finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_1_part_0.txt
Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 2
chapter 2
{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-2", "summary": "It's midnight, a few days after Oak saw the woman in the wagon, and there's a strong wind blowing. The narrator spends nearly two pages describing how clear and beautiful the night is. And from this beautiful night come the sounds of... Farmer Oak's flute. Yeah, dude plays the flute, too. Isn't that just so idyllic? Now it's time for a little backstory. It turns out that it hasn't been long since people started calling Gabriel \"Farmer Oak.\" It's only recently that his hard work and good spirits have allowed him to buy a flock of sheep on credit. In other words, he's in a good position, but there's a lot riding on this flock of sheep he's taking care of. After popping out of his shepherd's hut for a moment, Oak returns with a newborn lamb, hoping to warm it next to his fireplace. And again, we all go, \"Awwww.\" When the little lamb starts to gain its strength, Oak goes outside and stares at the stars. While looking, he realizes that one star isn't a star at all, but a lantern burning in a nearby plantation's shed. He decides to go check it out after feeling a pinch of loneliness. He peeks into the shed through a crack in the roof and sees two women with cows. One of the women says to the other that she wishes they were rich enough to pay men to do the farm work. She also mentions that she has lost her hat. They need oatmeal for the morning, and the younger one volunteers to ride to the mill to get it. The women don't have a side-saddle with them, but the younger woman insists that she can ride \"on the other\" . A little history: in Hardy's time it was considered indecent for a woman to ride a horse astride, or straddling the horse with one leg on either side of the horse's back. Instead, women were supposed to ride with both legs hanging off one side of the horse. Riding astride is not something you'd want to be caught doing if you were a woman in Hardy's time, since it might affect your reputation. But the young woman in the shed insists that she's fine with it. When he hears her say these things, Oak wants to get a better look at the young woman. He soon realizes that she's the same pretty young woman he saw riding the wagon and arguing about the tollbooth price a few days ago.", "analysis": ""}


NIGHT--THE FLOCK--AN INTERIOR--ANOTHER INTERIOR


It was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas's, the shortest day
in the year.  A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill
whereon Oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the
sunshine of a few days earlier.

Norcombe Hill--not far from lonely Toller-Down--was one of the spots
which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape
approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on
earth.  It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil--an ordinary
specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which
may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far
grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down.

The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying
plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the
crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane.
To-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest
blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound
as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened
moan.  The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same
breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and
sending them spinning across the grass.  A group or two of the latest
in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very
mid-winter time on the twigs which bore them and in falling rattled
against the trunks with smart taps.

Between this half-wooded half-naked hill, and the vague still horizon
that its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of
fathomless shade--the sounds from which suggested that what it
concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here.  The thin
grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in
breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures--one
rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another
brushing them like a soft broom.  The instinctive act of humankind
was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the
trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular
antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to
leeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and
how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south, to be heard no
more.

The sky was clear--remarkably clear--and the twinkling of all the
stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.
The North Star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the
Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at
a right angle with the meridian.  A difference of colour in the
stars--oftener read of than seen in England--was really perceptible
here.  The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a
steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and
Betelgueux shone with a fiery red.

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as
this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.
The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past
earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness,
or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the
wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression
of riding along is vivid and abiding.  The poetry of motion is a
phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification
it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night,
and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass
of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all
such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately
progress through the stars.  After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is
hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of
such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.

Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this
place up against the sky.  They had a clearness which was to be found
nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in
nature.  They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute.

The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed
muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to
spread high or wide.  It came from the direction of a small dark
object under the plantation hedge--a shepherd's hut--now presenting
an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled
to attach either meaning or use.

The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark on a small
Ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of
the Ark which are followed by toy-makers--and by these means are
established in men's imaginations among their firmest, because
earliest impressions--to pass as an approximate pattern.  The hut
stood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a foot from the
ground.  Such shepherds' huts are dragged into the fields when the
lambing season comes on, to shelter the shepherd in his enforced
nightly attendance.

It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel "Farmer"
Oak.  During the twelvemonth preceding this time he had been enabled
by sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease
the small sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock
it with two hundred sheep.  Previously he had been a bailiff for a
short time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his
childhood assisted his father in tending the flocks of large
proprietors, till old Gabriel sank to rest.

This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master
and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a
critical juncture with Gabriel Oak, and he recognised his position
clearly.  The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of
his ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from his youth, he
wisely refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this
season to a hireling or a novice.

The wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the
flute-playing ceased.  A rectangular space of light appeared in the
side of the hut, and in the opening the outline of Farmer Oak's
figure.  He carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door
behind him, came forward and busied himself about this nook of the
field for nearly twenty minutes, the lantern light appearing and
disappearing here and there, and brightening him or darkening him
as he stood before or behind it.

Oak's motions, though they had a quiet-energy, were slow, and their
deliberateness accorded well with his occupation.  Fitness being the
basis of beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings and
turns in and about the flock had elements of grace.  Yet, although if
occasion demanded he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a
dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his
special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing
little or nothing to momentum as a rule.

A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan
starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been
casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for
his great purpose this winter.  Detached hurdles thatched with straw
were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and
under which the whitish forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled.
The ring of the sheep-bell, which had been silent during his absence,
recommenced, in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing
to an increasing growth of surrounding wool.  This continued till Oak
withdrew again from the flock.  He returned to the hut, bringing in
his arms a new-born lamb, consisting of four legs large enough for
a full-grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable membrane
about half the substance of the legs collectively, which constituted
the animal's entire body just at present.

The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small
stove, where a can of milk was simmering.  Oak extinguished the
lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being
lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire.  A rather hard
couch, formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered
half the floor of this little habitation, and here the young man
stretched himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his
eyes.  In about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would
have decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep.

The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and
alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle,
reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung
associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools.  In the
corner stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were
ranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to
ovine surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia,
ginger, and castor-oil being the chief.  On a triangular shelf across
the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider,
which was supplied from a flagon beneath.  Beside the provisions lay
the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely
watcher to beguile a tedious hour.  The house was ventilated by two
round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides.

The lamb, revived by the warmth began to bleat, and the sound entered
Gabriel's ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected
sounds will.  Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert
wakefulness with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse
operation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour-hand had
shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried
it into the darkness.  After placing the little creature with its
mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the
time of night from the altitudes of the stars.

The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were
half-way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which
gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it
soared forth above the rim of the landscape.  Castor and Pollux with
their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy
Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away
through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the
leafless trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the
uppermost boughs.

"One o'clock," said Gabriel.

Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some
charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky
as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit,
as a work of art superlatively beautiful.  For a moment he seemed
impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with
the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and
sounds of man.  Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys
were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded
hemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself; he could
fancy them all gone round to the sunny side.

Occupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived
that what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the
outskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing.  It was an
artificial light, almost close at hand.

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable
and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by
far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when
intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability,
induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united
to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.

Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower
boughs to the windy side.  A dim mass under the slope reminded him
that a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the
slope of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level
with the ground.  In front it was formed of board nailed to posts and
covered with tar as a preservative.  Through crevices in the roof and
side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made
the radiance that had attracted him.  Oak stepped up behind, where,
leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he
could see into the interior clearly.

The place contained two women and two cows.  By the side of the
latter a steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket.  One of the women was
past middle age.  Her companion was apparently young and graceful;
he could form no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being
almost beneath his eye, so that he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as
Milton's Satan first saw Paradise.  She wore no bonnet or hat, but
had enveloped herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung
over her head as a covering.

"There, now we'll go home," said the elder of the two, resting her
knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole.
"I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now.  I have never been more
frightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking my rest if she
recovers."

The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall
together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without
parting her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught
the infection and slightly yawned in sympathy.

"I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things," she
said.

"As we are not, we must do them ourselves," said the other; "for you
must help me if you stay."

"Well, my hat is gone, however," continued the younger. "It went over
the hedge, I think.  The idea of such a slight wind catching it."

The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a
tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes
to tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her
long back being mathematically level.  The other was spotted, grey
and white.  Beside her Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old,
looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not
long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning
to the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited
instinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience.
Between the sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcombe Hill
lately.

"I think we had better send for some oatmeal," said the elder woman;
"there's no more bran."

"Yes, aunt; and I'll ride over for it as soon as it is light."

"But there's no side-saddle."

"I can ride on the other: trust me."

Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her
features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of
the cloak, and by his aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon
his fancy for their details.  In making even horizontal and clear
inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us
whatever our eyes bring in.  Had Gabriel been able from the first to
get a distinct view of her countenance, his estimate of it as very
handsome or slightly so would have been as his soul required a
divinity at the moment or was ready supplied with one.  Having for
some time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing
void within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for
his fancy, he painted her a beauty.

By one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy
mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn
and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and
forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket.  Oak knew
her instantly as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and
looking-glass: prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence.

They placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern,
and went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more
than a nebula.  Gabriel Oak returned to his flock.




Chapter 2
It's midnight, a few days after Oak saw the woman in the wagon, and there's a strong wind blowing. The narrator spends nearly two pages describing how clear and beautiful the night is. And from this beautiful night come the sounds of... Farmer Oak's flute. Yeah, dude plays the flute, too. Isn't that just so idyllic? Now it's time for a little backstory. It turns out that it hasn't been long since people started calling Gabriel "Farmer Oak." It's only recently that his hard work and good spirits have allowed him to buy a flock of sheep on credit. In other words, he's in a good position, but there's a lot riding on this flock of sheep he's taking care of. After popping out of his shepherd's hut for a moment, Oak returns with a newborn lamb, hoping to warm it next to his fireplace. And again, we all go, "Awwww." When the little lamb starts to gain its strength, Oak goes outside and stares at the stars. While looking, he realizes that one star isn't a star at all, but a lantern burning in a nearby plantation's shed. He decides to go check it out after feeling a pinch of loneliness. He peeks into the shed through a crack in the roof and sees two women with cows. One of the women says to the other that she wishes they were rich enough to pay men to do the farm work. She also mentions that she has lost her hat. They need oatmeal for the morning, and the younger one volunteers to ride to the mill to get it. The women don't have a side-saddle with them, but the younger woman insists that she can ride "on the other" . A little history: in Hardy's time it was considered indecent for a woman to ride a horse astride, or straddling the horse with one leg on either side of the horse's back. Instead, women were supposed to ride with both legs hanging off one side of the horse. Riding astride is not something you'd want to be caught doing if you were a woman in Hardy's time, since it might affect your reputation. But the young woman in the shed insists that she's fine with it. When he hears her say these things, Oak wants to get a better look at the young woman. He soon realizes that she's the same pretty young woman he saw riding the wagon and arguing about the tollbooth price a few days ago.