Paradise lost and hell regained:: On the figure of the intruder in Thomas!Hardy's 'Far from the Madding Crowd'

Intruders encroaching upon the calm of pastoral life are an ever recurrent feature in Thomas Hardy's novels. In Far from the Madding Crowd, it is Bathsheba Everdene who intrudes upon both the shepherd Gabriel Oak and the Farmer Boldwood. The plot is given an ironic twist when the former intruder is suddenly intruded upon by the dashing Sergeant Troy whose transgressive sexuality and propensity for dandyish modernity plunge Bathsheba into infernal depths. Out of these depths she is rescued by Oak who, throughout the novel, counterpoises Troy's destructiveness with "oaken" reliability and Christological qualities. The dialectical progress which underlies Bathsheba's fitful career seems to be completely missing in Hardy's later novels. Tess - herself an unwilling intruder-can only break Alec's destructive spell by desperately reverting to murder, while Jude's hell remains irreversible due both to Arabella's sexual intrusion and to the sombre Father Time, who destroys his young family.