Thomas Hardy: the Mayor of Casterbridge

📖 The Scoop

Set in the fictional town of Casterbridge, "The Mayor of Casterbridge" is Thomas Hardy's tragic story of Michael Henchard who over indulges in alcohol at a county fair and decides to auction off his wife and daughter to a sailor. When he recovers his sobriety Mr. Henchard realizes his mistake but it is too late to get his family back. Devastated he decides not to touch alcohol again for the next twenty-one years. The novel advances eighteen years to find the teetotaling Henchard as "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and a successful grain merchant. When his wife and daughter return to town a precipitous decline in Henchard's fortune is set in motion. In the end, Michael Henchard 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." A Faustian striver who is ambitious in business as a corn chandler, he becomes mayor but loses the three women who have meant most to him in life. Henchard dies in an obscure hut, desiring to be completely forgotten by the world. As with all of Thomas 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. This novel is one you should read and enjoy.

Genre: Fiction / General (fancy, right?)