In the September instalment of Far From the Madding Crowd in The
Cornhill, Hardy establishes the significance of the workhouse as
a symbol of personal and moral failure by Bathsheba's remarking
in Chapter 30 that, under all the anxiety that Troy and Boldwood
are putting her through, she expects to die "quite young" as a
"friendless" pauper "in the Union" (p. 4). This passage prepares
us for the agonizing journey and death of Troy's belovéd, Fanny
Robin, in the September instalment, which alerts us to her
plight immediately through the main plate, which shows the
little seamstress (readily distinguished from Bathsheba by her
hair colour) slumped beneath a haystack and through the initial
vignette. This latter drawing is a visual complement to Hardy's
descriptions of the Casterbridge Workhouse at the close of
Chapter 40, as Fanny, near death, arrives there, and at the
beginning of Chapter 42, when Joseph Poorgrass appears driving
Bathsheba's smartly painted wagon to collect Fanny's body for
burial. A connection