He has built a successful life to outward appearances but inside he is tormented, having imprisoned himself within a fortress of deceit and appalling behaviour. Whilst travelling to Jersey on business, Henchard begins a sexual relationship with Lucetta but effectively abandons her on his return to Casterbridge. Henchard allows people to think that Susan is dead. Henchard regrets this the next morning and swears to remain sober for the next 21 years. Henchard becomes a successful and well-respected grain merchant known for his sobriety and violent temper. The troubled Michael Henchard is looking for work but gets drunk and auctions off his wife, Susan, and baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to a sailor, Mr Newson, for five guineas. ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ begins at a country fair outside Casterbridge. They struggle against prejudice and bigotry, fighting against their passions and social circumstances.
Soon after, he married his secretary, Florence Dugdale, 39 years his junior, (shades of Dostoevsky here) but Emma remained his lifelong passion and obsession. After her death in 1912, Hardy fell into a trauma. In the same year, he married Emma Gifford, she was his great love and although they became estranged later, she remained his own tragic passion. He was acutely aware of class division and found London society, particularly the sense of his own social inferiority, intolerable. It was not until the success of ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ in 1874, that he was able to give up architecture and return to the West Country to write full time. He studied architecture at Kings College London. His father was a stonemason and his mother, who was well-read, ensured that he had a good education in Dorchester schools. Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and died there in 1928. It has a mystical and deeply private beauty and there is a sense that things are going on, and have been doing so for many centuries, hidden things that are too private to talk about. Although I was born in Hampshire, the government changed the county boundaries and consequently I spent my youth in Dorset. The landscape is the most intimate in the country, full of natural amphitheatres, secret valleys and ancient earthworks. Casterbridge is, of course, Hardy’s name for Dorchester. I’ve just finished reading The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.
Reading Published 02-05 at No Comments The Dorset landscape has a mystical and deeply private beauty there is a sense that things are going on, and have been doing so for many centuries, hidden things that are too private to talk about.
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