The Mayor of Casterbridge (Modern Library Classics)

Book Description

One of Hardy’s most powerful novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard—having gained power and success as the mayor—finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the authoritative 1912 Wessex edition, as well as Hardy’s map of Wessex.

Customer Reviews:

Allegory of the King Saul/David story.......2007-07-19

Thomas Hardy has a reputation for writing bleak, sad stories. The Mayor happens to be my first Hardy read, and I can't tell you how saddening I found the overall tale.

Many points are made by Hardy: dealing with the past and its haunting effects; pride before the fall; and even the folly of mental inflexibility.

I couldn't shake the parallel of the King Saul/David story from the Bible while reading this. You have the powerful man who takes in an apprentice then becomes overcome with jealousy and envy as his apprentice eventually outshines him. And rather than putting his usurped life in perspective, allows his anger and envy to make matters much worse.

I saw Michael as a flawed man who is redeemed by his sense of duty and obligation.

I think the theme of duty to world versus self is important here. Michael's duty to his first family overrides his desire to be with his new girlfriend Lucetta. He probably would have been happier with Lucetta; but wouldn't we as the audience have seen him as selfish if he had chosen her instead of Susan? Both women were manipulative, one aggressively, one passively, so it probably didn't matter. But it does raise the question of how much of our personal happiness should be sacrificed for societal duties.

Donald Farfrae, the Scottish apprentice is put here purely to provide Michael Henchard with a foil. I don't feel he is developed at all, and is kind of dull, as is Elizabeth Jane.

There are character driven stories and plot-driven stories. And in plot-driven stories, you know that the characters' personalities or decision-making won't really matter in how things end. That's an aspect of Mayor...that some may find the most frustrating. You never could shake the feeling that destiny was unalterable. I, however, had no problem with it. It was a good ride.

Powerful read, but not a happy one .......2007-07-10

Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge is a story about Michael Henchard attempts at redemption and the many sorrows, pain, and misery that comes with his decision to uphold his pride and name. To say that Henchard is the only character that suffers in this novel would be a misrepresentation; almost every character at some point suffers immensely in some trial of life, whether it is death of someone close, pain of separation, or the frustration of a relationship. For these reasons, this work is not a "light" read by any stretch of the imagination, and will probably test even the optimist's patience in getting through. Still, Hardy's story, the descriptions of the countryside and the characters' inner feelings, as well as the way he ties together every character in this book, is a remarkable feat and makes for a powerful read.

The story begins with Michael Henchard walking with his wife, Susan, to the fair as they cross the countryside. While there, in an act of drunkenness, Henchard sells his wife to a sailor, and seemingly sets in motion his irreversible bad fortune. Not being able to find his wife the next day, he makes an oath to not drink alcohol for 21 years, the exact amount of years he has lived. The novel then fast forwards 19 years to find Henchard the Mayor of Casterbridge, and a noteworthy man of respect. Susan finds him, marries him after forgiving him, but there are many secrets that both parties have and will have until the end of the novel. It seems that many of these secrets are the character's downfalls. Henchard, while Mayor of Casterbridge, meets a man named Donald Farfrae, who he comes to like and implores to stay in town; however, eventually he and Farfrae become bitter rivals in not only their business and society, but also in their relationship with Lucetta, a woman who had an affair with Henchard in the past.

Henchard's fallacy of character lay in his stubborn pride and his foolish belief that name and appearance is everything. He sometimes tries to create a façade, or cover up one sin with another secret or problem. When he tries to persuade Lucetta to marry him, so as to not destroy her name, he retorts: "But it is not by what is, in this life, but by what appears, that you are judged." He is a tragic individual who seems to not be able to change his views long enough to make something right occur; when something does go well, it is short lived. He even gets to a point where he connects himself with an ominous and unpreventable fate, at one point referring to himself as Cain. He never really heeds Elizabeth's attempts at love until very late in the novel when tragic occurrences seem to be set in motion.

Still, despite all his problems, and all his pride, he is a "likeable" character because he makes the effort at retribution and is sorrowful each time he gets hit with a dilemma or makes an unfavorable decision. He has the willingness and conscience to try to amend his deficiencies, but, in the end, he just makes too many mistakes, and has too much pride to reverse his fortunes.

Neither cheerful nor uplifting, but always compelling and moving!.......2006-12-26

Michael Henchard, a down-on-his-luck, unemployed hay trusser, succumbs to the siren call of alcohol at a country fair. Subconsciously feeling his wife, Susan, is holding him back from success in this world, he awakes to sobriety the next morning and realizes that, in a foolish fit of pique, he has auctioned her and his daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, off to a sailor. Despite his frantic efforts to find them, they have disappeared. Ravaged with guilt over his selfish, impulsive act, he swears he will not take another drink for twenty-one years.

Whether his wife was indeed one of Henchard's problems is left for the reader to ponder as Henchard moves to Casterbridge, prospers wildly in business and eventually becomes the town's leading citizen and mayor. Henchard's wheel of fortune, however, begins to spin on a wobbly axle as Donald Farfrae, an enterprising young Scot travelling to seek his fortune, enters his employ as the manager of his business. At the same time, Susan and Elizabeth-Jane, re-enter Henchard's life believing that Michael Newson, the sailor who had purchased them some nineteen years earlier, has perished at sea. Henchard's life truly begins to come apart when Lucetta Templeman, a former lover, also moves to Casterbridge and, ashamed of her past romantic entanglement with Henchard, seeks to hold him to his promise of marriage!

Hardy raises many issues but, not expressing his own opinion through an unequivocal direction in the story's plot line, seems content to leave these issues as topics for sober analysis by his readers. Hardy questions the conflict between the merits of tradition vs modernization. There is the enormous irony that Henchard's success as a business person seems clearly attributable in part to his tee-totalling vow but is founded upon the five guineas seed capital raised through the auction of his wife and daughter! Henchard seems to epitomize the constant personal conflicts we all face between decisiveness and strength of character as opposed to impulsiveness and stubborn bullheaded intransigence! One wonders whether Lucetta is flighty, coquettish, thoughtless and selfish or is she an early manifestation of modern woman sadly out of time and years ahead of the ladies around her? Is Farfrae to be admired or scorned for his meteoric rise to power in Casterbridge and his complete devastation of Henchard's place among his peers?

Perhaps the most powerful moment of the entire novel comes with the discovery of Henchard's will and his words directing that the world leave him to rest in forgotten isolation and that no person mark or mourn his passing in any fashion. Once again, we are left to decide for ourselves whether Henchard's life should be pitied, forgiven, admired or looked upon with scorn and disgust.

To the readers of the day, "The Mayor of Casterbridge" would have been perceived as a darkly pessimistic tragedy that might have evoked emotions akin to those raised by Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex". A classic worthy of the term, "The Mayor of Casterbridge", certainly never cheerful or uplifting, is however many, many things - compelling, moving, disturbing, thought-provoking and poignant. Above all, it is worthy of being read and enjoyed by any lover of classic 19th century British Literature.

Paul Weiss

Oedipus Updated.......2006-08-25

In the novels of Thomas Hardy, tragedy can be an externalized force like Egdon Heath in THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE or it can be of the internalized sort, the kind that Michael Henchard brings on himself in THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE. In either case, nature is unforgiving, a quality which is a given in any of Hardy's works. When tragedy is of the latter kind, then the protagonist is not unlike the doomed tragic hero from classical Greek drama wherein he is first seen as a great or simply a good man who suffers from a tragic flaw, the results of which drag him down so that by the end of the action, his state is so miserably pathetic that the reader/audience can do no more than shake their heads in sorrow at his downfall, that in another and less proud man need not have happened at all.

Michael Henchard is the post-Victorian man of mixed qualities who like Oedipus, commits a sin and then spends the rest of the book trying to make amends. His sin is maudlin self-pity. He allows his current debased financial position to lead him to drink, all the while blaming his wife and child. At an auction, he offers his family for the sale to the highest bidder. He ignores the warnings from those present that he is courting disaster. An unknown man offers the highest bid and off he goes, taking Henchard's wife and child with him. Hardy takes pains to place Henchard squarely in the middle of this somber farce. Hardy gives no name to the successful bidder nor does he allow the reader to note the wife's actions. She, surprisingly, remains silent, but weeping. Henchard, by contrast, is loud, crude, and obnoxious. He occupies central stage until the next chapter when he sobers up, is filled with remorse, and then tries to set things right. He fails and winds up the leading citizen of Casterbridge. The image of the drunken Henchard and the mayor Henchard are startlingly unlike. The latter is sober, industrious, and respectable, causing the reader to commiserate with him. But the tragedy of Henchard does not lie merely in a series of vain regrets. Just as he seems to undergo permanent rehabilitation of self, his ex-wife shows up again, with a new child from the now dead bidder. Hardy complicates the plot with his usual unwieldy complications. As a result, Henchard plunges again into the depths of despair; this time he shows that his old sins of false pride and egotism have returned with a vengeance. He tries to bankrupt his business partner Farfrae, for reasons purely of jealousy. It becomes progressively more difficult for the reader to maintain the same sympathy that they had earlier. Later, at the novel's close, Henchard is made to wander like a wounded Lear, and this alone partially elevates him back to his previous stature of a tragic figure. He, like Lear, dies repentant. From his death, the audience discovers that the essence of a tragic fall lies not so much in how much sympathy that protagonist garners during that fall but rather in how true to life his fall was. Michael Henchard was neither saint nor reprobate sinner. He was the Victorian Everyman with a mixture of goodness and mean-spiritedness, either of which could emerge under the right circumstances. At his fall, the reader saw that the "right" circumstances were sufficiently ordinary so that anyone of us might have done the same. This is the essence of the tragedy of THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE.

Compelling and Captivating.......2006-03-24

The first book I read out of Thomas Hardy's many works was "Far from the Madding Crowd" back in my secondary school days. I immediately fell in love with Hardy. Reading "The Mayor of Casterbridge" only confirmed that my liking for Hardy's works was not misplaced. The Mayor of Casterbridge is absolutely brilliant as the author uses his perceptive insights into the human nature to create very realistic characters with complex personalities. For example, Henchard is an alcoholic who suffers from many of the accompanying afflictions that include low self-esteem, shame, guilt, self-castigation, self-punishment, loneliness, a death wish, and a tendency to depression.

The book starts in the first chapter with a dramatic masterpiece that perfectly sets the tone and theme for the rest of the novel. A young man named Michael Henchard and his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane enter a village where Henchard hopes to find work. They go to a country fair where Henchard, an alcoholic, gets drunk and sells his wife and baby to a sailor. Once Henchard sobers up, he realizes his mistake, and searches, in vain, to retrieve his family. Abhorred at what he has done, he swears off liquor and decides to make something of his life. The story unravels nineteen years later, when his wife and daughter come back to present themselves to him. In the course of the rest of the novel, Henchard who was now the Mayor of Casterbridge falls from grace, this being a result of his own character flaws and the hand of fate.

I enjoy reading Hardy's impressive prose, which is strong, sharp and descriptive. The various scenes the author describes are filled with vivid and compelling imagery that leave one wanting to read more and more. Thomas Hardy is especially adept at describing the environment which he has a deep seated love for. The ironic twists of fate provide a setting that demonstrates the brilliant writer that Hardy is where he expertly weaves a plot that shows the themes of the balance between fate and individual choice. That makes The Mayor of Casterbridge very pleasant to read despite the sad story.

For those who wish to study English Literature, The Mayor of Casterbridge is on the top of the recommended list. The book provides exceptional descriptions of England and its culture as well as exposing the student to themes of profound gravity and importance. The book provides clear and concise explanations, dialogue and emotional energy. It is well-written, is easy-to-understand and to follow.

Reading Alcoholisms: Theorizing Character and Narrative in Selected Novels of Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf

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An important book from a number of angles.

Reading Alcoholisms: Theorizing Character and Narrative in Selected Novels of Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf
Jane Lilienfeld
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312217099

Book Description

With Reading Alcoholisms, Jane Lilienfeld has produced a ground-breaking cross-disciplinary study using the social, psychological, and scientific literature on alcoholism and family alcoholism to examine the novels of Hardy, Joyce, and Woolf. Each of these authors was directly affected by the alcoholism of a family member or mentor, and Lilienfeld shows how the effects of alcoholism organized their texts: through the portrayal of a protagonist in The Mayor of Casterbridge, through the denial of parental alcoholism and its silent presence in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and through codependent reactive patterns of Mrs. and Mr. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse. With the remarkable empathy Lilienfeld has for human dimensions of alcoholism, she demonstrates that "the narrative strategies in each of these novels at times mimic the behaviors and feeling states often arising from alcoholism." Without an understanding of the multidimensional nature of alcoholism and the transmission of its effects across generations, any analysis of the work of these three literary giants is incomplete.

Customer Reviews:

An important book from a number of angles........1999-08-12

What Shays did for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in *Achilles in Vietnam,* Dr. Jane Lilienfeld does for alcoholism in her new book, *Reading Alcoholisms.* Lilienfeld's book reviews some familiar works of English literature dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries through the lens of what we have come to know about alcoholism, both the "disease process" itself and its somewhat predictable effects upon alcoholics, their families, and others close to them. At the time the works Lilienfeld focuses upon were written, there was no body of alcoholism theory; nevertheless, the authors of these works reproduced in painful detail what would later become familiar trajectories of personal and familial decline. One of the points Lilienfeld scores is to show that alcoholism as we understand it existed BEFORE we understood it. However crude and ineffective present treatments for them might be, alcoholism (and, by extension, other addictions) are hardly the iatrogenic diseases some occasionally claim. Lilienfeld allows her readers to think inductively about evidence in the texts. One might sometimes wish for her to validate our thinking by drawing more conclusions for us. But that's a small gripe. This is a fine book.

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Penguin Classics)

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favorite Hardy book
The Mayor of Casterbidge is a Tragic Tale of a Tormented Soul.
Dark, depressing, and fascinating
The Downward Spiral
"He sold his wife and baby daughter for 5 guineas."

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Penguin Classics)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0141439785
Release Date: 2003-04-29

Book Description

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wilson.

Customer Reviews:

favorite Hardy book.......2007-08-23

Reread this one recently - what a great book. This is my favorite of all Hardy's books. The fascinating part of this novel is the protagonist, because he is such a mix of good and bad. He has good and even heroic impulses and acts, and bad and even evil impulses and acts. The way he manages to sabotage the good things he could get reminds me of Lily in the House of Mirth, although Henchard's sabotage is due to through bad temper and anger and insecurity, while Lily's are due to ambivalence. But the trip downward is quite similar. Basically it ends up being the story of a man's self-destruction. What a crime that Hardy's novels were unpopular when he first wrote them, and the bad reviews discouraged him from writing more! I have them all but wish there were more.

The Mayor of Casterbidge is a Tragic Tale of a Tormented Soul........2007-08-03

An early fall afternoon in the 1840s bucolic world of Wessex. Michael Henchard, a young hay trusser, sells his wife Susan to another man for the paltry sum of five guineas. The 400 page classic by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) goes on to chronicle the rise and fall of Henchard. The main characters are:
1. Michael Henchard-The tragic Mayor of Casterbridge who loses all he values in life and all those people he loves to his rival. Henchard is a visible proof of the fact that fiction displays "the human heart in conflict with itself.' He is a Faustian striver who is ambitious in business as a corn chandler; politics as he becomes mayor and love losing the three women who have meant most to him. Henchard dies in an obscure hut near Egdon Heath desiring to be completely forgotten by the world. He has a death wish and wishes to achieve the oblivion of death in a universe controlled by fate, chance and irony. He is one of Hardy's great creations.
2. Sue Henchard is the wife sold by Henchard to a sailor. She emigrates with him to America. When she returns 20 years later to Casterbridge she remarries Henchard but dies soon after the wedding. She is a simple-minded country woman lacking in knowledge and sophistication.
3. Donald Farfrae-While Henchard represents ancient Wessex in folkways and beliefs, Mr. Farfrae is a young Scotchman who soon steals Henchard's supremacy in Casterbridge. He is hired by Henchard to straighten out the latter's business affairs but leaves him to start a successful rival business firm. Farfrae is the second Mayor of Casterbridge in this novel. He marries Henchard's mistress Lucetta. When Lucetta dies after being the center of a scandal caused by old loves letters to Henchard being revealed, Farfrae weds Henchard's stepdaughter Elizabeth Jane. He is a kind man who seeks to help Henchard to no avail.
4. Eliaabeth-Jane-She is an intelligent person who returns from abroad with her mother Sue. She has been raised to believe that Michael Henchard is her father. Elizabeth-Jane becomes a hired companion to Henchard's quondom mistress Lucetta. Elizabeth Jane later weds Farfrae. This young lady learns her real father is the sailor Newson and Sue.
5. Seaman Newson-The real father of Sue who returns to find her twenty years after the deal of exchange he made to purchase Sue as his wife from Michael Henchard.
6. Lucette-The Jersey miss who had an affair long ago with Michael Henchard. Lucette is sexy and exotic. She weds Donald Farfrae dying after details of her affair with Henchard lead to scandal.
The characters in this ironical novel are all puppets in an uncaring universe.The last word in the novel is "pain"! There is plenty of pain to share among all the characters.
As with all of Hardy's classic novels, the descriptions of the town folks and the flora and fauna of Wessex are beautifully written. Hardy is the best regional novelist in all of English literature.
The Penguin Edition of the novel contains excellent illustrations by Robert Barnes which were included in the original edition. A helpful chronology of Hardy's life; discussion of the textual history of the novel and a useful introduction by Dr. Keith Hardy are included. The novel is one you should read and enjoy.

Dark, depressing, and fascinating.......2004-10-06

Read this novel after Far From The Madding Crowd and Return of the Native. It's a very bleak and depressing novel - without the comic flourishes and moments of his earlier work.
The story follows Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser, who sells his wife and child for five guineas in an 'auction' during a fit of inebriety. He spends the next 21 years regretting his action, but during that time he does well for himself, becoming mayor of Casterbridge, a rural town. Years later, his wife and daughter reappear. This starts a chain of events that leads to Henchard's fall. He eventually ends up losing everything because of his pride, passion and stubborness. The main character isn't very likeable, but there is something of the tragic about him that commands your attention.

The Downward Spiral.......2004-09-16

Michael Henchard (yep - - later he's the Mayor, all right), having sold his wife and baby early in the novel for 5 guineas while in a drunken rage, gets what he deserves despite his valiant efforts at atonement years later after an initial rise in fortune and a 'chance' reunion with his long-abandoned wife and daughter. Not that an example of Divine retribution is Hardy's intention; Hardy was an atheist. But he stacks the cards so heavily against Henchard that it's hard to believe he isn't a True Believer after all. Chance? Irony? Coincidence? (Synchroncity?? Gadzooks!) Divine retribution? All grist for Hardy's deterministic mill, and a grinding mill it is for Henchard. It ultimately doesn't matter - - to prove his point Hardy orchestrates the narrative so obviously and nothing can stop Henchard's downward spiral, of course. Everywhere in the novel, it's plain he's doomed. Hardy created this character whose final wish, as Hardy has him spell out in his will, is that he be forgotten. And then Hardy titles the novel after him for the ages. Did I hear someone say 'Omniscient Narrator'? Pretty divine, I'd say.

"He sold his wife and baby daughter for 5 guineas.".......2004-08-10

The Mayor of Casterbridge, focused and simple the premise has been in itself, affords a quite convoluted plot that packs with events as the memorably niched characters play out their lives and unravels the novel. The book is riddled with a well-faceted theme of conscience: the purging of conscience and its reconciliation through an allusion to deceit and characters' shameless past that ceaselessly haunt them and render them despondent and guilty. The tragic actions revolve around one man who manages to establish prestige, wealth, and authority over Casterbridge and ironically the very elite status leads to the fall of the deeply flawed man.

In a fit of drunken anger and delirium, young Michael Henchard sells his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor for 5 guineas at a county fair. Over the course of the years, though he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the town from literally nothing, Henchard still affords a ray of hope in reuniting with his family, until he meets Lucetta Templeman who nurses him in America. Such black spot of his youth as wife-sale caused by his fits of spleen not only renders him ashamed of himself but also wears an aspect of recent crime: something that will shame him until his dying day. Behind his success is always lurking such shameful secret of his troubled past shielded from the public and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper.

Contributing to the suspenseful nature of the novel is the return of the mayor's wife and daughter some 18 years later whom Michael Henchard believed to have perished at the sea. The sentimental reunion, which marks Henchard respectable 20-year abstinence from alcohol, brings about a heartrending revelation and an ironical sequence of events that irritate Henchard. The very truth cruelly leaves in him an emotional void that he unconsciously craves to fill. At the same time, the regard he has acquired for Elizabeth-Jane has eclipsed by this revelation. The new-sprung hope of his loneliness (or "friendless solitude" in Hardy's own words) that she will be to him a daughter of whom he can feel as proud as of the actual daughter she believes herself to be, has been stimulated by the (yet another) unexpected arrival of the sailor to a greedy exclusiveness in relation to her.

All these ineluctable consequences of his past shameful transaction at the fair take a stupendous toll on Henchard and his conscience. He is also uneasy at the thought of Elizabeth-Jane's passion for Donald Farfrae, whose rising prestige and success in his independent business provoke in Henchard enmity and envy. Henchard quails at the thought that Farfrae shall utterly usurp her mild filial sympathy with him, that she might be withdrawn from him by degrees through Farfrae's influence and learns to despise him. The pricking of conscience subtly manifests in Henchard's solicitous love and growing jealousy. His fear of losing tie after the death of his wife is sympathetically understandable. Though he in his effrontery has been weaning Elizabeth-Jane from the sailor by saying he is her father, she understands that Henchard has himself been deceived in her identity.

Lucetta Templeman, inescapably torn between her past disgraceful entanglement with Henchard and her love for a more refined gentleman, is also pricked by her conscience. In an impulsive moment, purely out of gratitude, Henchard proposes to the Jersey woman who has been so far compromised to him. But as the years gone by, Lucetta is more convinced that she has been forced into an equivocal position with Henchard by an accident. She has discovered some quantities in Henchard, who is either well-educated nor refined in manner, that irretrievably renders him less desirable as a husband than she has at first thought him to be, notwithstanding there remains a conscientious wish to being about her union with him.

When Lucetta learns of the wife-sale, she immediately dismisses any possibility of being with him and realizes she cannot risk himself in his hands. It will have been letting herself down to take Henchard's name after such an ignominious scandal. But her past which she diligently seals, if not expunge altogether haunts her. The surreptitious history with Henchard becomes the torture of her meek conscience and the reconciling of which through a marriage with a second man remains also her secret alone.

Subtitled "A Story of a Man of Character", Henchard's origins remain unexplained but he literally begins and ends the novel away from Casterbridge, where he achieves his prominent status ironically destines his downfall, through the lampooning and skimmity-ride. A psychological study, the novel accentuates the fury that causes him to lash out against both himself and those who stand closest to him. It depicts to the fullest the very self-destructive nature of the power that causes Henchard's fall, which is so obvious through his louring invidiousness.

2004 (46) ©MY

The Collected Novels of Thomas Hardy : Far from the Madding Crowd/the Return of the Native/the Mayor of Casterbridge

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The Collected Novels of Thomas Hardy : Far from the Madding Crowd/the Return of the Native/the Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Thomas Hardy

ASIN: 0679600779
Release Date: 1994-08-30

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Oxford World's Classics)

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The Mayor of Casterbridge (Oxford World's Classics)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192840711

Book Description

'The woman is no good to me. Who'll have her?' Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife Susan and baby daughter. Eighteen years later Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Henchard attempts to make amends for his youthful misdeeds but his unchanged impulsiveness clouds his relationships in love as well as his fortunes in business. Although Henchard is fated to be a modern-day tragic hero, unable to survive in the new commercial world, his story is also a journey towards love. This edition is the only critically established text of the novel, based on a comprehensive study of the manuscript and Hardy's extensive revisions.

The Mayor of Casterbridge: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds Criticism (A Norton Critical Edition)

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A classic read

The Mayor of Casterbridge: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds Criticism (A Norton Critical Edition)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

ASIN: 0393091740

Customer Reviews:

A classic read.......2000-05-27

A question about the source of human tragedy lies at the heart of The Mayor of Casterbridge. Characters frequently mention fate and providence as causes for tragedy (and joy), but Hardy offers more subtle and complex explanations for individual tragedy. At times, Hardy seems to indicate that circumstance and timing play a more important role than Providence in shaping the course of human destiny. Can people survive without the aid of luck or providence by pure force of will? Henchard (the Mayor) is a man whose loneliness, egoism, and pride cause him to make bad decisions. His faulty judgement certainly do not help him in his quest for fulfillment, either. Hardy's depiction of an ultimately unknowable universe is achieved partly through his characters' false assignment of meaning to meaningless incidents. Fate, human will, and faulty perceptions are central issues in much of Hardy's writing. Though not as moving and intense as Hardy's masterpiece Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Mayor is not to be missed. Hardy's complex rendering of Henchard's multi-faceted personality is remarkable. In addition, The Norton Critical Addition provides excellent commentary and background information from noteworthy critics.

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Cliffs Notes)

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The Mayor of Casterbridge (Cliffs Notes)
David C. Gild
Manufacturer: Cliffs Notes
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 0822008165

Book Description

Hardy's story dramatizes the human condition as a struggle between powerful men and against fate. (Fate usually wins!) In this tale, violent natural and social forces toss the characters about like rag dolls as the mayor is destroyed by his protege.

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There are reasons Hardy's works have stood the test of time

The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Blackstone Audiobooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0786196491

Customer Reviews:

There are reasons Hardy's works have stood the test of time.......2006-11-09

Somehow I graduated college with a B.A. in English without ever having read Thomas Hardy. Thanks to my library's audio book collection, and my long drive to work, I've been working on remedying this situation first with Tess of the Durbervilles and most recently with The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Hardy's novels are tinged with darkness. His characters endure rough lives. So, though at times they can get heavy, they are also refreshingly real. In The Mayor of Casterbridge especially, I was struck with the flawed multidimensional characters that peopled the novel. Not one of them was perfect, even Elizabeth Jane, who at times bordered on saintly, had her shortcomings. This is a novel you can sink your teeth into. I felt like I knew these people.

A central theme in the novel is the bond of marriage - what it means in a general sense and what it means for the various characters. Hardy was definitely sympathetic to the plight of women in his day, a fact that is very clear from reading Tess and shows in The Mayor of Casterbridge as well. Marriage, which is still a ripe subject for authors of today's books held much deeper significance for a woman of Hardy's day. I can lament all the shortcomings of my own life, but I can also appreciate how fortunate I am to live now and not then.

Still, the greatest compliment to an older novel is its longevity. For a reader in the 21st century, Hardy's novels are accessible, appreciated not as relics, but as well-written stories filled with drama and emotion that evoke nineteenth century life in England's small towns and villages with characters we see not as archetypes, but multi-faceted people blundering through their lives. Hardy's works have made their way to audio books because they are rich stories that stand the test of time.

Mayor of Casterbridge (Harper's Modern Classics)

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Mayor of Casterbridge (Harper's Modern Classics)
Thomas Hardy introduction: J.F.A Pyre
Manufacturer: Harper & Brothers New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K0CTS6

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles The Mayor of Casterbridge Far from the Madding Crowd

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Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles The Mayor of Casterbridge Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Chancellor Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

The quintessential Victorian novelist of unforgettable characters caught in their inescapable fates: with unfailing honesty and lyrical writing, Thomas Hardy captured his heroes' intimate relationship with the natural and social environment. Here are three of his finest works, presented in their entirety. Tess of the Durbervilles tells the tragic tale of a poor young girl's coming of age and her traumatic relationships with two men: the wealthy and cold Alec D'Urberville and the beautiful, but unforgiving Angel Clare. Michael Henchard, the title character of The Mayor of Casterbridge, reaches the pinnacles of power-only to lose everything through folly and bad luck. Set in Hardy's beloved Wessex, and always attentive to the struggles of everyday life in the farming community, Far From the Madding Crowd centers on Bathsheba Everdene and the men who love her.

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