The Mayor of Casterbridge [with Biographical Introduction]

Henchard, however, treats Farfrae as an enemy and forbids Elizabeth-Jane to see him. Before she dies, she writes a letter addressed to Henchard, which he is not to open until Elizabeth-Jane's wedding day. Soon after Susan's death, Henchard reveals to Elizabeth-Jane that he is her father. In looking for proof of his original marriage to Susan he needs this to prove that he is her father and have her name legally changed to his , he finds the letter that Susan has left and reads it.

It reveals that Elizabeth-Jane is not Henchard's daughter; that child died a few months after Henchard sold Susan, and the Elizabeth-Jane he knows is Newson's daughter. Henchard is distraught and decides not to tell Elizabeth-Jane. His behavior toward her changes, though; he criticizes her and increasingly avoids her. She feels unhappy and bereft. Visiting her mother's grave, Elizabeth-Jane encounters a woman she has never seen before and tells the woman her life story. The woman says that she is moving to Casterbridge and invites Elizabeth-Jane to live with her as her companion.

Elizabeth-Jane asks Henchard's permission to take the companion position she has been offered, and Henchard is relieved to see her go. He is surprised, though, when he hears that a Miss Temple-man will employ her. This is the woman with whom Henchard once had an affair, the woman he was about to marry before Susan arrived in Casterbridge. She has changed her name to escape the past scandal of her affair with Henchard.

Henchard, now free of Susan, has heard that Miss Temple-man, also called Lucetta, has just come into a large inheritance, and he wants to marry her. Elizabeth-Jane moves into Miss Templeman's house. Farfrae goes to see Elizabeth-Jane but is attracted to Miss Templeman, and the attraction is mutual. Henchard asks Miss Templeman to marry him, but she delays her answer.

Henchard later discovers that Farfrae is his rival in love as well as in business. Elizabeth-Jane feels rejected by both Farfrae and Henchard. Henchard now hires Jopp, the man whose job was taken by Farfrae early in the novel, and instructs him to use every legal means of ruining Farfrae's business.

Henchard then foolishly speculates on rising grain prices, and when the harvest is good and prices fall, he must take out huge loans to keep his business going. Blaming Jopp for this, Henchard fires him, and he vows to get revenge. Henchard forces Lucetta to agree to marry him by threatening to reveal their past affair if she will not. Henchard, though no longer mayor, is still a local judge. He is called to hear the case of an old woman accused of public obscenity.

This turns out to be the furmity woman who witnessed Henchard's sale of his wife. The woman exposes Henchard in court, and he admits the deed. Lucetta, who had thought Henchard's wife was dead, hears of this and leaves town for a few days. It is revealed that Lucetta married Farfrae during her absence, feeling released from her promise to marry Henchard by the news about his having sold his wife.

When Henchard learns of the marriage, he again threatens to expose Lucetta's scandalous past. Farfrae moves into Lucetta's house, and Elizabeth-Jane, because she has feelings for Farfrae, moves out. Because of the revelation about his past and coincidental business losses, Henchard is ruined. He declares bankruptcy and moves to a cottage owned by Jopp. Farfrae buys Henchard's business, house, and furniture. Henchard asks Farfrae to give him work as a laborer, and Farfrae agrees. Henchard hates Farfrae, though, who now owns all that was once his and is married to his former lover.

The twenty-one years of Henchard's oath have passed, and he is drinking again. He begins to utter threats against Farfrae. Henchard has some letters that Lucetta wrote him years ago, during their affair. He knows that these letters, if made public, would ruin both Lucetta and Farfrae, but he has too much feeling for Lucetta to do the deed. However, he stupidly assigns the vengeful Jopp to return the letters to Lucetta. Jopp reads the letters aloud at a tavern, and the crowd plans a "skimmity-ride," in which effigies of Henchard and Lucetta will be paraded through the town to publicize their past affair.

Henchard challenges the smaller, frailer Farfrae to a wrestling match to the death, but, when he is in a position to kill Farfrae, Henchard lets him go. Newson appears at Henchard's cottage. He says that his being lost at sea was a ruse to let Susan out of their relationship. Newson has acquired wealth and now wants to share his money and his remaining years with his daughter. Henchard tells Newson that Elizabeth-Jane is dead. Newson accepts this and leaves town.

Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane renew their affection for each other, and she decides to take care of him. About a year later, Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane are running a small shop and making a living. Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane begin spending time together. Henchard sees Newson outside of town and realizes that Newson somehow knows that Elizabeth-Jane is alive and has returned for her. Unable to bear the loss of his "daughter," Henchard leaves Casterbridge. When Elizabeth-Jane meets Newson and learns that he is her father, she turns against Henchard.

Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane are married. Henchard thinks that perhaps he was wrong in assuming that Newson was in Casterbridge to see Elizabeth-Jane, and, full of hope, he returns to Casterbridge on the evening of the wedding. He sees Newson dancing with Elizabeth-Jane and knows he has lost her. She sees him and is cold to him, and he apologizes and leaves for good.

A month later, Elizabeth Jane feels remorse for her treatment of Henchard, and she and Farfrae set out to find him. Several miles from Casterbridge a man at a humble cottage tells them that Henchard lived there but died less than an hour previously. He has left a will requesting that Elizabeth-Jane not be informed of his death and that no funeral be held for him. Elizabeth-Jane, touched by his acceptance of his fate, abides by his wishes. He quickly becomes Henchard's only trusted friend and, later, his adversary in both business and love. Hardy draws Farfrae as Henchard's counterpart in every way.

He is physically small, polite and charming, careful and controlled, forward thinking, and methodical. Whereas Henchard propels his fate through moments of rash behavior, Farfrae is cool and calculating in all he does. Although his personality is friendly and engaging, Farfrae maintains a certain detachment from people and events, always considering the possible consequences of his decisions and actions before he makes them.

As a result, his path through life is as smooth as Henchard's is rough. Farfrae initiates a relationship with Henchard by providing information that is a great help to Henchard in solving a business problem and by refusing Henchard's offer of payment for the information. Henchard is so grateful and impressed that he talks Farfrae into abandoning his plans to go to America and convinces him to take a job as Henchard's business manager. Because Farfrae is more organized and methodical than Henchard, the business prospers under his management.

Farfrae is ambitious enough to eventually go into business for himself, though, and this enrages Henchard even though Farfrae, in his typically principled way, tries to minimize competition between the two firms. Farfrae courts Elizabeth-Jane and even hints that he would marry her if he were in a financial position to do so, but when he meets the newly wealthy Miss Templeman—Henchard's former lover whom he, too, is again courting—he turns his affections to her and marries her.

Farfrae's careful approach to life wins him all that was once Henchard's: He marries Henchard's former lover and, after she dies, marries Elizabeth-Jane.

The Mayor of Casterbridge Summary & Study Guide Description

Farfrae even becomes the highly respected and well-liked mayor of Casterbridge. For Farfrae, though, the competition between Henchard and himself is never personal or mean-spirited. When the destitute Henchard asks Farfrae for a job, Farfrae hires him and makes sure that he himself never gives Henchard orders. Farfrae also offers to give Henchard any furniture or personal belongings that he would like to have back from the bankruptcy sale. The furmity woman runs the shop in which Michael, at the beginning of the novel, gets drunk and sells Susan. She appears again eighteen years later, when Susan and Elizabeth-Jane return to the village where the sale occurred to try to find Henchard.

The furmity woman is still there and remembers that Henchard returned a year after the sale. She tells Susan that Henchard told her that he was moving to Casterbridge and that if a woman ever came asking for him, the furmity woman should pass on this information. The furmity woman makes a final appearance in Casterbridge to seal Henchard's fate. Henchard is a judge, and the furmity woman, when brought before him on a public obscenity charge, recognizes him and tells the court about this shameful past.

As the novel opens, Susan is carrying an infant daughter named Elizabeth-Jane. She takes the baby with her when she goes off with Newson, and when readers see Susan eighteen years later, again with her daughter, Hardy gives the impression that this is the same infant grown up. Only later do readers learn that Henchard's daughter died a few months after he sold Susan and that this girl is Newson's daughter.

As Susan and the eighteen-year-old Elizabeth-Jane set about finding Henchard, Elizabeth-Jane knows nothing about her mother's marriage to Henchard. She thinks that her mother and Newson were legally married and that now Susan is in search of a distant relative by marriage who may be of some help to them.

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Early in the novel, both Elizabeth-Jane's natural beauty and her innate intelligence have been compromised by her poverty. She has no education and no prospects in life. This is why Susan is willing to risk the possibility of being rejected and humiliated again by Henchard; she sees him as her daughter's only hope for a better life. Once Henchard begins providing for her, Elizabeth-Jane blossoms both physically and socially. She becomes the town beauty and is admired by young men, including Farfrae, with whom Elizabeth-Jane has been quite taken since their first meeting. Hardy draws Elizabeth-Jane as a healthy mixture of levelheadedness and deep feeling.

When Henchard's money allows her nice clothes, she enjoys them but doesn't overspend or flaunt her position. She also takes advantage of her newfound leisure by reading and studying to improve herself; she has always been embarrassed by her lack of education. When Farfrae abandons her for Miss Templeman, Elizabeth-Jane simply withdraws quietly although she loves him. Unable to hold a grudge or remain bitter, Elizabeth-Jane finally marries Farfrae after Miss Templeman dies.

And although she lashes out at Henchard when she finds out that he has lied to keep her from Newson, she soon forgives him and goes to find him. She is touched by Henchard's will and honors his wishes. Michael Henchard is the towering but tragic hero of The Mayor of Casterbridge ; the novel is his story. He is physically large and powerful. His character is a strange mixture of the light and the dark. Henchard is true to his word.

Until he hires Farfrae, he runs his business with few written records, and the townspeople know that they can trust him to keep the contracts he makes orally. Yet he sometimes says things that are rash and even cruel and then follows through on them just as if they were contracts made in good faith. Such an outburst causes him to sell his wife at the beginning of the novel. Henchard has the willpower and determination to keep an oath for twenty-one years, yet he seems to rarely think ahead, and, in a single moment of ire, he can do a deed that ruins years of effort.

He is so honest that when the furmity woman exposes his past, he readily admits that she is telling the truth, and when he declares bankruptcy, he willingly turns over everything but the clothes on his back to his creditors. Yet when Newson comes looking for Elizabeth-Jane, Henchard tells him she is dead. Henchard begins the novel a young man who is poor but who at least possesses a skill, the vigor of youth, and a wife and child. Yet he is convinced that his early marriage has ruined his chances in life.

After shamefully ridding himself of the wife and child, he forswears the alcohol that undoubtedly fueled the deed and almost completely forswears the company of women, channeling all his energies into his business. And so, at first, the punishments that he imposes on himself for selling Susan lead to his success. But fate and Henchard's own abiding guilt conspire to destroy him. Fate places Donald Farfrae in his path, and Henchard chooses first to bring the man into his business and then to make him an adversary—the thoughtful, self-possessed adversary who will end up with impetuous Henchard's public office and stature, his wealth, his business, his home, his furniture, his lover, and, finally, his stepdaughter.

To help cruel fate along, Henchard indulges in one self-destructive act after another. When he would like to ruin Farfrae's business, he instead speculates foolishly and ruins his own. When he wishes to return some highly inflammatory letters to a former lover, he entrusts the delivery to a man who openly hates him. When Elizabeth-Jane is all he has left in the world, he tells lies that are sure to estrange her from him.

Henchard ends up much poorer than he began, having lost, for a second and final time, his wife and her child and having lost the strength and potential of youth. At the end of the novel, he walks away from Casterbridge utterly alone and soon dies in the hut that has been his final home.

He dies before he can know that Elizabeth-Jane has softened toward him, and his will makes clear that he would have wanted it so.

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His final wish is, in effect, to be obliterated for his sins, which a lifetime of penance was insufficient to obliterate in his own mind. His will asks that Elizabeth-Jane not be informed of his death, that no ceremony mark his passing, that no flowers mark his grave, and "that no man remember me. Susan Henchard is Michael's wife as the novel opens.

The small efforts she makes to control her fate are useless; she steers Henchard away from what is clearly a saloon to a place that appears not to serve alcohol only to find that the proprietor in fact sells rum on the sly. When Michael sells her to a sailor, Susan assumes that the transaction is valid and that she must stay with him.

She lives peaceably with him for many years and bears him a daughter before a friend finally makes her realize that she is not bound by Henchard's act. After the sailor is presumed dead at sea, Susan sets out to find Henchard, hoping to benefit her daughter. It never seems to occur to her that he might have an obligation to Susan herself. Once she finds out that Henchard is mayor of the town and well off, far from desiring to take advantage of him or ruin him, she wishes she could leave Casterbridge without meeting him. For the sake of her daughter, she goes through with her plan to approach him.

Even the townspeople of Casterbridge see that Susan has no sense of self; they call her a "ghost. Jopp is a lowlife villain who is driven by dark emotions. The day that Henchard hires Farfrae to be his business manager, Jopp shows up in the office having been previously offered the job that Farfrae now has. Informed that the position is no longer available, Jopp goes away steaming and bent on revenge.

Further events fuel this desire. Among other things, Henchard does finally hire Jopp but then fires him unreasonably when Henchard's own business decisions prove disastrous. Henchard foolishly gives Jopp his chance for revenge when he asks Jopp to deliver to Miss Templeman a package of scandalous letters. Jopp reads the letters aloud to a tavern crowd, which then plans the "skimmityride" a parading of effigies through the town to call attention to adultery that ends in Miss Templeman's death and Henchard's further humiliation. Newson is the sailor who buys Susan at the beginning of the novel.

He shows that he does have some scruples when he says that he will take Susan only if she is willing to go with him. His relationship with Susan and with Elizabeth-Jane is portrayed as kind and cordial. When Susan comes to understand that their relationship is not legitimate, Newson does her a kindness by having himself reported lost at sea, allowing her to leave his house without guilt and with a small amount of money. Newson's basic decency is seen later in his desire to share his wealth with Elizabeth-Jane, in his acceptance of Henchard's word that she has died, and in his lack of bitterness when he discovers that Henchard has lied to him.

At the end of the novel, Newson lives within sight of the sea but also near his daughter. Lucetta Templeman is a superficial, unthinking woman who, like Henchard, suffers several reversals of fortune and ends badly. Henchard has an affair with her before Susan arrives in Casterbridge, and this affair ruins Lucetta's reputation. To try to repair the damage, Henchard, thinking that Susan is probably dead, offers to marry Lucetta.

Before the marriage takes place, though, Susan returns, and Henchard must call off the wedding.

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After Susan dies, Lucetta inherits wealth, and Henchard renews his interest in her. Lucetta is more interested in Farfrae, though, and marries him. When Lucetta's old letters to Henchard become public, the scandal of their affair returns to haunt them both, and Lucetta is so distraught by this that she suffers a seizure and dies. Farfrae soon realizes that Lucetta was not a good match for him and that, had she lived, their marriage would not have been happy. The idea of a blind, arbitrary fate is a central theme in Hardy's fiction.

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: Introduction

Although this fate is blind, it is not neutral but almost always cruel. It is a force that brings suffering and feels no pity or remorse. In The Mayor of Casterbridge , blind fate manifests as a series of ruinous coincidences and unforeseeable circumstances. Such coincidences and circumstances seem to conspire against Michael Henchard from the opening scenes. There are two shops offering food at the fair; one clearly advertises that it sells liquor, but the other seems not to do so. Susan, knowing Michael's weakness for alcohol, steers him to what seems to be the "safer" of the two establishments.

But, as fate would have it, the proprietor there sells rum on the sly, and Michael is soon drunk and loudly insisting on his desire to sell his wife. Next, along comes a coincidence in the person of a man who has both the money and the inclination to accept the offer that Henchard has been unwilling to let drop in spite of attempts by his wife and others to silence him.

The man happens to be a sailor who takes Susan to Canada, far beyond Michael's reach as he searches for her. And so the tide of fate that will carry Michael inexorably to his tragic end gathers strength. It is not swayed by Henchard's repentance, by his shame, by his vow not to drink, or by his lifelong efforts to right his wrong. It is as if a curse has been uttered and cannot be withdrawn. In The Mayor of Casterbridge , more than in some of Hardy's other fiction, the theme of blind fate is interwoven with a second theme that might at first seem contradictory: Every coincidence or unforeseen circumstance is paired with a choice.

Henchard could have refused the furmity woman's rum, but did not. He could have refused Newson's offer to buy Susan, which would have required the courage and strength of character to admit that the offer was a drunken mistake. Circumstance and character hold a conversation throughout this novel. Each circumstance is a question that Henchard must answer, and each answer both illustrates what kind of man Henchard is and determines what kind of man he will become. In the beginning, Henchard has much control over his fate; more than once, he is presented with the opportunity to prevent the curse from being uttered.

But once he has sold Susan, his choices have much less power. A line has been crossed, a process has been set in motion, a deed has been done that all of Michael's future efforts will be inadequate to erase.

Introduction & Overview of The Mayor of Casterbridge

Although he makes many moral choices from that moment on—to forswear alcohol and to "remarry" Susan, for example—Michael has lost control of his fate. As these two themes of blind fate and personal character weave through the novel, Hardy leaves readers to interpret just how the two relate. Judging by Michael Henchard's end, though, Hardy's message seems to be that each choice a person makes limits future choices and that a single bad choice can put a person forever at the mercy of blind, uncaring fate.

Michael Henchard can be compared to a seaman in a storm who, in a moment of carelessness, loses his grip on his ship's wheel and is never able to regain control of his course. It was common for novels to be published serially, in magazines or in stand-alone sections. The Mayor of Casterbridge was first published serially, in twenty installments, in an English periodical called The Graphic in It was published simultaneously in the United States in Harper's Weekly.

Hardy's original manuscript, with some sections missing, is at the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester. The Mayor of Casterbridge was published in book form as soon as the serial publication was complete. Many novels of this period differ slightly in their serial and book forms authors were aware of the serial format as they wrote and structured their stories to keep readers interested from one week to the next , but this book differs substantially from the serial novel.

In the serial form, for example, Henchard marries Lucetta. Hardy's biography supposedly written by his second wife but actually written almost entirely by Hardy himself reveals that he felt this novel had been badly damaged by the demands of serial publication and that his revisions for the book publication were not adequate to repair the story. The text of the novel that is available to today's readers is the final revision that Hardy did for the Wessex Edition of his novels.

Victorian novels often deal with social issues. While social issues play a role in The Mayor of Casterbridge , the novel was a departure from the norm because it focused consistently on a single character, Michael Henchard. Because of this limited focus, the novel is shorter and has a smaller cast of characters than many novels of the time. Like all of Hardy's fiction, The Mayor of Casterbridge is set in southwestern England in the region once known as Wessex.

The area was invaded, settled, and named by the Saxons, who ruled it as a kingdom, in ancient times. While most novelists set their stories in real places, Hardy is distinctive for two reasons. First, although the author traveled widely, in the writing of his novels and stories, he never strayed beyond the boundaries of his native region. In his general preface to his final, revised version of his novels, Hardy explained, "there was quite enough human nature in Wessex for one man's literary purposes.

Second, Hardy, unlike other authors, rarely invented features to add to the real landscape of Wessex. He describes the towns and farms, the roads and hotels, and the smallest details as they really were. When Hardy describes a house, it is likely that readers in his time knew exactly which house he had borrowed for his tale. In some cases, Hardy used real place names; in others, he gave fictional names to real places. While Stonehenge and Southhampton appear under their actual names, Casterbridge is, in reality, Hardy's hometown of Dorchester.

In his preface, Hardy points out that his general rule was to use the real names of the major towns and places that mark the general boundaries of Wessex and to use fictional, disguised, or ancient names for most other places. Even Hardy's characters are based on real people more than most fictional characters are. Most are composites of people he knew or knew of and his own embellishments. He borrowed bits of characters and story lines from the folklore and ballads of Wessex.

The fact that he lived a long life in Wessex and had access to church records in his early work as an architect and church restorer gave him an intimate knowledge of local life and its too-frequent tragedies. Gothic fiction was popular between about and Gothic authors used threatening environments the foreboding hilltop castle on a stormy night ; brooding, malevolent characters; dark secrets; and the supernatural and occult to instill a sense of horror in their readers.

Gothic fiction has influenced much of the fiction written in the past two hundred and fifty years, and Gothic elements were prominent in the novels of the Victorian age. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. Download this Lit Guide! A concise biography of Thomas Hardy plus historical and literary context for The Mayor of Casterbridge.

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The Mayor of Casterbridge on a single page. In-depth summary and analysis of every chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge. Explanations, analysis, and visualizations of The Mayor of Casterbridge 's themes. The Mayor of Casterbridge 's important quotes, sortable by theme, character, or chapter.

Description, analysis, and timelines for The Mayor of Casterbridge 's characters. Explanations of The Mayor of Casterbridge 's symbols, and tracking of where they appear. An interactive data visualization of The Mayor of Casterbridge 's plot and themes. He was not able to receive a thorough education, but, at sixteen, he became an architectural apprentice. In , he moved to London to further his career and worked with an architect named Arthur Blomfield.

In London, he started to write and publish poetry. In , he returned to Dorset, working again as an architecture assistant, as he started to craft his first novel. He married his first wife, Emma Gifford, in , after meeting her on a business trip to Cornwall four years earlier. In , the Hardys moved to London, so Thomas could join the thriving literary circles there. But by , Thomas Hardy had again returned to Dorset.

There, in his beloved homeland, he wrote many of his major novels: For the thirty-two years of his life after the publication of Jude the Obscure , Hardy wrote only poetry and drama. Hardy remarried a woman named Florence Dugdale in Before his death in , Hardy was recognized as a major literary contributor of his time period and he was awarded the Order of Merit for his literary achievements in Thomas Hardy hoped to capture the lifestyles of Wessex County, particularly the farming practices, technologies, and the relationships farmers and villagers had with the land in England during the s.