feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_8_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 9
feat_summary_id: chapter 9
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-9", "summary": "Bathsheba's home, which \"presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance,\" was once the manorial hall of a small estate. Ornate stone pilasters, finials, and other Gothic features adorned it. All the outlines were softened by a mossy growth. The entire complex of buildings was mellowed, and its new function, as a farmhouse, seemed to have turned it front to rear, reversing its focus. Within, the floors, at present uncarpeted, creaked and sagged. Bathsheba and her maid-companion, Liddy, were in one of the upper rooms, sorting the belongings of the former owner. Liddy was the old maltster's great-granddaughter, and \"her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl.\" Maryann Money could be heard scrubbing, and Mrs. Coggan was busy in the kitchen. A horse tramped up the footpath, and the women were thrown into confusion when they saw that the rider was a gentleman. He knocked, and the responsibility for answering the door was delegated from one to another. Eventually Mrs. Coggan, flour-covered, opened it and announced Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba could not see him, said Mrs. Coggan, for she was \"dusting bottles sir, and is quite a object.\" Boldwood explained that he was merely inquiring as to whether Fanny had been found. Later, the girls told Bathsheba that Boldwood was a gentleman farmer, a forty-year-old bachelor. He had befriended Fanny and had sent her to school. Then he had gotten her the position with Bathsheba's uncle. Boldwood, they agreed, was kind, but \"never was such a hopeless man for a woman!\" He had resisted all female attempts to ensnare him. Bathsheba, in a petulant mood, told Maryann that she should long since have been married off. The girl agreed: \"But what between the poor men I won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!\" To Liddy's question, \"Did anybody ever want to marry you, miss?\" Bathsheba answered, \"A man wanted to once.\" But \"he wasn't quite good enough\" for her. At this point, a file of employees was seen arriving.", "analysis": "To describe the manor house, Hardy draws on the terminology of architecture, with which he is professionally conversant. He adds the mellowed tones of a painter's appreciation and creates the venerable, musty atmosphere of the estate. This is our first meeting with the gossiping female servants; they are as absorbing as their male counterparts in the previous chapter. Into this preserve comes the very masculine Boldwood. Through conversation with busybody Liddy, Bathsheba learns about him. He is fond of children , but impervious to womanly charms and wiles."}
text: 
  
  THE HOMESTEAD--A VISITOR--HALF-CONFIDENCES
  
  
  By daylight, the bower of Oak's new-found mistress, Bathsheba
  Everdene, presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of
  Classic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion
  which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had
  once been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now
  altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast
  tract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest
  demesnes.
  
  Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front,
  and above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped
  gables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their
  Gothic extraction.  Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed
  cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or
  sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings.  A
  gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted
  at the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the
  nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot
  or two in the centre.  This circumstance, and the generally sleepy
  air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and
  contrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination
  that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the
  vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to
  face the other way.  Reversals of this kind, strange deformities,
  tremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon
  edifices--either individual or in the aggregate as streets and
  towns--which were originally planned for pleasure alone.
  
  Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the
  main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as
  bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their
  century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs
  themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look
  over his shoulder.  Going up, the floors above were found to have a
  very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and
  being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be
  eaten into innumerable vermiculations.  Every window replied by a
  clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed
  every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the
  house, like a spirit, wherever he went.
  
  In the room from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her
  servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting
  upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles,
  and rubbish spread out thereon--remnants from the household stores
  of the late occupier.  Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter,
  was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent
  advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl.  The beauty
  her features might have lacked in form was amply made up for by
  perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened
  ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in a
  Terburg or a Gerard Douw; and, like the presentations of those great
  colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary
  between comeliness and the ideal.  Though elastic in nature she was
  less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness,
  which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness
  superadded by way of duty.
  
  Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to
  the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular
  disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at
  distant objects.  To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak
  of her was to raise the image of a dried Normandy pippin.
  
  "Stop your scrubbing a moment," said Bathsheba through the door to
  her.  "I hear something."
  
  Maryann suspended the brush.
  
  The tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the
  building.  The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what
  was most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door.  The door
  was tapped with the end of a crop or stick.
  
  "What impertinence!" said Liddy, in a low voice.  "To ride up the
  footpath like that!  Why didn't he stop at the gate? Lord!  'Tis a
  gentleman!  I see the top of his hat."
  
  "Be quiet!" said Bathsheba.
  
  The further expression of Liddy's concern was continued by aspect
  instead of narrative.
  
  "Why doesn't Mrs. Coggan go to the door?" Bathsheba continued.
  
  Rat-tat-tat-tat resounded more decisively from Bathsheba's oak.
  
  "Maryann, you go!" said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of
  romantic possibilities.
  
  "Oh ma'am--see, here's a mess!"
  
  The argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann.
  
  "Liddy--you must," said Bathsheba.
  
  Liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish
  they were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress.
  
  "There--Mrs. Coggan is going!" said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief
  in the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or
  more.
  
  The door opened, and a deep voice said--
  
  "Is Miss Everdene at home?"
  
  "I'll see, sir," said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the
  room.
  
  "Dear, what a thirtover place this world is!" continued Mrs. Coggan
  (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark
  according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl
  a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment
  showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with
  flour).  "I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but
  one of two things do happen--either my nose must needs begin
  tickling, and I can't live without scratching it, or somebody knocks
  at the door.  Here's Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene."
  
  A woman's dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in
  the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the
  other, Bathsheba said at once--
  
  "I can't see him in this state.  Whatever shall I do?"
  
  Not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farmhouses, so
  Liddy suggested--"Say you're a fright with dust, and can't come
  down."
  
  "Yes--that sounds very well," said Mrs. Coggan, critically.
  
  "Say I can't see him--that will do."
  
  Mrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested,
  adding, however, on her own responsibility, "Miss is dusting bottles,
  sir, and is quite a object--that's why 'tis."
  
  "Oh, very well," said the deep voice indifferently.  "All I wanted to
  ask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?"
  
  "Nothing, sir--but we may know to-night.  William Smallbury is gone
  to Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the
  other men be inquiring about everywhere."
  
  The horse's tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door
  closed.
  
  "Who is Mr. Boldwood?" said Bathsheba.
  
  "A gentleman-farmer at Little Weatherbury."
  
  "Married?"
  
  "No, miss."
  
  "How old is he?"
  
  "Forty, I should say--very handsome--rather stern-looking--and rich."
  
  "What a bother this dusting is!  I am always in some unfortunate
  plight or other," Bathsheba said, complainingly.  "Why should he
  inquire about Fanny?"
  
  "Oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and
  put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle.  He's
  a very kind man that way, but Lord--there!"
  
  "What?"
  
  "Never was such a hopeless man for a woman!  He's been courted by
  sixes and sevens--all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round,
  have tried him.  Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a
  slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost
  Farmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of
  new clothes; but Lord--the money might as well have been thrown out
  of the window."
  
  A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them.  This
  child was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as
  common among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents
  among our rivers.  He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to
  show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby
  elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity--to which
  exhibition people were expected to say "Poor child!" with a dash of
  congratulation as well as pity.
  
  "I've got a pen-nee!" said Master Coggan in a scanning measure.
  
  "Well--who gave it you, Teddy?" said Liddy.
  
  "Mis-terr Bold-wood!  He gave it to me for opening the gate."
  
  "What did he say?"
  
  "He said, 'Where are you going, my little man?' and I said, 'To Miss
  Everdene's please,' and he said, 'She is a staid woman, isn't she, my
  little man?' and I said, 'Yes.'"
  
  "You naughty child!  What did you say that for?"
  
  "'Cause he gave me the penny!"
  
  "What a pucker everything is in!" said Bathsheba, discontentedly
  when the child had gone.  "Get away, Maryann, or go on with your
  scrubbing, or do something!  You ought to be married by this time,
  and not here troubling me!"
  
  "Ay, mistress--so I did.  But what between the poor men I won't have,
  and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the
  wilderness!"
  
  "Did anybody ever want to marry you miss?" Liddy ventured to ask when
  they were again alone.  "Lots of 'em, I daresay?"
  
  Bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation
  to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by
  aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published
  as old.
  
  "A man wanted to once," she said, in a highly experienced tone, and
  the image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her.
  
  "How nice it must seem!" said Liddy, with the fixed features of
  mental realization.  "And you wouldn't have him?"
  
  "He wasn't quite good enough for me."
  
  "How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say,
  'Thank you!'  I seem I hear it.  'No, sir--I'm your better.' or 'Kiss
  my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence.'  And did you
  love him, miss?"
  
  "Oh, no.  But I rather liked him."
  
  "Do you now?"
  
  "Of course not--what footsteps are those I hear?"
  
  Liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was
  now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night.  A
  crooked file of men was approaching the back door.  The whole string
  of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of
  intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which,
  distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a
  whole family.  Some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of
  Russia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet--marked on the
  wrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work.  Two or
  three women in pattens brought up the rear.
  
  "The Philistines be upon us," said Liddy, making her nose white
  against the glass.
  
  "Oh, very well.  Maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till I
  am dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall."
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 9
target: Bathsheba's home, which "presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance," was once the manorial hall of a small estate. Ornate stone pilasters, finials, and other Gothic features adorned it. All the outlines were softened by a mossy growth. The entire complex of buildings was mellowed, and its new function, as a farmhouse, seemed to have turned it front to rear, reversing its focus. Within, the floors, at present uncarpeted, creaked and sagged. Bathsheba and her maid-companion, Liddy, were in one of the upper rooms, sorting the belongings of the former owner. Liddy was the old maltster's great-granddaughter, and "her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl." Maryann Money could be heard scrubbing, and Mrs. Coggan was busy in the kitchen. A horse tramped up the footpath, and the women were thrown into confusion when they saw that the rider was a gentleman. He knocked, and the responsibility for answering the door was delegated from one to another. Eventually Mrs. Coggan, flour-covered, opened it and announced Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba could not see him, said Mrs. Coggan, for she was "dusting bottles sir, and is quite a object." Boldwood explained that he was merely inquiring as to whether Fanny had been found. Later, the girls told Bathsheba that Boldwood was a gentleman farmer, a forty-year-old bachelor. He had befriended Fanny and had sent her to school. Then he had gotten her the position with Bathsheba's uncle. Boldwood, they agreed, was kind, but "never was such a hopeless man for a woman!" He had resisted all female attempts to ensnare him. Bathsheba, in a petulant mood, told Maryann that she should long since have been married off. The girl agreed: "But what between the poor men I won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!" To Liddy's question, "Did anybody ever want to marry you, miss?" Bathsheba answered, "A man wanted to once." But "he wasn't quite good enough" for her. At this point, a file of employees was seen arriving.
feat_summary_analysis: To describe the manor house, Hardy draws on the terminology of architecture, with which he is professionally conversant. He adds the mellowed tones of a painter's appreciation and creates the venerable, musty atmosphere of the estate. This is our first meeting with the gossiping female servants; they are as absorbing as their male counterparts in the previous chapter. Into this preserve comes the very masculine Boldwood. Through conversation with busybody Liddy, Bathsheba learns about him. He is fond of children , but impervious to womanly charms and wiles.