Product Description

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18097 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From the Back Cover
Under the powerful influence of the rum furmity, Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser by trade, sells his wife susan and their child Elizabeth-Jane to Newson, a sailor, for five guineaus.

Years later, Susan, now a widow, arrives in Casterbridge to seek her legal husband. To their surprise, Henchard is now the Mayor of Casterbridge and following the sale of his wife, took a twenty-one-year vow not to drink, out of shame. Henchard remarries Susan and as Elizabeth-Jane believes herself to be Newson's daughter, he adopts her as his own. But he cannot evade his destiny by such measures, for his past refuses to be buried. Fate contrives for him to be punished for the recklessness of his younger days.

In this powerful depiction of a man who overreaches himself, Hardy once again show his acute psycological grasp and his deep-seated knowledge of mid-nineteenth century Dorset.

Customer Reviews

Surely one of the best tragedies in the English language!
From the atmospheric opening "One evening of late summer", this novel captivates the reader with its tale of the tragedy of Henchard. As is typical of Hardy's writing, a minor character is responsible for a major part of the plot. In this case, it is the furmity woman who puts grog in Henchard's broth; eventually resulting in him selling his wife and daughter to a sailor. After initial success in his life, Henchard fails in business and is overtaken by his young apprentice, Farfrae.

Although the novel is chiefly about the failure of Henchard's life, it could also be seen as an allegory for modern life, suggesting that success will only come to those who keep up to date with developments.

Henchard, Titan with feet of clay.
Henchard, the Colossus that dominates the town of Casterbridge is a titan with feet of clay.The 'respectable', feared Mayor and magistrate who judges his peers and minnions with a rough arcadian justice cannot escape the harpy that is fate pursuing him. Though he may try to make amends and regret the heartless, brutal recklessness of his youth, fate is slowly bringing the pieces of his denouncement together. He may pose as a modern man but beneath this veneer, the superstitious,unschooled rural yeoman remains - resorting to soothsayers in a moment of weakness,unable to muster the diplomatic skills of his rivals and tempted by grog and violence. The humulity and honesty with which he bears his final fate and his herculean attempts to discipline himself bear witness to a tortured soul, driven finally usunder by his contrary urges of passion and dimly observed Christianity ethics. In the end he is as a pathetic figure, pathetic as his wedding gift, a man who is unable to rise beyond his nature and doomed by fate to bitter regret.

Accessible Victorian Soap Opera
When it comes to "classics" of Victorian literature, this is certainly much more readable than most, and while it presents some memorable characters, and plenty of themes worthy of high-school English essays, it's hard to take it very seriously in many ways. Like many novels of the era, Hardy's was first published in a serial format in an illustrated magazine (The Graphic), and then collected as a book. This, no doubt, accounts for why so many chapters end with a spectacular revelation or plot twist. It also explains why it often comes across as little more than a literate soap opera, chock to the brim with misunderstandings, coincidences, and the mighty hand of fate. Indeed, while many seem content to classify it as a tear-inducing tragedy, I found it to be far too calculated and melodramatic to truly qualify as tragedy.

There is no doubt that the prologue chapter is a masterpiece: a poor family traveling through rural Wessex stops for dinner at a small hamlet. There, young husband and father Michael Henchard gets drunk on rum and grows belligerent, eventually going so far as to sell his wife and child to a passing sailor. The next chapter leaps ahead almost twenty years, where we find that Henchard has pulled himself together to become a repentant and prosperous hay merchant and mayor. He hires a passing Scotsman to become his right-hand man-just the first of several characters that will come to the small town of Casterbridge and bring change. Soon, as in a good film noir, Henchard's past misdeeds come back to disrupt his position.

Henchard is certainly one of the great flawed characters of literature, given to fiery bursts of temper and bullheadedness, but also surprising moments of compassion, and a running penchant for being his own harshest critic. He does much throughout the story that is is to be condemned, and yet he remains a sympathetic and pathetic characters, one never able to escape his nature. Some have compared his relationship to the Scotsman as that of Saul to David, but this is a facile parallel that only works in the broadest sense. It's more satisfying to view Henchard as representing the early Romantic era of Victorianism, with the emphasis on brute force, emotion, and becoming self-made through hard work-in contrast to the Scotsman, who represents the coming Industrial era, with the emphasis on intellect and ingenuity.

So, there's clearly plenty food for thought in the book, but that doesn't change the fact that it's built on the wildest coincidences, contrivances, and misunderstandings. The other major flaw in the book is the women, who are passive tokens with zero depth. They exist in the book as objects whose possession represents triumph or failure, but rarely engineer their own fate. While this is certainly in keeping with the position of women at the time, it gets old quick when read from the mode. All in all, it sounds like the most accessible of Hardy's work, and even the most impatient reader is unlikely to get bogged down. For those who still can't be bothered, there was a nice adaptation for British TV that came out in 2003 and a silent version that was done back in 1922.