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Chapters 1 - 6

• Far from the Madding Crowd is a late-nineteenth-century novel by English author Thomas Hardy.

• In Chapters 1 and 2, the third-person omniscient narrator introduces Gabriel Oak, a young farmer in South Wessex, and a beautiful young woman he encounters in the woods.

• In Chapters 3 and 4, Gabriel Oak comes to know Bathsheba Everdene more as she stays with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst.

• Struck by Bathsheba’s beauty, Gabriel calls upon her and asks for her hand in marriage. Bathsheba, however, refuses.

• In Chapters 5 and 6, Bathsheba has left town and gone to Weatherbury to live with an uncle.

• In the meantime, Gabriel Oak comes to ruin when a young sheepdog chases his flock over a cliff.

• Oak is impoverished and while looking for work, encounters a barn fire which he leads in fighting; the barn belongs to Bathsheba.

Chapters 7 - 12

• In Chapters 7 and 8, Bathsheba has hired Gabriel as a shepherd...

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