– Set on the fictional Egdon Heath, the novel illustrates how the protagonists are somewhat fatalistically bound to the natural landscape. Making the reading experience fun Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster.Geared. – Symbolism in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native – “Cruel Persuasion”: Seduction, Temptation, and Agency in Hardy’s Tess – Maiden No More: Rape Culture in Tess of the D’urbervilles An entry in Hardy’s notebook dated April 1878 gives us a clue to the guiding principle behind his fiction:Ī Plot, or Tragedy, should arise from the gradual closing in of a situation that comes of ordinary human passions, prejudices, and ambitions, by reason of the characters taking no trouble to ward off the disastrous events produced by the said passions, prejudices, and ambitions. Far From the Madding Crowd opens with a description of farmer Gabriel Oak, a man just out of youth who has established himself as a sheep-farmer in the past.

Far from the madding crowd sparknotes