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The Mayor of Casterbridge (Penguin Classics)

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Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge" es a truly remarkable novel. Interesting throughout, it is the story of the rise and fall of a man named Mechael Henchard. Ay the beginning of the novel, Henchard is a volatile, twenty-one-year-old hay-trusser. He becomes drunk at a fair and sells his wife and daughter to a sailor in an auction, which originally began as a joke, turns serious.Upon realizing that he has sold his family, Henchard searches for them to no avail, and takes an oath to give up alcohol for twenty-one years. After the supposed death of the sailor, Michael's wife, Susan Henchard, and her daughter began a search for Michael Henchard, who has become the mayor of Casterbridge.
The novel proceeds as many soap-opera-like events unfold. The unique plot-twists made reading the novel a very entertaining experience. An unfavorable trait Henchard possesses is not letting go of past mistakes. Although he tries to atone for the past indiscretions, fate always seems to catch up to him. These factors and others contribute to the downfall of Michael Henchard.

Read this novel after Far From The Madding Crowd and Return of the Native. It's a very bleak and depressing novel - without the comic flourishes and moments of his earlier work.
The story follows Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser, who sells his wife and child for five guineas in an 'auction' during a fit of inebriety. He spends the next 21 years regretting his action, but during that time he does well for himself, becoming mayor of Casterbridge, a rural town. Years later, his wife and daughter reappear. This starts a chain of events that leads to Henchard's fall. He eventually ends up losing everything because of his pride, passion and stubborness. The main character isn't very likeable, but there is something of the tragic about him that commands your attention.

The Mayor of Casterbridge, focused and simple the premise has been in itself, affords a quite convoluted plot that packs with events as the memorably niched characters play out their lives and unravels the novel. The book is riddled with a well-faceted theme of conscience: the purging of conscience and its reconciliation through an allusion to deceit and characters' shameless past that ceaselessly haunt them and render them despondent and guilty. The tragic actions revolve around one man who manages to establish prestige, wealth, and authority over Casterbridge and ironically the very elite status leads to the fall of the deeply flawed man.

In a fit of drunken anger and delirium, young Michael Henchard sells his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor for 5 guineas at a county fair. Over the course of the years, though he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the town from literally nothing, Henchard still affords a ray of hope in reuniting with his family, until he meets Lucetta Templeman who nurses him in America. Such black spot of his youth as wife-sale caused by his fits of spleen not only renders him ashamed of himself but also wears an aspect of recent crime: something that will shame him until his dying day. Behind his success is always lurking such shameful secret of his troubled past shielded from the public and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper.

Contributing to the suspenseful nature of the novel is the return of the mayor's wife and daughter some 18 years later whom Michael Henchard believed to have perished at the sea. The sentimental reunion, which marks Henchard respectable 20-year abstinence from alcohol, brings about a heartrending revelation and an ironical sequence of events that irritate Henchard. The very truth cruelly leaves in him an emotional void that he unconsciously craves to fill. At the same time, the regard he has acquired for Elizabeth-Jane has eclipsed by this revelation. The new-sprung hope of his loneliness (or "friendless solitude" in Hardy's own words) that she will be to him a daughter of whom he can feel as proud as of the actual daughter she believes herself to be, has been stimulated by the (yet another) unexpected arrival of the sailor to a greedy exclusiveness in relation to her.

All these ineluctable consequences of his past shameful transaction at the fair take a stupendous toll on Henchard and his conscience. He is also uneasy at the thought of Elizabeth-Jane's passion for Donald Farfrae, whose rising prestige and success in his independent business provoke in Henchard enmity and envy. Henchard quails at the thought that Farfrae shall utterly usurp her mild filial sympathy with him, that she might be withdrawn from him by degrees through Farfrae's influence and learns to despise him. The pricking of conscience subtly manifests in Henchard's solicitous love and growing jealousy. His fear of losing tie after the death of his wife is sympathetically understandable. Though he in his effrontery has been weaning Elizabeth-Jane from the sailor by saying he is her father, she understands that Henchard has himself been deceived in her identity.

Lucetta Templeman, inescapably torn between her past disgraceful entanglement with Henchard and her love for a more refined gentleman, is also pricked by her conscience. In an impulsive moment, purely out of gratitude, Henchard proposes to the Jersey woman who has been so far compromised to him. But as the years gone by, Lucetta is more convinced that she has been forced into an equivocal position with Henchard by an accident. She has discovered some quantities in Henchard, who is either well-educated nor refined in manner, that irretrievably renders him less desirable as a husband than she has at first thought him to be, notwithstanding there remains a conscientious wish to being about her union with him.

When Lucetta learns of the wife-sale, she immediately dismisses any possibility of being with him and realizes she cannot risk himself in his hands. It will have been letting herself down to take Henchard's name after such an ignominious scandal. But her past which she diligently seals, if not expunge altogether haunts her. The surreptitious history with Henchard becomes the torture of her meek conscience and the reconciling of which through a marriage with a second man remains also her secret alone.

Subtitled "A Story of a Man of Character", Henchard's origins remain unexplained but he literally begins and ends the novel away from Casterbridge, where he achieves his prominent status ironically destines his downfall, through the lampooning and skimmity-ride. A psychological study, the novel accentuates the fury that causes him to lash out against both himself and those who stand closest to him. It depicts to the fullest the very self-destructive nature of the power that causes Henchard's fall, which is so obvious through his louring invidiousness.

2004 (46) ©MY

An early fall afternoon in the 1840s bucolic world of Wessex. Michael Henchard, a young hay trusser, sells his wife Susan to another man for the paltry sum of five guineas. The 400 page classic by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) goes on to chronicle the rise and fall of Henchard. The main characters are:
1. Michael Henchard-The tragic Mayor of Casterbridge who loses all he values in life and all those people he loves to his rival. Henchard is a visible proof of the fact that fiction displays "the human heart in conflict with itself.' He is a Faustian striver who is ambitious in business as a corn chandler; politics as he becomes mayor and love losing the three women who have meant most to him. Henchard dies in an obscure hut near Egdon Heath desiring to be completely forgotten by the world. He has a death wish and wishes to achieve the oblivion of death in a universe controlled by fate, chance and irony. He is one of Hardy's great creations.
2. Sue Henchard is the wife sold by Henchard to a sailor. She emigrates with him to America. When she returns 20 years later to Casterbridge she remarries Henchard but dies soon after the wedding. She is a simple-minded country woman lacking in knowledge and sophistication.
3. Donald Farfrae-While Henchard represents ancient Wessex in folkways and beliefs, Mr. Farfrae is a young Scotchman who soon steals Henchard's supremacy in Casterbridge. He is hired by Henchard to straighten out the latter's business affairs but leaves him to start a successful rival business firm. Farfrae is the second Mayor of Casterbridge in this novel. He marries Henchard's mistress Lucetta. When Lucetta dies after being the center of a scandal caused by old loves letters to Henchard being revealed, Farfrae weds Henchard's stepdaughter Elizabeth Jane. He is a kind man who seeks to help Henchard to no avail.
4. Eliaabeth-Jane-She is an intelligent person who returns from abroad with her mother Sue. She has been raised to believe that Michael Henchard is her father. Elizabeth-Jane becomes a hired companion to Henchard's quondom mistress Lucetta. Elizabeth Jane later weds Farfrae. This young lady learns her real father is the sailor Newson and Sue.
5. Seaman Newson-The real father of Sue who returns to find her twenty years after the deal of exchange he made to purchase Sue as his wife from Michael Henchard.
6. Lucette-The Jersey miss who had an affair long ago with Michael Henchard. Lucette is sexy and exotic. She weds Donald Farfrae dying after details of her affair with Henchard lead to scandal.
The characters in this ironical novel are all puppets in an uncaring universe.The last word in the novel is "pain"! There is plenty of pain to share among all the characters.
As with all of Hardy's classic novels, the descriptions of the town folks and the flora and fauna of Wessex are beautifully written. Hardy is the best regional novelist in all of English literature.
The Penguin Edition of the novel contains excellent illustrations by Robert Barnes which were included in the original edition. A helpful chronology of Hardy's life; discussion of the textual history of the novel and a useful introduction by Dr. Keith Hardy are included. The novel is one you should read and enjoy.

...but without the histrionics.

One of the greatest novels ever written. Also one of the most suspenseful and (for those whose palates have not been ruined by trash) one of the most enjoyable.

Reread this one recently - what a great book. This is my favorite of all Hardy's books. The fascinating part of this novel is the protagonist, because he is such a mix of good and bad. He has good and even heroic impulses and acts, and bad and even evil impulses and acts. The way he manages to sabotage the good things he could get reminds me of Lily in the House of Mirth, although Henchard's sabotage is due to through bad temper and anger and insecurity, while Lily's are due to ambivalence. But the trip downward is quite similar. Basically it ends up being the story of a man's self-destruction. What a crime that Hardy's novels were unpopular when he first wrote them, and the bad reviews discouraged him from writing more! I have them all but wish there were more.

Mayor Henchard was drunk when he sold his wife and child. This instance of reckless cruelty would come to haunt him in his later years. Overall a pious and good man, his downfall was his reluctance to face his past. His will dictated his epitaph. He will never be heard from again. (The will is on the last few pages of the book.) Fading into nothing, it challenges the reader to find a term for death. Is death the physical end of life, or the emotional end of life. Readers will be challenged to determine their own answers to Henchard's damnation.

Mayor of Casterbridge is a tale about a man named Michael Henchard and the mistakes he makes in life. It is really well written, Hardy has a skill for great storytelling. There are so many surprises and details, which you at first think at irrelevant turn out to be the turning factors of the entire book. Hardy is not one who puts in a lot of useless text, everything has to be thoroughly read or you will not enjoy it. Anyways boys and girls, hope you enjoy this, I sure did

The story of a man who ruins his life by doing the right thing at the wrong time, both in business and in his relationships with his wife, a potential wife, and his stepdaughter. In business, he buys at the wrong time and sells at the wrong time. In relationships, he is cold when his nearest and dearest wish to be close to him, and then seeks them out after it is too late.

Good literature provides keen observations in behaviors and psychology of human beings when faced with moral choices and consequences, and this book definitely is filled with good stuff. The main character, Mr. Henchard, is severely flawed and his iniquities are multiple, and yet, he also is so human and really hard not to have sympathetic feelings toward him in the end. The writing is wonderfully philosophical and dramatic, especially the last paragraph of Elizabeth-Jane's reflection on life is movingly insightful.