Customer Reviews

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Oxford World's Classics)

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Michael Henchard, a 21-year-old itinerant farmhand, enters a refreshment tent with his wife and baby girl at a country fair. Depressed by his poverty, Henchard gets blind drunk. He'd get along so much better without the burden of a family, he declares to one and all - and he offers his wife for sale to the highest bidder.

Am amiable sailor throws down five guineas, and Susan Henchard, babe in arms, goes off with him.

Amazingly, such things did happen in nineteenth-century rural England. This shocking event is our introduction to Michael Henchard's tempestuous character.

Once sober, Henchard searches high and low for his wife and child, but with no success. He makes a vow in church to abstain from alcohol for the next 21 years, and he keeps that vow.

We encounter Henchard two decades later, now a prosperous corn and wheat merchant and the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Character is fate. Henchard's nature, violent and remorseful, jealous and generous by turns, will give him no rest in this life. We can't help pitying the man, deeply flawed though he is.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is a classic of English literature. It's also a totally gripping story, abounding in reversals, romances and local color. Don't start reading it on a night that you hope to get to bed early!

This was an ok novel. It has many plots and twists and is a little hard to follow. The cliff notes make the book much easier to follow.