The Most Admirable Character in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge

The Most Admirable Character in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge

Introduction - Thomas Hardy

Thomas HardyHardy was born in Higher Bockhampton, Dorsetshire, June 2,

1840, and educated in local schools and later privately. His father, a

stonemason, apprenticed him early to a local architect engaged in

restoring old churches. From 1862 to 1867 Hardy worked for an

architect in London and later continued to practice architecture,

despite ill health, in Dorset. Meanwhile, he was writing poetry with

little success. He then turned to novels as more salable, and by 1874

he was able to support himself by writing. This is also the year that

Hardy married his first wife, Emma Gifford. Their marriage lasted

until her death in 1912, which prompted Hardy to write his collection

of poems called Veteris Vestigiae Flammae (Vestiges of an Old Flame).

These poems are some of Hardy's finest and describe their meeting and

his subsequent loss. In 1914 Florence Dugdale became Hardy's second

wife and she wrote his biography after he died in Dorchester, on

January 11, 1928.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

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The Mayor of Casterbridge was written by Hardy in 1886, and uses many

fictional devices such as Pathetic fallacy to bring out the emotions

of his characters. In many ways this is a tragedy, with Michael

Henchard as our 'Macbeth', but also flawed by fate and disasters

beyond his control. As with many other tragedies, the reader is made

to feel sympathetic for the protagonist, but in the end, Henchard, of

course, dies.

Henchard

Michael Henchard is the first character that we meet in the Mayor of

Casterbridge. We see him to be a rash, volatile young man with a

dangerous drink habit. He does whatever he thinks of on the impulse,

and then regrets it later.

Take the first chapter, for example. After eating/drinking some

'furmity' (a sort of broth of soup and sometimes alcohol) he decides

to sell his wife. "This woman is no good to me," he says, showing