Let me just start by saying that I had been put off reading Thomas Hardye by Dickens. Having really struggled with Dickens and resorted to audio I had wrongly assumed that all 19C liturature was the same. How wrong I could be. From the first paragraph where the opening character farmer Gabriel Oak is desribed smiling, ‘the corners of his mouth spread till they were an unimportant distance from his ears‘ I fell in love with Hardy‘s narrative. His ability to use words that lift the description off the page and into the reader‘s imagination are not just outstanding but incredibly enjoyable.

I went into this book blindly, knowing little about the plot that lay ahead or even the genre. It has been described by some as romantic fiction. But I think this is too simplistic a title and and maybe slightly off-putting to some. Hardye steps into Greek Tragedy when the unwitting and churlish actions of our young protagonist, Bathsheba Everdene, result in a love tryst between three suitors with tragic consequenses.

The book is essentially a journey for Bathsheba into womanhood not unlike the journey that Scarlett O‘Hara makes in Gone with the Wind who also has to overcome great tragedy in order to realise her own strength. Unlike this heroin, however, Bathsheba is more the instrument of chaos and indecion and part of her journey is that she accepts what she has caused and tries to make it right.

Hardye avoids making this into moral stricture but deviates from the Greek Tragedy model by giving us a happy ending not atypical of 19C serialised fiction.

Quite often an author‘s voice creeps into their writing and the reader becomes aware that they are not in fact walking the hills and dales of fictional Wessex but are at the pen nib of a writ

Let me just start by saying that I had been put off reading Thomas Hardye by Dickens. Having really struggled with Dickens and resorted to audio I had wrongly assumed that all 19C liturature was the same. How wrong I could be. From the first paragraph where the opening character farmer Gabriel Oak is desribed smiling, ‘the corners of his mouth spread till they were an unimportant distance from his ears‘ I fell in love with Hardy‘s narrative. His ability to use words that lift the description off the page and into the reader‘s imagination are not just outstanding but incredibly enjoyable.

I went into this book blindly, knowing little about the plot that lay ahead or even the genre. It has been described by some as romantic fiction. But I think this is too simplistic a title and and maybe slightly off-putting to some. Hardye steps into Greek Tragedy when the unwitting and churlish actions of our young protagonist, Bathsheba Everdene, result in a love tryst between three suitors with tragic consequenses.

The book is essentially a journey for Bathsheba into womanhood not unlike the journey that Scarlett O‘Hara makes in Gone with the Wind who also has to overcome great tragedy in order to realise her own strength. Unlike this heroin, however, Bathsheba is more the instrument of chaos and indecion and part of her journey is that she accepts what she has caused and tries to make it right.

Hardye avoids making this into moral stricture but deviates from the Greek Tragedy model by giving us a happy ending not atypical of 19C serialised fiction.

Quite often an author‘s voice creeps into their writing and the reader becomes aware that they are not in fact walking the hills and dales of fictional Wessex but are at the pen nib of a writ.

这篇小说让我们知道应该如何去选择爱情才不至于盲目！小说中的特洛伊对待爱情是很盲目与不负责任的！他不负责任地丢下了芳丽·罗宾，不负责任地与美丽的芭丝谢芭·埃弗登结了婚，最后伤害的是他们三个人。

爱情应该就应该像盖伯瑞尔·奥克对待芭丝谢芭那样的忠贞，或许在这个物欲横流的社会中已经几乎找不到这种纯真、无私的爱情了，但正因为如此哈代手中的奥克才成了众多女生心中的美好期待，同时也成了众多男士学习的楷模了！

这篇小说围绕芭丝谢芭·埃弗登与三个男人之间的爱情纠葛而进行的！

小说中的特洛伊是我们一般人的象征，作者赞美的是盖伯瑞尔式的坚贞不渝的爱情！他把这种爱情是为高尚的美德。他特别赞赏建立在共同事业上的爱情！

在几个人中我最喜欢奥克，他对爱情是那么的忠贞，那么的无私，这种男人在女人心中应该是很成熟的，也是最易获得她人芳心的。同时他为人老实、善良，不耍手段，那么的无私。而特洛伊却是那么地不负责任，那么地冲动，害了芳丽、害了芭丝谢芭、害了博尔伍德，而且他嗜赌不听劝告，因此这些人物中我最不喜欢就数特洛伊了，尽管博尔伍德最后杀了他，但这也并没有得到我的同情。总的来说特洛伊是人品不行。然而特洛伊在恋爱方面耍的几个小把戏我倒是蛮喜欢的'，在爱情上他比博尔伍德好多了，三个人中博尔伍德在爱情上是最懦弱的了，他对爱情是那么地敏感，所以就易激动，无法控制好自己的情绪。我想没有哪一个女人能忍受得了博尔伍德式对爱情的态度，不过博尔伍德人品倒还好，只是他的（ai）情商太低了，所以如除去在爱情方面的表现，博尔伍德的行为也是没有什么好指责的。尽管他杀了人，事实上倒成全了芭丝谢芭（与奥克）！

由此看来，一个最重要的还数人品，人品不行了，就会让人家瞧不起，如果你人品行的话，即使其他方面有些缺点都是可以忍受的！