I'm reading Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (if you ever want to send a professor into a snit, call Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer's Night Dream" or this book Far from the Maddening Crowd). I've grown weary of Hardy, as it appears that he saw more to enjoy in rural life than I do. Still, this book is pretty good; a straightforward tale of a woman with more suitors than sense. But from the same author as Tess and Mayor of Casterbridge, it's pretty tame. Here is a scene where Oak, who proposed to Bathsheba when he has his farm, has lost it and now has to work for her as a shepherd. He spies her talking to a prosperous farmer (Boldwood) and knows that she will eventually marry the farmer.

She left Boldwood's side, and he walked up and down alone for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then she reappeared in her new riding-habit of myrtle-green, which fitted her to the waist as a rind fits its fruit; and young Bob Coggan led on her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse from the tree under which it had been tied.

Oak's eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to continue his shearing at the same time that he watched Boldwood's manner, he snipped the sheep in the groin. The animal plunged; Bathsheba instantly gazed towards it, and saw the blood.

Wow. That's not symbolic or anything.