‘Rot the Genuine’: Moral Responsibility and<i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>’s Cancelled Fragment

Abstract

This article considers Hardy’s ‘deleted’ sheep-rot scene from Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), which focuses on Troy’s surreptitious scheme to ‘rot’ his wife’s flock of sheep to increase their market profitability. Sheep-rot, a dreaded nineteenth-century ovine disease, occurred when flocks grazed in low-lying, swampy fields: while the condition was fatal, in the early stages it caused its victims to fatten quickly without showing other symptoms. Troy’s efforts to capitalize on the economic advantage of this stage – without regard to the animals’ suffering or to the dangers posed by human consumption of diseased meat – eerily foreshadows the ambivalence shown by proponents of the factory farm today. While the chapter did not survive later drafts, Hardy recycled imagery from it for a scene depicting Bathsheba’s night next to a swamp: in both instances the swamp is a literal (and not solely symbolic) unhealthy environment for its occupants. The fragment also links the swamp with the fern hollow where Bathsheba has her first romantic rendezvous with Troy. The linking of the two scenes – along with the implications of sheep-rot transposed into the human realm – demonstrates Hardy’s ease in moving from the non-human to the human and raises questions of why he chose to use the scene with Bathsheba as the central figure instead of the sheep. So far, little scholarly attention has been given to the sheep-rot scene, but this essay will argue for its importance: the extent of Hardy’s description of rot and the seriousness of the condition upon the sheep (who are repeatedly configured as creatures) add further import to the swamp’s transcription to the scene with Bathsheba, gesturing toward moral obligation to non-human and human others.