David C. Gild - CliffsNotes on Hardys The Mayor of Casterbridge

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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 Susans 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, Susans 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 Farfraes prestige in the town, has dismissed him, and Farfrae sets up his own rival business. Shortly after, Farfrae and Lucetta are married.

Henchards fortunes continue their decline while Farfraes advance. When Henchards successor as mayor dies suddenly, Farfrae becomes mayor. Henchards 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 Farfraes.

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 Henchards 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-Janes kindness and concern. Even his comfort in her affection is threatened, however, when Newson, the sailor, returns in search of his daughter. Henchards 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 brides 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.

On every page of Hardys Wessex novels is displayed the influence of Hardys upbringing, regional background, and architectural studies. His characters are often primitiveas is the case in The Mayor of Casterbridgeand exhibit all the passions, hates, loves, and jealousies that rustic life seems to inspire. Yet these characters are at all times real, for they are based on people he had grown up with, people he had heard about in legends and ballads, people whose tragic histories he had unearthed during his early architectural apprenticeship. There are also long, well-wrought, descriptive passages of the surrounding countryside, the buildings, the roads, the commerce, and the amusements that make up the enviromnent of Casterbridge. It is Hardys naturalness in handling this particular environment, which he called Wessex, that puts us at our ease and infuses the work with a life and a reality all its own.

Hardys philosophy dramatizes the human condition as a struggle between man and man, and between man and his fate. Usually it is fateor the arbitrary forces of the universethat wins. Fate is all-powerful, and in its blindness human suffering is of no importance. This malevolence of fate certainly seems at times to be demonstrated in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Yet the victim of fate, Henchard, is also the greatest offender against morality, which would indicate purpose in the suffering he endures. Moreover, the novel ends on a note of hope because of Henchards strength of will and his determination to undergo suffering and deprivation in order to expiate his sins. It is this element which makes the book a unique outgrowth of Hardys philosophy.

Whether or not Hardys pessimism seems valid, one should remember that during his lifetime, Darwins The Origin of Species undermined the prevailing concept of the divine descent of man; the higher criticism recreated biblical figures as humans, not divinities; science reversed prevailing opinions and superstitions; and life in general grew faster, harsher, less concerned with beauty and art, and more preoccupied with practical economics. Hardy, as a product of his age, was profoundly affected by the violent changes and forces which seemed to toss man about like a rag doll. It was natural that the events of his age should have created in him a deep pessimism, but it was also an exemplary virtue of his spirit that in one of his finest works, The Mayor of Casterbridge, he posed the solution of the dilemma: Man will overcome because he has the nobility and strength to endure.