Far from the Madding Crowd a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. Over time, Bathsheba and Gabriel grow to like each other well enough, and Bathsheba even saves his life once. However, when he makes her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much, and him too little. Feeling betrayed and embarrassed, Gabriel offers blunt protestations that only foster her haughtiness. After a few days, she moves to
The Way of a Man with a Maid sexual passions. In addition to the "quite perverse" scenes of rape, bondage, mother-daughter incest, whipping and "odd things done with feathers" to force women into orgasm, the book has a major element of lesbianism. The book can be considered to be irreverent of the British class system prevailing at the time of writing – all women, be they servants or great ladies, are "equal" in having to submit to the narrator's every sexual whim. The book's title is derived from the Bible's Book of Proverbs, where the wise King Solomon mentions "The way of a man with a maid" as