The Mayor of Casterbridge :: Free Essays Online

The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge, which was subtitled The Life and Death of a Man of Character, was write by Thomas Hardy. The books main focus is the spiritual and material career of Micheal Henchard, whose governing inclinations are tragically at war with each other (Penguin Classics, Blurb). Henchard, in a fit of drunkenness, has decided to sell his wife and daughter at a fair. Afterwards, Henchard plumps a wealthy man and the mayor of the townspeople Casterbridge. His wife and child seek him out years later. In the end, it is neither his supposed child, Elizebeth-Jane, nor his wife, Susan, who ruins him but his own self-destructive nature. The novel was published serially in the Graphic and in Harpers Weekly. The Graphic was the English version and Harpers Weekly was the American version. They ran concurrently over the nineteen-week period from January endorse to May fifteenth in the year of 1886. There were no major differences bet ween the serial versions except that for reasons of space Harpers Weekly omitted almost passages which were restored in later editions (Norton Critical Edition, xiii). There were three hundred changes from the manuscript. Essentially, they were only minor local improvements. For example, in the Graphic the slang words damn it become hang it. It appears that the American Harpers Weekly was not so worried about the novels usage of inappropriate language. There were several(a) cancelled plotlines for The Mayor of Casterbridge. The notes or plans Hardy had made for the novel before he began writing have not survived (Norton Critical Edition, xiii). Therefore, there is a considerable interest in the manuscript as evidence of these ever-changing plotlines. The Norton Critical Editon of the novel says that through the various plotlines they deducted that as Hardy began writing, large areas of the action were distillery to be decided at one stage there were two be two daught ers, one staying with Henchard, the other going with Susan and Newson (xiii). Furthermore, the Elizebeth-Jane of the opening chapters was not to die, so the figure we meet in the body of the novel was to be Henchards real daughter (xiii). Hardys reasoning for the many plot changes was to accord the interest of the novel more evenly (xiii).