val’s Reviews > Far from the Madding Crowd > Status Update

gabriel oak: yearning final boss

in all honesty, if i were gabriel, i would've simply left weatherbury and never gone back. holy crap

In all honesty, I'm quite fascinated by Bathsheba. There's something dangerous in her constitution. Her pride is immense, and she reminds me of Emma Woodhouse in the sense that she holds herself in high regard and disregards any opinion that wars with her own. Also, the "winning smile" that she gives Gabriel at the end of the chapter could very well be a manipulative ploy... I'm both repulsed and intrigued 3

the pacing of this book is wild

gabriel reminds me of gwan-sik from when life gives you tangerines... he's so obsessed with bathsheba! he's so in love! he's such a defender! wow! yearner #1

bathsheba i don't think that's a great idea

bathsheba just lowkey bodied a hall full of men by being like "ok just because i'm a woman and just because i only got this job by accidentally breaking the glass ceiling due to a thieving bailiff i will NOT tolerate disrespect" and everyone just nodded along. i love women in male fields.

sometimes a book is so painfully obviously written by a man...

this is good, and the premise is interesting, but the pacing is so terribly off, and bathsheba doesn't feel like a character yet. maybe the last point has something to do with the fact that we're seeing everything from gabriel's perspective at the moment, but bathsheba feels underdeveloped and stagnant despite her supposed ascendancy to wealth.

a proposal and a rejection within 30 pages. whatever happened to slow burn, gabriel oak?

me when the book involves the heroine saving a man !!!! yippee.

you know the pen on fire gif. or the gif of penelope featherington serving face while she's writing a whistledown article. well, that's how i felt annotating "vanity" next to "woman's prescriptive infirmity" only to have my annotation affirmed at the end of the first chapter #womeninpropheticfields