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The Mayor of Casterbridge Study Guide
In June of 1883, Thomas Hardy and his wife Emma settled into their
new home in Dorchester. The Hardys had spent the last few years traveling about
England, although they wanted to settle down and perhaps begin a family.
Finally, Hardy and Emma decided to return to Dorchester. This town, located
only a few miles from his birthplace of Upper Bockhampton, was long important
to Hardy--he attended school there in his youth, and later he was apprenticed
as a young architect there.
Now Hardy had returned
home, and he was there to stay, as he proved through his attempts to become
part of the town. He quickly built his home, Max Gate, in town. He also became
interested in the issues important to the townspeople, such as the status of
the laborers. He eagerly read historical records from the area, savoring the
"really valuable and curious" Records of the Town of Weymouth.
Despite his efforts to return to the community, however, Hardy's first love was
his writing. Although he had written various short stories, he had not written
a new novel in three years. Hardy had long wanted to write a novel that
combined his love of history with his love of Dorsetshire. In addition, he
wanted to capitalize on the success of the Wessex setting from his earlier
novels. His desire to immerse himself in the history of the region led him to
examine the files of the Dorsetshire County Chronicle in the spring of 1884. In
these files, he found an article describing the sale of a wife by an auction.
The article about the wife-sale provided him with a spectacular situation for
his characters.
After spending several
weeks immersed in research, Hardy began to write the novel that would
become The Mayor of
Casterbridge in the summer of
1884. He wrote it in bursts, constantly writing and putting it aside until he
finally completed the novel on April 17, 1885. The literary magazine Graphic
agreed to publish the novel serially, although with misgivings. The publishers
wanted to see everything before it was published, since Hardy was known for his
ability to offend everyone, even atheists. Hardy felt so constrained by the Graphic's
demands that he alluded to their heavy-handed treatment in the courtroom scene:
Stubberd substitutes all the curse words with letters, to the annoyance of the
court. Nevertheless, Hardy's novel eventually began its serialization on
January 2, 1886. On May 10 of the same year, The Mayor of Casterbridge was
published in two volumes. Although the critics loved Hardy's realism and poetic
style, most agreed that the novel was too improbable and too shocking--opinions
that would only increase as Hardy continued to write novels.
The Mayor of Castrbridge is
set in the county of Wessex, a land that has relied on the beliefs of the
farming folk for centuries. Because the farmers are more connected to the land,
they follow a more primal religion, based on the changing of the seasons and
the forces of Nature. One of the forces of nature is cruel Fate, that
"sinister intelligence bent upon punishing" which stops at nothing to
keep things from being "as you wish it." This fate usually works through
two channels: chance and irony. Chance often brings chraracters: Farfrae and
Lucetta are brought to Casterbridge quite unexpectedly, but their arrivals ruin
the lives of the Henchards. Irony works upon the people who are already there,
making the best laid plans go awry. Just as Michael convinces Elizabeth-Jane
that she is his daughter, he finds the note from Susan that tells the truth.
Nature also serves to assist Fate--the harvest weather is bad until Michael
buys all the ruined grain at high prices and cannot sell it back. With the
actions of a primal and unchanging world working against the weak human, life
becomes a series of pains, punctuated only by flashes of happiness.
Yet it is not completely
the whims of fate that bring the characters to their downfall. When The Mayor
of Casterbridge was first published in serial form, Hardy wrote, "It is
not improbabilities of incident but improbabilities of character that
matter." This is the basic theme of the novel, which has the additional
title, "The Story of a Man of Character." Fate may create the
situations for the characters, but in the end their personalities determine how
they will react. Michael gains a true confidant in Farfrae, but his quick
temper and mercurial ways only serve to push the young man away. Michael's pride
keeps him from confessing whatever secret he has at the time. Lucetta's
reckless nature causes her to do dangerous things for love. The gossiping
nature of the townspeople is responsible for the skimmity ride that kills
Lucetta, and the gossip that ruins Michael's career. Even Elizabeth-Jane's
prudishness pushes Michael away for the first and last time. Character is just
as responsible for the foibles of mankind as Fate is.
The Mayor of Casterbridge
is a tragedy, in the tradition of the Greek tragedies and the plays Othello
and King Lear. However, the novel still ends with a hope
for humanity. The belief that fate is to blame is a tool of the past, of the
superstitious farmers such as the townspeople. When Michael believes that fate
is destroying him, his problems continue. Only when Michael looks into the
future by casting off old beliefs is he able to change. When he sacrifices duty
for love of Elizabeth-Jane, he becomes more aware of his feelings as an individual.
That is humaity's only way to escape the pain of life: by relying on present
instead of past, character instead of fate, the individual instead of the
multitude.
Book Summary
In a fit of drunken irritation, Michael Henchard, a young, unemployed
hay-trusser, sells his wife Susan and his infant daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a
sailor during a fair in the village of Weydon-Priors. Eighteen years later,
Susan and Elizabeth-Jane return to seek him out but are told by the
"furmity woman," the old hag whose concoction had made Henchard drunk
at the fair, that he has moved to the distant town of Casterbridge. The sailor
has been reported lost at sea.
Susan and Elizabeth-Jane, the latter innocent of the shameful sale
eighteen years before, reach Casterbridge, where they discover that Henchard
has become the mayor and one of the wealthiest businessmen in the area.
Henchard, out of a sense of guilt, courts Susan in a respectable manner and
soon after remarries her, hoping that one day be will be able to acknowledge
Elizabeth-Jane as his daughter. Concurrently with Susan's return, Henchard
hires Donald Farfrae, a young Scotsman, as his business manager. After a short
while, Susan dies, and Henchard learns that his own daughter had died many
years earlier and that Elizabeth-Jane is really the illegitimate daughter of
Newson, the sailor, Susan's second "husband."
Lucetta Templeman, a young woman from Jersey with whom Henchard
has had a romantic involvement, comes to Casterbridge with the intention of
marrying Henchard. She meets Farfrae, however, and the two are deeply attracted
to each other. Henchard, disturbed by Farfrae's prestige in the town, has
dismissed him, and Farfrae sets up his own rival business. Shortly after,
Farfrae and Lucetta are married.
Henchard's fortunes continue their decline while Farfrae's
advance. When Henchard's successor as mayor dies suddenly, Farfrae becomes
mayor. Henchard's ruin is almost completed when the "furmity woman"
is arrested as a vagrant in Casterbridge and reveals the transaction two
decades earlier when Henchard sold his wife. Then, by a combination of bad luck
and mismanagement, Henchard goes bankrupt and is forced to make his living as
an employee of Farfrae's.
Lucetta, now at the height of her fortunes, has staked everything
on keeping her past relationship with Henchard a secret. Her old love letters
to him, however, find their way into the hands of Henchard's vengeful
ex-employee, Jopp, who reveals them to the worst element in the town. They
organize a "skimmity-ride," in which Henchard and Lucetta are paraded
in effigy through the streets. The shock of the scandal kills Lucetta.
Now an almost broken man, Henchard moves to the poorest quarters,
where his life is made tolerable only by Elizabeth-Jane's kindness and concern.
Even his comfort in her affection is threatened, however, when Newson, the
sailor, returns in search of his daughter. Henchard's lie to Newson that
Elizabeth-Jane has died is eventually discovered, and Elizabeth-Jane, his last
source of comfort, turns against him.
Farfrae, after a period as a widower, renews his interest in
Elizabeth-Jane. They are married and Henchard, when he comes to deliver a
wedding gift, finds Newson enjoying his position as the bride's father.
Heartbroken, Henchard leaves and shortly afterwards dies in an abandoned hut,
attended only by the humblest and simplest of his former workmen. The novel
closes when Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane find the place where he has died and
read his terrible will of complete renunciation.
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