Mayor of Casterbridge (Hardy, 1886)

Thomas Hardy. The Mayor of Casterbridge. Pub. 1886. Ed. Phillip Mallett. New York: Norton, 2001.

• Serialized in the Graphic and Harper's Weekly 2 Jan - 15 May 1886, subsequently pub 2 vol by Smith, Elder
• good for: coincidence and realism (i.e., Susan and E-J returning from Canada, Newson not being dead); entanglement of history, memory, deep time, and mysticism at The Ring; Skimmington ride

Reading Notes

• Basic plot (paraphrased from Sutherland): Henchard gets drunk and sells Susan to Newson, a sailor. 18 yrs later, Susan and E-J return and Henchard wants to remarry but, on Susan's death, it's revealed E-J is Newson's daughter. Farfrae, formerly Henchard's manager, becomes H's rival and subsequently marries E-J. "Through the treachery of a former employee called Jopp, Henchard's sexual indiscretions become common knowledge, and the dregs of Casterbridge mount a mocking parade ('skimmity ride') with effigies of the adulterous pair, the humiliation of which kills Lucetta." Henchard relapses into drunkenness, Newson returns and is reconciled with E-J, and Henchard dies a penniless vagrant on Egdon Heath.
• 42 history, memory (condensing the former), aestheticization (but also perhaps Messianic time):

'True,' said Buzzford, the dealer, looking at the grain of the table. 'Casterbridge is an old, hoary place o' wickedness, by all account. 'Tis recorded in history that we rebelled against the King one or two hundred years ago, in the time of the Romans [Catholics?], and that lots of us was hanged on Gallows Hill, and quartered, and our different jints sent across the country like butcher's meat; and for my part I can well believe it.'

• 48 Casterbridge description as Elizabeth Jane walks up the street: a passage rich in Roland Barthes' notations: "Hence, through the long, straight entrance passages tthus enclosed could be seen, as through tunnels, the mossy gardens at the back, glowing with nasturtiums, fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, 'bloody warrriors' [wallflowers], snap-dragons, and dahlias, this floral blaze being backed by crusted grey stone-work remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than the venerable one visible in the street."
• 55 Henchard and Susan meet again for the first time at The Ring - deep time, history, and the metaphysical (they also plan to enact a "marriage" plot between them)
• 89

But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not be inaptly described as Faust has been described - as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide them on their way.

• 96 after letter from Susan revealing Elizabeth is not really his daughter: "Her husband regarded the paper as if it were a window-pane through which he saw for miles. His lip twitched, and he seemed to compress his frame, as if to bear better. His usual habit was not to consider whether destiny were hard upon him or not -- the shape of his ideas in cases of affliction being simply a moody 'I am to suffer, I perceive.' 'This much scourging, then, is for me.' But now through his passionate head there stormed this thought - that the blasting disclosure was what he deserved."

Class Notes

• "the story of a man of character:" character as fate (89)
  • Henchard a strong but not a good character
    • his physicality vs cerebral, cautious Farfrae
• ch. 44 omitted in UK serialization at first (when Henchard leaves)
• action as a means for developing character (Aristotelian)
  • credible character more impt than a credible plot
  • criticized for coincidences (like Dickens), but all these coincidences are realistic because they stem from Henchard's character
  • recognition scenes key for tragedy (again, Aristotelian -- see 96)
• Hardy verges on naturalism (the baser side of human nature: sex, crime)
  • English don't have a strong tradition of this vs. the French
  • a retrospective rather than an historical novel, perhaps -- both preserving the transient
  • effects of social convention on human subjectivity (law, convention determining people's possibilities)
• the lack of emotional mobility the women experience vs the men (volatility)
• economy: selling Susan and buying back Elizabeth Jane
  • economic exchange having more import than marriage vow
  • how much money means in this world
• Henchard: fetishistic, superstitious instead of genuinely religious
• mystical, metaphysical elements: the seers, prophetic, Farfrae's Midas touch, E-J being able to "see" where Lucetta has been
  • E-J's attunement, intuition, her hyper-awareness and need for "attainment"
  • double-vision: ordinary and mystical (The Ring)
  • Henchard not superstitious enough, his rashness, not a clean line that "new ways are good"
  • Farfrae's receptivenesss and Henchard's dogmatism (the seed-sorted in Ch 24)
• Henchard and Lucetta both weighted by past indiscretion coming to bear on present conduct
• Henchard feels obligated to the past while Lucetta wants to escape it
• This novel's Lucetta-Henchard plot was a fairly explicit discussion of "life" (sex) for 1880s England (The Woodlanders (Thomas Hardy, 1887) even more so, I think)
  • "Candour in English Fiction" (compare to Gissing's attitudes)
  • the indiscretion of two letting letters float around
  • "it was a dalliance for me, it ruined her" - the disproportionate weight of social onus
  • still, gesturing toward the difficulty of writing frankly about sex
    • hard to say what's Hardy copping out and what's him bowing to commercial pressures
• Coincidence and realism - how is this problematic
  • Levine: Hardy's awareness of the artifice of the form - it's on purpose
    • the paradox of realism: the claim to be real exists because it's a fictional convention ("overturning conventions")
  • trying to use language to get beyond language and convention to get beyond convention
• Hardy foregrounds the text's artifice while still making claims to realism
  • Henchard doesn't see them as coincidences (psychological realism)
  • Hardy breaking conventional narrative form/content: "the struggle to avoid the inevitable conventionality of language in pursuit of the unattainable, unmediated reality" (Levine 617)
  • Widening the historical sense of realism
  • coincidence disrupting resolution rather than effecting it (as in Dickens)
  • the real vs realism
  • character being explored through the mechanism of plot
    • Henchard changing place with everyone in the novel, encompassing everyone -- the Mayor in all of these different subject positions
• toward the end, E-J's consciousness receding from the novel, seeing less inside her head
  • wedding: opaque, when she's in the act of becoming the most socially legible
  • depth constructed by being shut out of her mind: E-J says nothing (vs Farfrae saying something inadequate)
  • we do end up in her head though: E-J's "mechanical" promise to Henchard (235), then "machinery of the gods" 241 -- fatalism
• realism and moments of retreat from narration/description, from diegesis - maintaining something generically with realism, avoiding sensational/conventional extremes
  • sensation fiction (which is about moral outrage for Victorians)
• Henchard and tragedy
  • a tragic hero's ambition
  • tragic flaw (?): his changability, inability to regulate emotion
  • he never interprets events correctly, or people like Farfrae
• Skimmington ride paralleling wife sale (196ff) --
  • and the reversal of the royal procession (chronicle vs social history, reclamation vs authority)
  • violent experience of past in present (though still mediated, the novelist has to be more Farfrae-like)
  • historically the actual peoiple were tied to horses: again the doubling and mediation of history
  • compare to the Carmagnole in Tale of Two Cities (1859)
• Henchard's will
  • ties to "Are you Digging at my Grave"
  • she does just what is asked - willingly embraces nullification
  • wouldn't he have changed his mind? But death prevents him -- all or nothing
  • it is kind of self-aggrandizing even in willing himself out of existence
    • his will is what we begin and end with
    • he wants to erase himself, but can't -- he writes this will and E-J gets it (paradox of the will)