englishness that is tested and proven worthy by contrast in times of adversity. The incursion and removal of ‘outsiders’ in Hardy’s Wessex, first conceptualized in Far from the Madding Crowd, thus reflects a deeper ideological project – the construction and protection of a distinct notion of Englishness.