The Mayor of Casterbridge is one of Thomas Hardy’s typical ‘Wessex novels’. This novel narrates a series of stories that happened after Henchard sold his wife when he was drunk at early 19 century England, Casterbridge. Combining with other Wessex novels we can summarize that Hardy believed that human fate was closely linked with character, it is “the novel of character and fate”. In traditional literature, a tragic hero is utterly vicious, but in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Michael Henchard is not the typical tragic man, he is a tragic hero. He was impulsive, arrogant and honest, ambitious at the same time. So the moral value supported his control over his wife, daughter and lover. By analyzing Henchard’ s defective character, we can safely come to the conclusion that Henchard is mainly responsible for his own tragedy which is inevitable for his own defective personalities. Apart from Henchard, Susan and Elisabeth are the female roles in the story who also have different fates because of their unique characters. For living environment, they were living in the same society when people have prejudices against women. For character, they were completly different. Compared with traditional woman, Susan, the mother, Hardy created a new model of female, Elisabeth, the daughter, who desired for freedom and explored for self-improvement. For their fates, Hardy believed that there was a kind of mysterious and unavoidable power that can change people’s life, and their different fates are the result of their different personalities. Susan as a tragic great mother, died miserably, and Elisabeth as an independent daughter, gained liberation and lived happily. This paper observes the human being from these two angles, the character and the fate, to deeply and systematically analyze the close relationship between fate and character in The Mayor of Casterbridge.
| Published in | International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 5, Issue 4) |
| DOI | 10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13 |
| Page(s) | 99-104 |
| Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Character, Fate, The Mayor of Casterbridge
| [1] | Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. New York: Bantam Books Press, 1912. |
| [2] | Beauvoir, de, Simon. The Second Sex. New York: Bantam Books Press, 1953. |
| [3] | Barnet, Sylvan and Hugo Bedan. Current Issues and Enduring Questions. St. Martin’s Press, 1987. |
| [4] | Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Beijing: Foreign language teaching & research press, 1996. |
| [5] | Merrily, Weisbord. The Love Queen of Malabar. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010. |
| [6] | Abravanel, G. Hardy’s transatlantic Wessex: contructing the local in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 39 (1): 97-117, 2005. |
| [7] | Beauvioir, S. de. The Second Sex. H. M. Parshley (trans). New Yourk: Bantam Books, 1953. |
| [8] | Gerdabi H. Characters' Names in the Shade of Literary Tendencies: An Onomastic Approach to Characters' Names in The Mayor of Casterbridge, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and The City of Glass [J]. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2017, 19. |
| [9] | Donnelly B. THOMAS HARDY'S “THE MOCK WIFE,” MAUMBURY, AND THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE [J]. Victorian Literature and Culture, 2016, 44 (1): 97-110. |
| [10] | Koehler K. 'Essentially separated in spite of all uniting factors': Thomas Hardy and the Community of Letter Writers [J]. Victorian Review, 2016, 41. |
| [11] | Keen S. Thomas Hardy, Time and Narrative: A Narratological Approach to his Novels by Ken Ireland (review) [J]. Victorian Studies, 2016, 58. |
APA Style
Qin Liu. (2017). Character and Fate in the Mayor of Casterbridge. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 5(4), 99-104. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13
ACS Style
Qin Liu. Character and Fate in the Mayor of Casterbridge. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2017, 5(4), 99-104. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13
AMA Style
Qin Liu. Character and Fate in the Mayor of Casterbridge. Int J Lang Linguist. 2017;5(4):99-104. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13
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Download@article{10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13,
author = {Qin Liu},
title = {Character and Fate in the Mayor of Casterbridge},
journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
volume = {5},
number = {4},
pages = {99-104},
doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13},
url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13},
eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20170504.13},
abstract = {The Mayor of Casterbridge is one of Thomas Hardy’s typical ‘Wessex novels’. This novel narrates a series of stories that happened after Henchard sold his wife when he was drunk at early 19 century England, Casterbridge. Combining with other Wessex novels we can summarize that Hardy believed that human fate was closely linked with character, it is “the novel of character and fate”. In traditional literature, a tragic hero is utterly vicious, but in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Michael Henchard is not the typical tragic man, he is a tragic hero. He was impulsive, arrogant and honest, ambitious at the same time. So the moral value supported his control over his wife, daughter and lover. By analyzing Henchard’ s defective character, we can safely come to the conclusion that Henchard is mainly responsible for his own tragedy which is inevitable for his own defective personalities. Apart from Henchard, Susan and Elisabeth are the female roles in the story who also have different fates because of their unique characters. For living environment, they were living in the same society when people have prejudices against women. For character, they were completly different. Compared with traditional woman, Susan, the mother, Hardy created a new model of female, Elisabeth, the daughter, who desired for freedom and explored for self-improvement. For their fates, Hardy believed that there was a kind of mysterious and unavoidable power that can change people’s life, and their different fates are the result of their different personalities. Susan as a tragic great mother, died miserably, and Elisabeth as an independent daughter, gained liberation and lived happily. This paper observes the human being from these two angles, the character and the fate, to deeply and systematically analyze the close relationship between fate and character in The Mayor of Casterbridge.},
year = {2017}
}
TY - JOUR T1 - Character and Fate in the Mayor of Casterbridge AU - Qin Liu Y1 - 2017/07/13 PY - 2017 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13 DO - 10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13 T2 - International Journal of Language and Linguistics JF - International Journal of Language and Linguistics JO - International Journal of Language and Linguistics SP - 99 EP - 104 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2330-0221 UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170504.13 AB - The Mayor of Casterbridge is one of Thomas Hardy’s typical ‘Wessex novels’. This novel narrates a series of stories that happened after Henchard sold his wife when he was drunk at early 19 century England, Casterbridge. Combining with other Wessex novels we can summarize that Hardy believed that human fate was closely linked with character, it is “the novel of character and fate”. In traditional literature, a tragic hero is utterly vicious, but in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Michael Henchard is not the typical tragic man, he is a tragic hero. He was impulsive, arrogant and honest, ambitious at the same time. So the moral value supported his control over his wife, daughter and lover. By analyzing Henchard’ s defective character, we can safely come to the conclusion that Henchard is mainly responsible for his own tragedy which is inevitable for his own defective personalities. Apart from Henchard, Susan and Elisabeth are the female roles in the story who also have different fates because of their unique characters. For living environment, they were living in the same society when people have prejudices against women. For character, they were completly different. Compared with traditional woman, Susan, the mother, Hardy created a new model of female, Elisabeth, the daughter, who desired for freedom and explored for self-improvement. For their fates, Hardy believed that there was a kind of mysterious and unavoidable power that can change people’s life, and their different fates are the result of their different personalities. Susan as a tragic great mother, died miserably, and Elisabeth as an independent daughter, gained liberation and lived happily. This paper observes the human being from these two angles, the character and the fate, to deeply and systematically analyze the close relationship between fate and character in The Mayor of Casterbridge. VL - 5 IS - 4 ER -
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