The Mayor of Casterbridge
By Thomas Hardy
Published Year: 1886
Page Count: 385 pages
Medium Used: Paperback
Genre : Classics, Drama, Romance,Mortality, morality, 2025-read.
Rating : 4/5
Though this book was written in the late 19th century, reading it didn't feel unsettling or displaced in time for me. Most of the sentiments and fears that prevailed during that time, apparently, still remain. Someone feeling unspeakable guilt at their rash action, someone fearing the release of secret love letters to their husband, someone feeling unworthy of life when left alone in this world.. I can connect with all these sentiments. The world of Thomas Hardy's books welcomes me like bee to a honey pot. I like the simple innocence of the characters and the bucolic nature of the surroundings. The writing is medium paced and prose felt a bit boring at times, with many extraneous descriptions, I felt, but there were no digressions. The character development is simply remarkable.
Thomas Hardy is one of my favorite authors and this goes on to add another jewel into his literary treasure chest. The main characters of the plot are Michael Henchard the mayor, his wife Susan, his step daughter Elizabeth-Jane, his rival Donald Farfrae, his romantic interest Lucetta Templeman and Elizabeth-Jane's father Nelson. The tale weaves among these personages and twists, turns as the plot thickens towards the inevitable end where Henchard is left an orphan with no one to care after him.
Michael Henchard,a twenty one year old hay trusser, in a drunken bout, sells off his wife and toddler daughter, to a man named Newson for five guineas, at a fair. After coming to his senses, he regrets his action and takes a solemn oath in a church to never touch alcohol for twenty one more years. He sticks to his oath, works hard as a hay trusser and goes on to become the mayor of Casterbridge. His wife, thinking her second husband Newson to be dead at sea, returns to Casterbridge where she learns Henchard to be settled. Little does she know that he is a mayor and therefore a very rich man. Henchard, during all those years, has remained distant from female sex except with one dalliance in the form of a Lucetta. He was in the plans of marrying her when he knows of the return of Susan and Elizabeth Jane back into his life. He does what he thinks is right by them. He remarries Susan and takes the two of them into his household. He meets a very promising and remarkable young man, Donald Farfrae, whom he makes the manager of his corn and hay business. Susan contrives to make Elizabeth Jane and Farfrae like each other ,as in romantically, but doesn't see it happen before her end takes her away from everyone. Then Lucetta enters the scene as a rich woman. Initially she presses the newly widowed Henchard to marry her, then learns of his past action and finds another mate. We see the luck of Henchard go sour as the star of Farfrae rise. A sequence of events and we arrive at the end where Henchard is a loner and bereft of any purpose/inclination to continue with his life. He finds no reason for an uphill climb..like his career growth and all that. He simply doesn't want to tarry any longer, the inevitable end of his life.
I thought the ending could have been better. I didn't like the way Henchard had to leave. I mean, though the narrator created this special bond with his step daughter and Elizabeth Jane herself being a good and sentimental person, the mayor should have persisted and lived.
Overall, a cool read.
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