The Mayor of Casterbridge
Get this SparkNote to go!
Suggestions for Further Reading
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
Casagrande, Peter J. Unity in Hardy’s Novels: Repetitive Symmetries. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1982.
Daleski, H. M. Thomas Hardy and the Paradoxes of Love. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
Edwards, Duane D. “The Mayor of Casterbridge as Aeschylean Tragedy,” Studies in the Novel. 4 (1972): 608–618.
Guerard, Albert J. Thomas Hardy: The Novels and Stories. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1949.
Howe, Irving. Thomas Hardy. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1966.
Kramer, Dale. “Character and the Cycle of Change in The Mayor of Casterbridge,” in Tennessee Studies in Literature, vol. 16 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971). 111–120.
Lerner, Laurence. Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge: Tragedy or Social History. London: Sussex University Press, 1975.
Mickelson, Anne Z. Thomas Hardy’s Women and Men: The Defeat of Nature. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1976.
Paterson, John. “The Mayor of Casterbridge as Tragedy,” Victorian Studies 3 (1959): 151–172.
Taft, Michael. “Hardy’s Manipulation of Folklore and Literary Imagination: The Case of the Wife Sale in The Mayor of Casterbridge.” Studies in the Novel 13 (1981): 399–407.
Characters
by atleastimnotaprincess, March 23, 2013
All of the characters (besides the troubled Henchard) are almost completely shallow and almost petty. Isn't it odd how Frafaer had no difficulty getting back together with Elizabeth-Jane after he hurt her so terribly by going for Lucetta? And how Lucetta practically refuses to own up to her own actions by claiming it was a misfortune she fell into? Although it is almost annoying how Henchard never learns from his mistakes, he truly does seem like the only "deep" character in this book.
