This paper looks at how biblical scripture interwoven with folk belief functions as a form of fetishism in Far From the Madding Crowd Consistently, it is the uttering of the words themselves, rather than the spiritual or figurative message of the scripture that holds sway in Far From the Madding Crowd. For these characters daily speech is peppered with remnants of biblical scripture and biblical ideas, yet, this same speech is imbued with folk beliefs that are more fetishistic than doctrinal.
While the result often appears humorous, the comedy belies the palpable angst and tension informing this speech. But with Hardy, contemporary cultural theory is only a springboard for his own creative re-working in the world of his fiction.
And possibly, neither does Hardy, as he would later make substantial changes for the Wessex edition over what he submitted in manuscript form to Cornhill magazine. For the purposes of this paper, I will be citing examples from both the Wessex edition of Far from the Madding Crowd edited by Suzanne Falck-Yi Hardy and the original manuscript edition edited by Rosemarie Morgan Hardy Well, when I got to Saying After Me I rose from my knees and found the gate would open — yes neighbours, the gate opened the same as ever.
Hardy , So while the word-fetish here may alter from a hymn to a prayer or bit of liturgy, crucially, the effect is the same. Ah, poor widow woman! She cried her heart out about it almost. She was brought up by a very heathen father and mother who never sent her to church or school, and it shows how the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, mem.
This fatalistic view towards repressing the inborn instinct also surfaces in The Mayor of Casterbridge when Michael Henchard takes an oath to quit drinking altogether; yet it is this very decision to shun alcohol that sets him firmly apart from the community argues Joanna Devereux So while Coggan and the maltster officially proclaim to be Christians, their loyalties seem to lie more with nature, a nature for whom certain words — acting as fetishes — must be regularly spoken for harmony to remain.
