Far From the Madding Crowd: Chapter 56 Summary & Analysis

With the spring, Bathsheba begins to recover, though she continues to prefer solitude. She does spend more time outside as the summer goes on. One evening in August she enters the orchard for the first time since Christmas. She hears singing from the church and goes into the graveyard, where she reads Fanny’s tombstone, then the new letters below it saying that the remain of Francis Troy lie in the same grave.

Bathsheba listens to the hymn from inside, where the choir is practicing. It’s a somber one, about light leading one on amid gloom. She begins to cry, wishing she could be innocent like the children. Grief, though, now seems to her more of a luxury than a punishment. After some time, she lifts her head to see Gabriel, who respectfully says he was about to enter: he’s one of the bass singers.

Gabriel doesn’t want to drive Bathsheba away: he thinks he won’t go in tonight. They stand, embarrassed, and finally he says he hasn’t seen her for so long. At first he avoids speaking to her about the tragedy, but she says he need not. They stand by the grave. Then, hesitating, he says that he’s been meaning to ask her about a business matter. He’s thinking of leaving England next spring. Surprised and disappointed, she asks why and where: Gabriel stammers that he’s thought of California, and that he has reasons to decline to manage Boldwood’s farm.

Bathsheba cries that she can’t do without Gabriel, who has been with her for so long: it seems almost unkind for him to leave when she’s so helpless. But Gabriel says that’s why he feels obliged to go. Anxiously, he leaves. Now Bathsheba is troubled in a new way, pained that the one person who’s always remained on her side is now abandoning her.

As the weeks go on, Gabriel’s lack of interest in her or her affairs becomes more evident: he is avoiding her, making her feel like he despises her. Christmas arrives, the anniversary of her widowhood. As she leaves church, she hopes to cross his path—she had heard his bass voice from the overhead gallery—but as he comes up the path he looks aside, and vanishes.

The next day Bathsheba receives a formal letter from Gabriel saying he will be gone by Lady Day. She sits and cries bitterly, wounded at the withdrawal of his love for her and bewildered at having to regain the energy to survive on her own, at going back to the market, even, which he’s done since Troy’s death.

After dinner, Bathsheba goes down to Gabriel’s house and asks to speak with him. Awkwardly, he says he doesn’t have proper accommodation for a lady: she doesn’t mind the wood seats of his chair, but can’t escape a discomfort that they’ve never had between them before. She stammers that she feels she’s offended him, and couldn’t let him leave on that account. He tells her that’s not the case—in fact, he’s not going to emigrate, only take over the Lower Farm.

Gabriel adds that he would continue to watch over Bathsheba’s farm, were it not for what’s being said about them. Bathsheba says he must tell her: it’s that he has been waiting around with the idea of “getting” Bathsheba, that is of marrying her. Bathsheba looks alarmed: she begins to say it would be absurd, but quickly interrupts herself to say “too soon” to think of that. Gabriel agrees that it’s “too absurd,” though Bathsheba stammers that she said too soon. He corrects her, but with tears in her eyes, she insists she didn’t say that—he must believe her.

Gabriel looks into Bathsheba’s face, with tender surprise, and says if he only knew whether he might marry her after all. But she says he never asks—and he ought not to have sent that harsh, cruel letter. Laughing, now, Gabriel says that as an unmarried man managing her affairs he had to watch over his position, especially since people knew how he felt about her—it hasn’t been easy. Bathsheba cries, rising from her seat, that she’s glad she came, though she cries that it’s as if she’d come to court him, a dreadful thought. Gabriel accompanies her home and they speak little of their feelings: their affection doesn’t need pretty phrases. Instead it is the relationship that comes from knowing each other’s worse aspects first, and better character only later: a true camaraderie, the only love as strong as death, and much stronger than passion.