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My ten favourite generalisations about women that Hardy makes in Far From the Madding Crowd: a thread.
1. that novelty among women—one who finished a thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it.
2. Women are never tired of bewailing man’s fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.
3. at the same time bringing a few more tears into her own eyes, not from any particular necessity, but from an artistic sense of making herself in keeping with the remainder of the picture, which seems to influence women at such times.
4. The vision of Oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the imitative instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea, resolved to kneel, and, if possible, pray.
5. Bathsheba’s feeling was always to some extent dependent upon her whim, as is the case with many other women.
6. 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
7. The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or squirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here.
8. Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false—except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical on strictures that she knows to be true.
9. Bathsheba had too much sense to mind seriously what her servitors said about her; but too much womanly redundance of speech to leave alone what was said
10. Bathsheba collected the flowers, and began planting them with that sympathetic manipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuous in a woman’s gardening, and which flowers seem to understand and thrive upon.
So there you have it! Women are thoughtless, complaining, unfeeling, imitative, they talk too much, believe false things to be true and true things to be false, and are bad throwers but good gardeners.
Thanks, Thomas!
Thanks, Thomas!
