The Mayor Of Casterbridge (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
If there ever were a title apropos for every Thomas Hardy book, one that covered the completely wretched nature of each of his characters, Les Misérables would fit the bill: (of those I've read) the misery that awaits Tess; the dire straits for Jude; and, here, the absolute pathetic choices of Michael Henchard and their effects on those around him.In fact, the thought came to mind early in the book that the Advanced Placement English test surely at one time or another requested in essay form, "Compare and Contrast Hugo's Jean Valjean with Hardy's Michael Henchard." Then, it became so obvious the various corollaries that could be made, that I avoided all other reviews of this book (I'll check them out as soon as I post this one) in order to keep my theory as pure to my own thoughts as possible. I became worried that there were, indeed, thousands of reviewers who had already drawn this conclusion, and I wanted this idea to be unique to myself.Henchard is the antihero foil to Valjean. Both come to a moment in their lives early on where they resolve to make a change before God. Both rise in their communities through acts of hard work to become mayors of their towns. Both become father figures to an impressionably pure girl, whom each seeks to 'protect' from the advances of a love interest. But, where luck and timing (and a deeply ingrained desire to do the right thing!) seem to favor Valjean, Henchard's choices continually come back to bite him. "He and she are gone into their new house today ," said Jopp."Oh," said Henchard absently. "Which house is that?""Your old one.""Gone into my house?" And starting up Henchard added, "My house of all others in the town!""Well, as somebody was sure to live there, and you couldn't, it can do 'ee no harm that he's the man."It was quite true: he felt that it was doing him no harm. Farfrae, who had already taken the yards and stores, had acquired possession of the house for the obvious convenience of its contiguity. And yet this act of his taking up residence within those roomy chambers while he, their former tenant, lived in a cottage, galled Henchard indescribably.Jopp continued: "And you heard of that fellow who bought all the best furniture at your sale? He was bidding for no other than Farfrae all the while! It has never been moved out of the house, as he'd already got the lease.""My furniture too! Surely he'll buy my body and soul likewise!""There's no saying he won't, if you be willing to sell."The question posed to Henchard is that which has probably plagued him since we first joined up with him. When he sold his wife, did he already mark himself as one who would sell his own soul? We want to hate him. He is, at times almost always, a self-serving, hard-nosed louse. Yet there is a great deal of feeling that Henchard does only as he knows how, and that a measure of mercy and pity are also allowed him. Hardy encourages the reader to jump into the pages of his books and grab his characters by his lapels or her pelisse and shake some sense into them. "No! No, no, no! Don't do that!" I often asked myself during my reading of this book what thing could have been done to stop certain events from transpiring. It was usually not just a case of one choice (thought it plays heavily against Henchard's actions), rather a series of events unstoppable. Hardy makes us feel that fate is unkind; Life is bleak and mournful.But he does it with such grace and beauty! His stories are impeccable! His writing is exquisite! We cannot help but thrill and bask in the misery of the human soul. Life is hard. Hardy capitalizes on this suffering and, perhaps, touches our compassion just enough to cause us to think about our actions and how they will affect others. He experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking back upon an ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as what he has gained in substance; but the superadded bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago; but his attempts to replace ambition by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself. His wronged wife had foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a virtue. It was an odd sequence that out of all this tampering with social law came that flower of Nature, Elizabeth. Part of his wish to wash his hands of life arose from his perception of its contrarious inconsistencies — of Nature's jaunty readiness to support unorthodox social principles."Les Misérables, indeed.
Michael Henchard undoubtedly has to be a not-so-distant relative of American anti-hero Homer J. Simpson. The Mayor of Casterbridge serves as literary English grandfather to our own lecherous, lazy, and negligent father of America's longest running cartoon family. Bull-headed, dim-witted, and insolent, we cannot turn our gaze from the train-wreck that is Hardy's eponymous protagonist. Henchard is both repellent and fascinating. We know his ship is going down from the start of the novel--the story is just a matter of when and how. Not nearly as steeped with lush prose and reverence for Nature as his other works, Hardy's novelistic eye and acute attention to detail turns toward architecture and design. Perhaps the cut of stone and the structure of brick and mortar serves to compliment and edify our main character. The men in this story are the pillars to the narrative and the women, in this case, take a backseat from the limelight. Donald Farfrae, Henchard's handsome Scottish rival, is so amicably charming and clever, Hardy successfully persuades readers to gradually dislike and resent him because he antagonizes our anti-hero. Not an easy writing feat, by any means! Hardy's central characters are men of industry. Henchard represents old, bucolic agrarianism. Farfrae, an energetic lad from the North, ushers in technology and worker's rights. And the landscape that Hardy usually lingers on gets tossed aside, like Susan Henchard, sold to the highest and most convenient bidder. Though many of the plot twists are easy to predict, The Mayor of Casterbridge's melodramatic storyline still holds intrigue because Hardy paints each character so vividly. We may be able to foresee what's in store for them, but we're never sure how they will react. Michael, Elizabeth Jane, his long-lost daughter, Lucette, his lost mistress, and Farfrae are each volatile elements. Watching them interact, with their clashing drives and unstable fears, is like watching Hardy, as mad scientist, experiment in his literary lab. Put your goggles and gloves on! Its great twisted fun to watch these sparks burst. What we eventually learn at the close of the work is not new. Everyone is laden with guilt whether by deliberate action or by indirect association. Sin is gravity, bringing all of us down, literally and figuratively. A barrel of monkeys, Thomas Hardy is not. But what makes his work brilliant and why I can't keep from returning to him is that his writing is deftly evocative. The pivotal scene that hails Henchard's downfall is deliciously rife with details, the writing palpitates. See for yourself:'I'll tell ye what--I won't sell her for less than five,'said the husband, bringing down his fist so that the basins danced. 'I'll sell her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat her well; and he shall have her for ever, and never hear aught o' me. But she shan't go for less. Now then--five guineas--and she's yours. Susan, you agree?' She bowed her head with absolute indifference. 'Five guineas,' said the auctioneer, 'or she'll be withdrawn. Do anybody give it? The last time. Yes or no?''Yes,' said a loud voice from the doorway. All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed the door of the tent was a sailor, who, unobserved by the rest, had arrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence followed his affirmation. 'You say you do?' asked the husband, staring at him. 'I say so,' replied the sailor.'Saying is one thing, and paying is another. Where's the money?'
What do You think about The Mayor Of Casterbridge (2003)?
When Thomas stopped writing novels in the early 1900s, he concentrated his bitterness on spectacularly peevish poetry, dripping with more melancholy self-loathing than mid-90s Morrissey albums (has anyone actually heard Maladjusted or Southpaw Grammar the whole way through?) These poems captivated my downbeat imagination as a teenager but the novels remained out of reach—I wanted heartbreak-to-go, I wasn’t looking to eat in the restaurant of shattered dreams. Now, I find myself pulled towards the Great Grump’s masterworks. Starting with this terrific novel that reads like a transcript of my first two goes on The Sims—I lost my father, killed my mother, made a series of kitchen-fire hotchpotches and ended up killing all my close friends and children, then killed myself. The details are different in The Mayor of Casterbridge (only slightly), but if ever a writer was Sim-like, it’s Hardy. He is like an existential bingo caller with a grudge. Mayor no more—forty-four! Poisoned by hate—eight-eight! No women survive—twenty-five! This Oxford World Classics edition stifled me with its academia and I confess I skipped the intro. Usually I like the setup and context intros give me but here, I wanted in to the action. Since this review is stressfully scattershot, I might as well conclude with this track from Nick Cave: sums up the fate of the poor Mayor perfectly, as well as being amazing in its own right:When I First Came to Town
—MJ Nicholls
I am in the midst of reading all of Thomas Hardy's novels in the order that he wrote them. Well, at least the more well known novels. While most of Hardy's 'Novels of Character and Environment' have a fairly pronounced pastoral presence, The Mayor of Casterbridge is distinctly a novel about characters in a relatively urban setting, the Wessex town of Casterbridge.The Mayor of Casterbridge is a relentless novel. It is a relentlessly sad story, and a relentlessly painful story to read. Change the scene, the time, and the garb and this tragedy is worthy of the greatest ancient Greek playright. This is not a 'coming of age' tale. No, this is the story of the slow, but self-wrought, destruction of one man -- Michael Henchard -- the Mayor of Casterbridge.The novel opens with a horrifying event, and concludes with another. In between those two bookends of horror, in typical Hardyan fashion, Fate, Chance, and Irony intermittently intercede impacting the lives of Henchard and those around him. In some sense, I believe that this novel is Hardy's testament to his views on 'Crime and Punishment'. The structure of the tale, and the bleakness of the characters, brings home in a powerful way the intended and unintended consequences of our actions upon others in our journey along the path of Life.In large part, the substance of this novel can summed up by Michael Henchard himself near the end of the book when he says, "When I was rich I didn't need what I could have, and now I be poor I can't have what I need!" A moral we should all pay very close attention to.
—Christopher H.
This is the story of Michael Henchard, who sells his wife and infant daughter for five guineas while drunk at a local fair. The consequences of this one impulsive action haunt his life thereafter. Henchard is a tragic figure, doomed not only by the character flaws of which he is only too aware, but also by a malignant, inescapable fate. Hardy's writing is breathtaking. The novel is full of stunningly beautiful descriptive language. Hardy paints vivid pictures with words, bringing both characters and setting to life. It's a novel full of memorable characters. Henchard is the most striking, but in their quieter way Donald Farfarie, the Scotsman who wins and then loses Henchard's affection, the good and long-suffering Elizabeth-Jane and the complex Lucetta are also compelling, as are the secondary characters who form the chorus. This is an intensely sad novel. It had the same effect on me as a Greek or a Shakespearean tragedy: you know it'll end badly, no matter how hard the characters try to avoid their fate. And I ached for Henchard, a man who desperately wants to find redemption, even when pride, arrogance, temper and impulsiveness undo him at every turn.I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Simon Vance. He does a magnificient job, particularly with Henchard and Farfarie, although (in common with most male narrators) he struggles with young female voices. It appears that I've turned into a huge Thomas Hardy fan after steafastly avoiding his novels for more than thirty years. Who'd have thought?
—Kim
