The Mayor Of Casterbridge

The Mayor of Casterbridge

by Thomas Hardy

Overview of The Mayor of Casterbridge...

Have you ever done something that you later regretted? In his 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy set out to examine how a man's choices affect his life in the long run. Set in the early nineteenth-century in Casterbridge, a fictional town in Dorset in southwestern England, Hardy used his unique understanding of the poor and the rich to create the unique plot of The Mayor of Casterbridge. Through summarizing the plot and analyzing the characters, we will look at the ultimate themes of remorse and redemption.

The Characters

• Michael Henchard is a young migrant farm laborer who works his way up to a position as a wealthy agricultural merchant and mayor of the town of Casterbridge.

• Susan Henchard is Henchard's wife, whom he sells at a country fair along with their baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane.

• Richard Newson is a sailor who buys Susan and Elizabeth-Jane from Henchard.

• Elizabeth-Jane Newson is the daughter whom Richard Newson and Susan have together after the first Elizabeth-Jane (Susan and Henchard 's daughter) dies.

• Donald Farfrae is a young man from Scotland who passes through Casterbridge on his way to America. Henchard convinces him to stay in Casterbridge and become Henchard's manager. However, the two become rivals. Farfrae starts his own business in competition with Henchard. Farfrae then becomes the mayor of Casterbridge after Henchard's term expires.

• Lucetta Templeman is a woman from the Isle of Jersey who meets Henchard and falls in love with him. She later moves to Casterbridge with the intention of marrying Henchard, but she meets Farfrae, falls in love with him, and marries him instead.

• Joshua Jopp is one of Henchard's employees. He bears a grudge against Lucetta because she refused to help him get a job with Farfrae. When Henchard gives Jopp love letters that she wrote to him, Jopp uses this evidence of their old affair to humiliate Lucetta after she marries Farfrae.

Story Plot

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 "skimming-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 afterward 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.

Reviews

“A shocker” – if I had to explain this book with one word, that will be it. The twists during this book won’t fail to form you gasp on every occasion. The Mayor of Casterbridge may be a quick paced, thrilling scan with never a boring moment. It took me six unproductive days to complete this 360 pages long book, and it had been price each moment. 

I  will personally give it 4 out of 5.