THE PLOT

A bald synopsis of the plot of The Mayor of Casterbridge might surprise us if we had read only Hardy's other novels. We might well feel less attracted to this novel than to the others. After all, if we have been impressed by Hardy's treatment of the land and landscape of Wessex and by his presentation of the ways of love (the two elements I have most stressed in the preceding chapters), we may well wonder where these elements have disappeared to in Henchard's story.

Young Henchard, depressed and drunk and out of work, sells his wife at a country fair, and with her their baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane. Sober the next morning, he searches for her but cannot find her; he vows to abstain from drink for twenty-one years and goes to find work in Casterbridge. Twenty years later his wife, who thinks that her purchaser, the sailor Newson, is drowned, reappears with the grown-up Elizabeth-Jane. Out of a sense of duty and reparation Henchard, now mayor of Casterbridge and a well-to-do corn merchant, remarries his wife, who later dies. Another woman, one Lucetta, whom Henchard has in some way compromised when they were together in Jersey, arrives in Casterbridge and, in her turn, claims reparation in the shape of marriage from the mayor. But before he can take any steps in this direction Lucetta has fallen in love with Donald Farfrae. Farfrae is a Scotsman who, by accident more than by design on his own part, has become Henchard's manager and assistant in his corn business. Henchard and he have quarrelled, and he has set up on his own account.