Far from the Madding Crowd Far from the Madding Crowd Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in "Cornhill Magazine", where it gained a wide readership. The novel is the first to be set in Hardy's fictional region of Wessex in rural south west England. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the farmer Bathsheba Everdene, her life and relationships – especially with her lonely
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