Far from the Madding Crowd thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited her uncle's estate and is now wealthy. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she employs him. Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty, whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words, "Marry me".
Far from the Madding Crowd (1915 film) the genuine ones over which Gabriel Oak watched with such care." In February 1916, the five-reel feature film was given a general release in Britain. On 19 June 1916 the film was released in the United States, the first of six Turner productions to be distributed in the U.S. by Mutual Film. The production was panned in a "Variety" review, which criticized the narrative as hard to follow and deemed the 30-year-old Turner as "no longer qualified physically to portray the roles of the simple ingenue type". The reviewer concluded, ""Far from the Madding Crowd" is one of those stories