If you just skim Far from the Madding Crowd, you can easily miss how important a role alcohol plays in its action. But beneath all the nature walks and cute baby sheep is more alcohol than on Mardi Gras weekend.
We can tell that Sergeant Troy is a brute, for example, by the way that he can drink any other man under the table. By contrast, we know that Gabriel Oak is a good, Christian man by the way he tends to stay away from the sauce. There are some poor workmen like Joseph Poorgrass who just can't control themselves when it comes to drink, and for Hardy, this seems to happen out of a combination of addiction and personal weakness. On top of that, though, the plot of this book also calls for moments when people need to be a little more clumsy and dumb than usual, and alcohol is a really good way for a writer to make clumsy and dumb happen.
Questions About Drugs & Alcohol
- What do you think this book's overall opinion of alcohol is? Is it for it? Against it? Does it distinguish between something like cider and, say, hard liquor?
- What do we learn about Sergeant Troy when he walks out of his barn whistling when every other man who has drank as much as him is stumbling around with a headache?
- What role does alcohol play in keeping Joseph Poorgrass from properly transporting Fanny Robin's casket to the Weatherbury cemetery? Who is to blame, apart from Joseph?
Chew on This
In Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy shows us that it's best to just stay away from alcohol entirely if you're going to be a good person.
In Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy draws a clear line between the enjoyment of alcohol and the abuse of it.