(Ed. Note: This piece was originally published in a student-ran literary journal and was submitted as an end-of-term essay in the early 2010s. I’ve included this text in my portfolio to demonstrate my technical writing and further display my analysis skills)
Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge—on its surface—is simply a novel about the rise and fall of Michael Henchard. Henchard, after selling his wife Susan, vowed not to drink for twenty years. During this time, Henchard became the mayor of Casterbridge. This position of power—and the hiring of a Scot named Donald Farfrae—set Henchard up for his subsequent rise to and fall from prominence, leading to the subtitle applied to Casterbridge, “The Life and Death of a Man of Character.” However, when analyzed through a historical lens, The Mayor of Casterbridge presents a different interpretation.
In this context, the act of Henchard selling Susan can be construed to be a symbol for the Industrial Revolution. It can also be seen as Hardy’s attempt to chastise the patriarchal system in place at the time. In addition, the contrast between Henchard and Farfrae illustrates the proverbial changing of the guard that occurred during the Industrial Revolution; those that were unwilling to amend their mindsets were destined to fall to the wayside in favor of new, malleable instruments of change.
R.M. Hartwell questioned whether the Industrial Revolution was the “culmination of a most unspectacular process, the consequence of a long period of slow economic growth [or] the outcome of a process of balanced growth.”[1] This statement infers that the Industrial Revolution occurred by a plethora of ripe opportunities presenting themselves at just the right time. In other words, the Industrial Revolution was pure happenstance. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, this idea of change through coincidence plays out first during the first chapter. Had Michael not felt the urge to have his furmity laced with rum the first time, he may have not had the opportunity for a second, third or fourth. Without this fourth basin, it can be argued that Michael would not have become “overbearing… [and] quarrelsome,”[2] which led to another discussion about the “extinction of his energies [because of] an early imprudent marriage.”[3] Of course, this discussion led to Michael propositioning his wife for sale and created situations that would play out over the course of the rest of the novel.
This relates to Hartwell’s hypothesis as the selling of Susan occurred by pure chance and the results of this sale influenced the rest of Henchard’s life, just as the Industrial Revolution had an impact on the world as a whole. Furthermore, Edward Muir argues that “[wife selling] reflected the spreading market mentality of the early modern period.”[4] This is reflected by Henchard’s chiding of the audience to get a higher bid for Susan. By reducing Susan to nothing more than “goods,”[5] Henchard essentially turns his wife into a commodity, thus exhibiting this so-called “market mentality.”
The practice of wife-selling dates to at least the Eighteenth Century, as John Ashton indicated that “a man might sell his wife to any bidder”[6] in a text about the time. Some scholars contest that the practice began in the Seventeenth Century as a way to end a marriage. In Casterbridge, the action of selling her also “demonstrated the essentially powerless position of wives in which law, religion and custom employed the language of ownership to represent the authority of adult males over women [among others].”[7] In other words, men could do anything to women because women were seen as nothing more than something that could be owned. Henchard could display “nothing but temper”[8] to Susan—meaning that Henchard constantly appeared to be irritated by the thought of Susan’s existence as his wife—and she could do nothing to stop it. However, by agreeing to go along with Newson, Susan breaks the abusive bond attaching her to Henchard—even if the sale was not bound by law. She could have chosen to stay with Henchard. Because she chose to “try [her] luck elsewhere”[9] with Newson, Susan has real power over Henchard in this instance.
Perhaps Hardy wanted to point out that if a woman was mistreated enough, she may get the “nerve” to leave her husband and start over with someone else. Susan’s departure left Henchard with a “stolid look of concern,”[10] meaning that he was unprepared for Susan accepting Newson’s offer, even though he appeared indifferent. This scene contains elements of female empowerment as Susan is the character with the power to reject or refuse to go with Newson. Henchard acts as the proprietor of his “goods” until those goods get a voice of their own, thus getting an opinion of their own.
The wife-selling scene paints Henchard as a man of extremes; he willingly sells his wife after four drinks to a stranger because he can and is unhappy with his relationship with her. After this, Henchard vows to “avoid all strong liquors for the space of twenty years to come, being a year for every year that [he has] lived.”[11] However, as well-intentioned as he is, his flaws are what make him a character that needs to be disposed of and a symbol for the old way of life.
One example of this is the fact that Henchard constantly disregards the wants, needs and desires of his constituents just to satisfy his own need. An example of this occurs as he ignores Susan’s wishes and opens her letter addressed to Elizabeth-Jane. This is also an example of chance playing a role in the lives of the characters. If Henchard refused to open the letter, he would not have found out that “‘Elizabeth-Jane was not [his] Elizabeth-Jane—the child who was in [Susan’s] arms when [Henchard sold her.]”[12]
Henchard is portrayed as a character whose “fortunes and misfortunes…are intimately related to the esteem in which he is held in [Casterbridge].”[13] This indicates that Henchard is an individual who has never left his hometown and that his very being is constructed by what he does—or does not do—in the town of Casterbridge. This essentially pigeonholes Henchard intellectually as his failure to explore puts him at a disadvantage, especially when it comes to wheat and crops. Henchard states that “[turning grown wheat into wholesome wheat] can’t be done,” indicating that Henchard is from a school of thought that does not believe in turning grown wheat nto wholesome wheat. This can be interpreted to mean that Henchard also is an individual that is somewhat intolerable to change. Things must go his way or no way. And even if they do not go his way, he will try his hardest to make them such. That said, Henchard attempts to live life as if it is not governed by chance.
A prime example of this occurs as he is courting Farfrae as an employee. At first, Farfrae rejects Henchard’s attempt to woo him into staying; Farfrae states that he “wishe[s] to leave early [the] next day”[14] for the “wheat-growing districts of the West.”[15] However, Henchard never gave up and eventually coerced the young Scot to stay. This illustrates Henchard’s relentlessness as he did not care about what Farfrae had planned or what he had to do to get Farfrae to stay; Henchard getting what he desired was all that mattered.
Casterbridge is—at first—portrayed as a “small country town…[that] lived by agriculture.”[16] This would indicate that Casterbridge is also a town that very few people leave from or enter. Therefore, it is safe to assume that most changes that occur in the town could only be “observed by details.”[17] So, it comes as no surprise that when Farfrae enters Casterbridge, he is. Norman Page argues that Farfrae is “the new man, who represents the younger generation knocking at the door [of the old social order].”[18] This is portrayed in the text by Farfrae being one of the only people in Casterbridge—at any point in the story—that has outside knowledge that can make harvesting and other things in Casterbridge more efficient. For instance, Farfrae is the only person that acknowledges that the new drill will “revolutionize sowing hereabout…[because it will cause] each grain [to go] straight to its intended place, and no one else at all!”[19] This is in direct contrast to Henchard’s statement about turning grown wheat into wholesome wheat. While Henchard is stubborn and stuck in his own, old ways of doing things, Farfrae is willing to embrace technological advances as a necessity to continue in life.
Michael J. Franklin argues that “[Casterbridge] is more concerned with the symbolic possibilities of renewal [as] the grain, like the past, cannot be entirely restored.”[20] Farfrae contends that “to fetch back [what has already passed] entirely is impossible” as it is against the laws of Nature. Perhaps Hardy is arguing that Nature only allows for forward motion and that all that stays within the restrictions of the past must be lost forever to proceed. Farfrae is the only one left alive—much less standing—after the culmination of his rivalry with Henchard. While Henchard finally accepts that he has no place left in the new world. In his will, he requests that “[he] be not bury’d in consecrated ground…no sexton be asked to toll the bell…no murners walk behind [him at his] funeral…[and] that no man remember [him].”[21] This means that the new man has won out against his old adversary. This conclusion for The Mayor of Casterbridge could be seen as Hardy’s way of saying that the old way of life must be altered—sometimes almost completely eradicated—for society to survive in a brave new world. Henchard had to resign himself to his forgotten fate for Casterbridge to continue its path of revival and renewal. This is because Henchard represents all that was negative and wrong with Casterbridge. He was unwilling to compromise. He was extreme, selfish, and not open to change.
The Mayor of Casterbridge was written as a piece that painstakingly described the rise and fall of a “man of character.” However, it can also be analyzed as a social history pertaining to the Industrial Revolution.
[1] R.M. Hartwell. “The Cause of the Industrial Revolution: An Essay in Methodology.” Economic History Review. Second Series, XVIII (1965). 78.
[2] Thomas Hardy and Keith Wilson and Patricia Ingham, eds.. The Mayor of Casterbridge. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003). 8. Note: All footnotes hereafter from this text are from this edition.
[3] Hardy 9.
[4] Edward Muir. Ritual in Early Modern Europe. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 42.
[5] Hardy 11.
[6] John Ashton. Old Times—A Picture of Social Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885). 342.
[7] Muir 42.
[8] Hardy 13.
[9] Hardy 13.
[10] Hardy 13.
[11] Hardy 18.
[12] Hardy 123
[13] Norman Page. Thomas Hardy. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977). 51.
[14] Hardy 47.
[15] Hardy 46.
[16] H.C. Darby. “The Regional Geography of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex.” Geographical Review. Volume 38, Number 3. July 1948. 434
[17] Hardy 19.
[18] Page 51.
[19] Hardy 168.
[20] Michael J. Franklin. “‘Market-Faces’ and Market-Forces: [Corn-] Factors in the Moral Economy of Casterbridge.” The Review of English Studies. Volume 59, Issue 240. 439
[21] Hardy 321
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