In a moment of dramatic irony, the reader observes Bathsheba riding as if no one is watching her:
The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a moment as if to ensure herself that all humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony’s back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulder and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her glide in this position was that of a kingfisher—its noiselessness that of a hawk [...]. Thus she passed under the level boughs.
From where she sits, Bathsheba believes “all humanity is out of view.” However, Gabriel Oak is watching her intently from the hedge as she lies flat across the body of her horse to pass beneath low swinging boughs. Her horse has no reaction to this behavior, suggesting that she often rides like this instead of dismounting to walk under the low-hanging trees.
In this (seemingly) private moment, Bathsheba does something notably unladylike, unconventional, and habitual. Something intimate about her is revealed in her riding style, which is a personal quirk that is performed for no one but herself. In addition to the private nature of this moment, the sexual undertones of the scene cannot be ignored. Both her positioning (in lying flat and riding astride the horse afterward) and her later embarrassment at having been seen (being caught offending ideals of “modesty”) add another subtext to this moment.
It is worth noting that Gabriel becomes interested in Bathsheba in earnest after this moment, after having witnessed a glimpse of her idiosyncrasies, interiority, and sexuality. In a stroke of situational irony, it is Bathsheba’s unladylike behavior—her disregard for the conventions of female behavior—that wins her Gabriel’s sincere romantic interest.
After Boldwood has become the target of Bathsheba’s joke valentine, the narrator reveals that, beneath his veneer of apparent calm, Boldwood is a deeply emotional person. This description is actually an instance of situational irony, as the unassuming Boldwood is revealed to be full of passion:
That stillness, which struck casual observers more than anything else in his character and habit [...] may have been the perfect balance of enormous antagonistic forces—positives and negatives in fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once. [...]Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic intensity. Had she known Boldwood’s moods, her blame would have been fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable [...] she would have trembled at her responsibility.
The apparent “stillness” in Boldwood’s manner is actually the perfect, delicate balance of the extreme emotions within him. Boldwood has been, up until this point, reasonably unengaged with women or the town at large; but the incident with Bathsheba has stirred something in him. Boldwood’s capacity for deep emotion is activated by Bathsheba's simple valentine, the only moment of intrigue he has had for quite some time.
This insight into Boldwood’s character is also a moment of dramatic irony, as the audience is made privy to something that Bathsheba does not know. If she had any idea of his true personality, the narrator says, she would have been unimaginably ashamed at her own decision-making.
This instance of irony is important because the narrator reveals something that would be impossible for the audience to see in Boldwood’s behavior alone. The reader, like the townspeople, would not be able to square Boldwood’s sudden obsession with Bathsheba with the quiet, seemingly well-adjusted person he has been for most of the book.
