Bathsheba Everdene inherits a farm and must manage it herself, choosing among three suitors who represent different modes of masculinity. Hardy's fourth novel established his Wessex as a fictional world and showed his ability to combine pastoral beauty with psychological complexity. The scene where Gabriel Oak saves Bathsheba's ricks from fire is one of the great set pieces of Victorian fiction. The novel ends more happily than Hardy's later work; the darkness is present but contained.