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Editorial Review Product Description
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled 'A Story of a Man of Character', Hardy's powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town. ... Read more Customer Reviews (6) 
Drama at its best, or satire at its best?
About two thirds through this undeniably great work, I began to question everything I thought I knew about this book.Kicking off in high drama and then barrelling on in that fashion with not even a stop for air, the twists and turns in Hardy's tale of morality, regret, and character seemed to occur due to the faults and failures of the principal actors, and not thanks to any plot contrivances on the part of Hardy.Which ever the case, this is a great testament to Hardy's writing abilities, but as the story progressed, the idea that Hardy was pushing the limits of "fate" and "tragedy" to its extreme seeped in.By the time I finished the book and sat puzzled over the complete change in tone for the last two paragraphs, I realized that Hardy had written one of the greatest pieces of satirical tragedy ever.
Based on an actual inicident Hardy read about in a local newspaper, a husband, travelling on the road with his family, gets drunk and auctions off his wife to the highest bidder.After being offered a considerable amount of money, the wife is sold and she willingly leaves with the highest bidder, daughter in tow, as the drunken husband stays behinds and drinks.
End first scene, cut to 18 years later. The man has become a teetotaler and has so righted his life, he has become the Mayor of Casterbridge.The wife enters the town, beautiful now older daughter in tow, looking for her former husband now that her husband-by-auction has died.They meet, work out a plan to remarry, and set about doing that.
We then discover that the Mayor is already engaged to another woman.We discover that one of the Mayor's enemies is interested in wooing his daughter.We discover that the girl he believes is his daughter- has been told is his daughter!- is not actually his daughter.Discovery after discovery rain down upon us, each one forcing the characters to react in ways that while always consistent with their characters, creates further drama and eventually, tragedy.
Hardy is an incredible author and even if this was nothing more than a tale about character and ethics, it would be an incredible read.When viewed as a satire of such tales, however- like an updated Job story without the God aspect, with the Mayor being Job- the work rises to another level.Hardy is funny, and even in the context of obviously serious works, there are occasional lighthearted moments.But once one grasps this complex work as a satire of similar works, Hardy verges on being hysterical.The Mayor of Casterbridge is a living character with obvious faults, but the heap of abuse that Hardy piles upon him in no way corresponds with his initital heinous act.Unless, of course, you're trying to be funny.
Regardless of whether this is meant to be taken seriously or not, it is an underrated (as far as Hardy books go) classic.
(And those last two paragraphs I alluded to above: their tone, syntax, vocabulary all sound like they come from a different book.To me, it sounded like Hardy was having one last laugh, foolishly trying to validate all the tragedy that occurred with two "intellectual" sounding paragraphs. One last bone to throw to those so absorbed in morality tales that they couldn't see that this whole journey was a farce.)
The Rise and Fall of Michael Henchard
Thomas Hardy was never one to refrain from controversey in his writing, as is evidenced by his decision after the negative reviews that "Jude the Obscure" received to never write novels again but to devote himself entirely to poetry."The Mayor of Casterbridge" opens with perhaps one of the most unique plot devices in Edwardian/Victorian literature, when Michael Henchard, a young haytrusser becomes drunk at a country fair and sells his wife and daughter to whoever will pay five guineas for them.What follows afterwards, for Michael Henchard, is a life tinged by regret, even as he finds himself prospering in all other manners."The Mayor of Casterbridge" is a compelling story of how falsehoods and regrets can overshadow one's life if they are allowed to do so.
After selling his wife and daughter, Michael Henchard vows that he will not touch alcohol for twenty-one years and manages to build himself up to the position of a prosperous businessman and mayor in the town of Casterbridge.As he nears the twenty-first year of his oath, his wife Susan returns, finding him in his exalted position, and Henchard knows the only right thing to do is "remarry" her since they have been legally married all these years, and therefore make it possible for him to claim Elizabeth-Jane as his true daughter, not just step-daughter.Yet life has many secrets for Michael Henchard - some he keeps, like the fact he is engaged to another woman, and one shocking one that his wife keeps from him that will desperately impact his dealings with Elizabeth-Jane.While Henchard has prospered up to this point, a falling-out with his foreman, the Scotsman Donald Farfrae, leads to his eventual downfall in both his private and his public life.As evidenced by the selling of his wife, Henchard allows his quick temper to get the better of him, and he sets his mind on revenge to all those who have wronged him, whether acutal or not.Therefore, he constantly finds himself at odds with Elizabeth-Jane, with Donald Farfrae (whom he would like nothing better than to kill), and with another woman from his past who has upset his life.
Michael Henchard is truly a tragic character, for while it may be easy to dislike him for his roughness and his callow actions, he is not entirely an evil man.His fault is that he regrets his actions, just usually too late."The Mayor of Casterbridge" is a surprisingly fast-paced read, with a vivid setting and an extremely intriguing character in Elizabeth-Jane.The web that Michael Henchard manages to spin for himself is compelling and familiar, as these characters and their motives transcend beyond the time period captured so effortlessly by Hardy.
Excellent
Nineteenth century literary classic, details a man seeling his wife and daughter and the long term consequence. It's a pretty powerful and deeply ambitious story, one that makes up for a couple feeble plot stimulators with a powerful psychological representation. What's most interesting is the protagonist, the titular individual. A man so committed to drunk and evasion that he will sell off his own family. Also a man that works across the rest of the novel to redeem himself from this moment, but not without much backsliding and fresh egotistical mistakes. He's also capable enough to claw his way up into a position of wealth and authority, but then later lose that fortune, and the book is quite effective in showing the degree to which his admuirable qualities are tied in with his core defects. He's far from a monster, and for all the damage his pride and spiteful rejection cause to other lives there is much to admire about him, his strength of character, his general optimism and the way he's able to come forth with strong ethical choice at the most surprising moments. He's an intriguing, complex and overall plausible character, most notably in the way that none of his grand transcendetal moments lack, the way he continually reverts back partially to his earlier ways.
More generally, the work shows an engaging cynicism about the status of class, gender and hypocrisy in contemporary England. There are some very strong critiques in here against Victorian society, to the extent that I'm surprised it attained the popularity it did in its own time, and these are always coonected to an engaging novel. It makes me a lot more interested in reading the other nineteenth century literary classics I've so far neglected. And more Hardy, of course.
Worse than: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Better than: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Also better than: Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Masterpiece of the Highest Order
The Mayor of Casterbridge is not Thomas Hardy's most famous or acclaimed novel, but in the opinion of this die-hard fan it is his best. The later Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are generally considered his masterpieces, but while this lacks their epic grandeur and sociopolitical relevance, it is more immediately arresting, has a more conventionally interesting plot, and features one of literature's best tragic heroes. I give it the highest possible recommendation not only for fans but for anyone even remotely alive to literary greatness.
Hardy in his day was nearly unique in mixing high literary elements with what would later be called pulp factors. Hard as it is to imagine, he was like William Faulkner and Stephen King in one - a true artist with mass appeal, both critically acclaimed and bestselling. However, his early nineteenth century rural English settings, heavy dialect use, eccentric vocabulary, and other characteristics make many current readers think his books slow going. The Mayor is the obvious exception, beginning almost immediately with one of the most arresting and unforgettable scenes in all literature - nothing less than a drunken man selling his wife and child to a stranger out of anger and disgust. As often with Hardy, it is based on a real incident, but he dramatizes so vividly that we cannot help being enthralled. The drama indeed reaches such a fever pitch in these first few pages that even those normally averse to classic literature can hardly help being pulled in.
Such a beginning sets a very high standard, and it is a testament to the book's greatness that it never disappoints - and, indeed, hardly lets up. The popular aspects of Hardy's fiction made him more influential on later writers, especially mainstream ones, than nearly any other classic author; it is almost impossible to exaggerate his impact, which is such that even many who have never read him have been greatly influenced without knowing it. These strengths are present even in his earliest fiction, but The Mayor is the preeminent example. Supremely engrossing and intriguing, it is full of plot twists that will keep even the savviest readers guessing and ends in one of the most spectacularly memorable conclusions ever. One could not expect more from even the most entertaining pulp novel - and The Mayor of course has a wealth of great artistry to boot. To be sure, this Hardy aspect has always had critics bemoaning apparent overreliance on complex plots and melodramatic coincidence, the implication being that Hardy was unable to make a story without them. However, anyone even remotely familiar with him knows that he was intensely interested in coincidence, chance, and fate, using them deliberately to dramatize what dominated his thought. Those aware of this can see how well his writings work out the implications of his bleak impressions:that humans are near-laughably insignificant on the cosmic scale, that no force sympathetic to humans or generally benevolent controls the universe, and that human life is essentially miserable with little chance of success at love or other happiness. More specifically, his work illustrates what he called the Imminent Will - an unconscious force controlling human action. What seems luck or chance may thus be very much otherwise, though we can do nothing about it. Many have said that he has an almost malevolent attitude toward his characters, plotting so that things work out in the worst possible way and cause them the greatest possible suffering, but this is simply Hardy's view of the human condition. The Mayor's complicated plot is an essential example - perhaps the preeminent. Hardy was later somewhat unsatisfied, thinking that it suffered more from serialization's effects than any of his other novels. He worried that he included too many improbabilities and twists in an effort to include an exciting event in every installment but noted with satisfaction that the events arise naturally from the story, and so they do. Those who do not like this feature elsewhere will be unconvinced - or even have their view cemented -, but those for whom Hardy's tragic vision speaks powerfully will be in awe of the masterful execution.
There are several keys to its success. Hardy reiterated over and over again that probability of character, not of action, is what matters, and this proves it. The book works mainly because its characters are so believable and often identifiable; we care about them in spite of - or arguably even because of, such is Hardy's skill - the highly-wrought events. It has one of Hardy's largest casts, and the four main characters are some of his most fully realized and memorable. Three are unsurprisingly doomed to near-constant suffering:the admirably strong-willed and hard-working but fatally impulsive Michael Henchard; Elizabeth-Jane, who has great empathy and love potential but is so passive that others constantly step on her with impunity; and the dignified but overly passionate Lucetta. The fourth, Donald Farfrae, is one of Hardy's most original and interesting. He was not one to champion a creation, but Farfrae is probably his most thoroughly positive and genuinely likable. Other characters are drawn to him almost irresistibly, and so are we; intelligent, industrious, and positively infectious, he is drawn with a good humor almost never seen in Hardy and gives much of the book's appeal. He is also notable as a sympathetic and nuanced Scotch character from an English writer.
But this is of course mainly Henchard's story, and what a story! Hardy based his tragic fiction on ancient Greek models, but Henchard is his only true example of the tragic hero central to those works - a character who is in many ways admirable but imbued with a flaw that proves his downfall. "Impulsiveness" perhaps sums up his and is manifested in various ways; many know such a person, but the far more important thing is that we can see ourselves in him. He is in some ways an Everyman despite obvious flaws and has several admirable qualities, not least how he raised himself from extreme poverty to relative wealth and prominence by sheer force of will. However, his fall is even greater than his rise - in fact, one of the greatest and most affecting ever imagined. It is a true testament to Hardy's artistry that he makes us care for Henchard despite him being in many ways despicable; for him to win our hearts after the opening scene seems not only impossible but perverse to even conceive, yet Hardy pulls it off. There is much to dislike, but he is fully and thus frailly and tragically human. Whether or not we think him redeemed, he is more sinned against than sinning, as even those he has wronged eventually see. Yet he also undeniably caused his own demise; what seems like bad luck or wretched fate is really his bad decisions' delayed consequences. His end is one of the most highly tragic and sympathetic ever written; he dies miserably alone and fully broken, denied even the last ray of light that a guilty conscience and sincere repentance could have potentially given. The scene with his final note - complete with misspellings belying the lack of education and humble background that made his rise more remarkable but that he was in many ways unable to overcome - is one of the most moving I have ever read. It is the culmination of what is a highly emotional work throughout; Hardy runs us through a gamut of feelings as only he can. The pathos is at times almost unbearable, and few readers will not cry at least once. Indeed, aside from Les Misérables, which I believe is unquestionably the greatest creation of all-time, no other book out of the hundreds or thousands I have read has moved me so often or deeply. Other than Victor Hugo, Hardy has no equal at conveying emotion, and this is his supreme example. Later works, particularly Tess, show the tragedy of the human condition on a grander scale, but only Oedipus Rex itself even rivals this as a supremely moving depiction of individual tragedy. Indeed, I can say without hyperbole that nothing else I have ever experienced - artistic or otherwise - has driven home life's profound tragedy with such conviction or force.
This alone is of course more than enough reason to read the book, but the work is also notable for other reasons. Chief among these is another perennial Hardy strength - great sense of place. Perhaps no one equals him in making place so vivid that it is essential to the story; setting is never mere background with him. He is of course best-known in this regard for Wessex - the part-real, part-dream country based on his native Southwest England that he made world famous. Setting is not as important here as in some other works, but the Casterbridge focus is particularly noteworthy. Based on the real-life Dorchester, Casterbridge is Wessex's largest town; nearly all Wessex stories and a considerable number of the poems mention it, and many take place there in part. However, this is unique in being almost entirely set there, giving both a fascinating glimpse into Southwest England's early nineteenth-century hub and filling in much of the background to other works. This is invaluable to fans and of considerable interest to historians and others.
Relatedly, Hardy's work is well-known for showing modernity's ache, i.e., how technology and other advances were rapidly and drastically changing a society that had been essentially the same for a thousand years. The Mayor in particular portrays its effect on agriculture and other business aspects, depicting all with realism and human interest. Some current readers may think this makes the book drag somewhat, but it will be a big attraction for others, especially those keen on the background to the book and its importance to Hardy's life and thought.
I simply cannot praise the novel highly enough; it is one of the all-time greatest artistic achievements, a supreme creation of artistry and, more fundamentally, the human heart. Suffice it to say that anyone sensitive to the unforgettable final two paragraphs, which sum up Hardy's grim but eminently practical view of existence in his fine inimitable style and conclude by calling happiness "the occasional episode in a general drama of pain," will not find the sentiments more vividly dramatized anywhere. This is enough - perhaps even all anyone could ask for.
mayor of casterbridge
One of Hardy's best novels. The characterisation are excellent and the descriptive writing is superb. I recommend it highly.
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CHOIR AND A PRETTY GIRL
Horrible formatting for the Kindle edition - Oxford University Press Edition