About the title
Having inherited a wealthy farm from her uncle, young Bathsheba Everdene energetically takes charge, hiring workers. Among them is the ruined farmer Gabriel Oak, an experienced and honest man. Gabriel had once proposed to her but was rejected. Now her neighbor, the well-to-do farmer William Boldwood, offers her his hand in marriage, but the willful Bathsheba is not yet ready to become a wife, asking for time to think it over.