Elliot Ziwira @ The Book Store

Temper is a weakness in man which somehow clouds his judgment and is detrimental to progress; that also is true.

READING Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge” (1886) is quite revealing as it questions Man’s rather warped notion that he controls the world, which he believes to be a culmination of his architecture.

Instead he is just a mere fly in the intricate web of his existence, where a monstrous and invisible hand, with a single swift swish, has the capacity to phenomenally catapult him to dizzy heights or condemn him to the lowest ebb within the blink of an eye.

No matter how brilliant one’s decisions may be, one may not be in control of the outcomes which in a way are at the mercy of the invisible hand of fate. We really do not have power over our destiny as all our efforts and endeavours are also intertwined with those of others whose fall may shape our rise or vice versa. Time puts us all in an hour glass like drops of a strong perfume whose scent though powerful will not last forever as the vagaries of nature take their toll.

In “The Mayor of Casterbridge” (1886), Thomas Hardy tells the story of an ordinary man whose rise up the social, political and economic echelons is extraordinary; so is his subsequent fall from grace. The book chronicles the sad story of Michael Henchard, a hay trusser out of employment, who in a moment of drunken stupor sells his wife Susan and daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor at a fair in Weydon-Priors.

After a futile search for his family, he decides to go to Casterbridge where fortune smiles at him, and prosperity leaps onto his lap. Embracing his good fortune, he becomes the mayor and chief magistrate of the town. However, as fate would have it Susan and Elizabeth-Jane come back into his life, and events take a sad twist, as the good mayor tumbles from grace to disgrace.

His past comes back to hound him through the furmity woman whose potent liquor has played havoc with his sense of discernment in his moment of madness, who refuses to be presided over by a chief magistrate whose hands are no cleaner than hers.

After losing everything to his former friend, manager and confidant, Donald Farfrae, the tragic hero lives the town in the same way he came; unemployed, poor and disgraced. Unlike in the first instance, his departure is devoid of hope and illusion, and his subsequent death is of no consequence.

Michael Henchard is a temperamental man, whose ill-temper may have caused his downfall, it is true. Temper is a weakness in man which somehow clouds his judgment and is detrimental to progress; that also is true.

However, if all events in the protagonist’s life are to be put to scrutiny, it may be interesting to note that he really has no control over them. Prior to Henchard’s decision to sell his wife Hardy writes:

“The conversation took a high turn, as is often on such occasions, the ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the frustration of many a promising youth’s high aims and hopes, and the extinction of his energies, by an early imprudent marriage, was the theme.”

It may be true that the tragic hero is under the influence of alcohol, but the fact that he believes that his bad fortune has to do with his early marriage also stands true as the following suggests:

“I married at 18, like a fool that I was; and this is a consequence of it … I haven’t more than 15 shillings in the world, and yet I am a good experienced hand in my line. I’d challenge England to beat me in the fodder business; and if I were a free man again I’d be worth a thousand pound before I’d be done o’t.”

It is through fate that Henchard marries Susan, the “bad woman” that stalls his progress, and his destiny is to be a man of property and a mayor of Casterbridge, a town he never thought of visiting, so naturally his wife has to be out of the way. It has not been the first time that selling his wife crosses his mind as Susan tells us: “Michael, you have said this nonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it once too often, mind.”

When the auction begins everyone present takes it for a joke, raising bids until unbeknown to them all, a sailor who has just arrived five minutes to the stroke takes it up and pays the five guineas required and takes the lot much to the chagrin of all.

Had not the sailor arrived, then Henchard wouldn’t have sold his family, and his search for it the following day and months on wouldn’t have yielded nothing and the beckoning Casterbridge would have been disappointed.

It is worth noting that Susan is willing to go, as she affirms to the sale as Newson, the sailor puts a condition that she has to be willing. Her meekness and ignorance is also to blame as she believes that the sale is legally binding. The fact that Henchard takes an oath to desist from taking any “strong liquors for the space of 20 years to come, being a year for every year that I have lived,” prepares him for a new life. He could have made that decision earlier, so it seems.

Despite his temperamental nature, arrogance and impatience, the protagonist rises to become the most prominent man in Casterbridge, as a mayor, chief magistrate and a corn and hay merchant.

His star wanes not because of his temper but because of Time. The vagaries of nature affect his wheat which could have dragged his reputation into the slime, if Donald Farfrae had decided not to stop by.

Donald’s offer to help him to reclaim the bad wheat at no cost convinces the good mayor that he is the man that he has advertised for; provident sent; thus he convinces him to make a start in the town as his manager instead of proceeding to Bristol where he is headed. In the thick of things Susan and Elizabeth-Jane come back into his life after 18 years, and Henchard who has vowed not to marry again as long as she lives somewhere, remarries her. One cannot help sympathising with Susan and her daughter, as one cannot also fail to realise that through fate she is his downfall.

The allusion that she is the “imprudent”, “bad” wife hangs between Henchard’s sunshine and decline. Her death does not only rob the protagonist, whose star is on the wane, of a companion but it also exacerbates his suffering as he learns, through a letter by Susan’s hand, that the adorable Elizabeth-Jane is not his daughter but Newson’s, theirs having died three months after the auction.

As the limelight fades on Henchard, it glows on Farfrae, whose destiny is intertwined with his. Donald Farfrae, whom he convinces against his better judgment, to stay, becomes the darling of the town at his expense. Yes, he has taken him in as a friend and brother, and his dismissal of him in a moment of jealous madness, could not have been warranted, but the fact that he decides to be in the same business like his, is as callous as it is deceitful.

In the end Farfrae replaces him in all his former stations; taking his former sweetheart, Lucetta whom he is betrothed to marry, because he happens to be at her place when she is expecting Henchard; marries his Elizabeth-Jane after the death of Lucetta; also designed by fate, buys all his furniture and occupies the house of his prominence. All this happens within two years after the arrival of the three in Casterbridge-Farfrae, Susan and Elizabeth-Jane.

Henchard’s hasty decisions in buying could have put him under, but the invisible hand of fate plays him done as he lays his odds against the weather.
The appearance of the old furmity woman 20 years after his shameful deed at Weydon-Priors seals his fate. This happens because he is asked to stand in as chief magistrate by virtue of being the past immediate major as the mayor for the year; Dr Chalkfield is out of town. All this is beyond his control.

It is sad that a man’s worth can only be determined by what he is and not so much by what he does, as he strives to shape his destiny, which ironically he has no power over. Susan’s arrival in Casterbridge takes the allure from Henchard as the story becomes Farfrae’s which he dominates for the better part of it.

Henchard’s death in a desolate swamp, as poor as the day he was born, and his burial without honours, lays bare the futility of life’s toils and the finality and triumph of death.

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