Far from the Madding Crowd

"So good. "

"Many talk about Mr. Darcy but give me the heart and steadfastness of Mr. any day. His love is true and unbending. He accepts Bathsheba as she is and who she becomes. He calls her out when she makes mistakes but is there when she needs him. "

"He's named perfectly, too: Gabriel Oak. He is solid, reliable, sheltering."

"The only emotions that this book evoked for me were boredom and annoyance. The boredom stemmed largely from its predictable plotline and its verbose narrative style (and its utter failure to engage me intellectually, which may have made this verbosity pardonable). The annoyance stemmed from Hardy's method of creating the protagonist, Bathsheba. He repeatedly describes Bathsheba as being self-willed, confident, independent, and poised; but he only tells us this about her, while her actions demonstrate a considerable lack of these characteristics. He has a habit of writing in sweeping generalizations about the nature of "women," often describing such nature in its supposed relation to Bathsheba. Each time he tells us of her supposed independence, he does so with the implicit, and often explicit, assumption that what he is saying about her sets her apart from that which defines women in general, yet his negative stereotypes about women later manifest themselves in the actions which he gives to Bathsheba."