Far From the Madding Crowd: Chapter 51 Summary & Analysis

Since Poorgrass is now suffering from his ‘multiplying eye,’ and Gabriel is busy, Bathsheba accepts Boldwood’s offer to ride aside her as she drives home herself. She’d rather have Gabriel’s company, but resolves to be civil to Boldwood. She pities him, recognizing how devoted he still is.

Suddenly, Boldwood asks if Bathsheba will marry again some day. She says she hasn’t thought of it, and indeed she’s not legally a widow: gently, she says while she at first doubted Troy’s death, she now has no more doubts, yet still would never think to marry another. After a pause, Boldwood reminds her of when he carried her, fainting, in his arms: he will never recover from her refusal to marry him.

Boldwood asks if Bathsheba likes or respects him. She says it’s difficult to define her feelings in a language made for men’s. She does regret her behavior towards him: he asks if she might repair the wrong by marrying him. She cannot say; certainly not now, but perhaps, she says, as he prods her, at a future time—say six years. She cries that that seems long, though he says it will be short. Boldwood tells her he is willing to protect her for the rest of their lives, and there would be no fault in making such a bargain with him: that if she marries again it will be him.

Almost afraid, she says she’ll never marry another while Boldwood wishes her to be his wife. But she hesitates to promise to marry him in six years. She finally is persuaded to think about it until Christmas, and give her answer then. Bathsheba feels coerced by a force stronger than her own will.

One day Bathsheba is working with Gabriel and mentions Boldwood: Gabriel says he’ll never forget her. Suddenly Bathsheba shares with Gabriel her anxiety about her promise. She admits she worried Boldwood would go insane if she didn’t promise to consider it: she holds his future in her hand. Gabriel tells her that his manner has always been dark and strange, but that it couldn’t hurt to make the conditional promise.

Bathsheba says the scheme is absurd, and asks if it wouldn’t be immoral. What stops it from being immoral, Gabriel says, is that she doesn’t care for him: a mere contract isn’t wrong. There is, though, he says, a sin in thinking of marrying someone one doesn’t love. Bathsheba says she’s willing to pay that penalty for her idle jest. She wishes she could pay him damages in money for what she did. This, though, is penance if only because she hates the idea of marriage so much now, as well as the class of women that she’d seem to belong to if she married Boldwood.

Gabriel says it depends whether Bathsheba really thinks, like everyone else, that Troy is dead: she says she’s long ceased to doubt it. He suggests she speak to Mr. Thirdly, but she says she wants a broad-minded opinion: she prefers the parson’s opinion on law and the lawyer’s on doctoring, for instance. In love, though, she sticks to her own opinion: Gabriel, with a sad smile, says there’s a mistake in that logic. She pauses, then bids him good evening. She has a slight pang that he never once wished her free so that he could marry her himself. She wouldn’t have listened to it, but his lack even of playful jest hurts her.