In Chapter I, after selling his wife and daughter to a sailor for five guineas, Michael Henchard steps out of the furmity-merchant’s tent and considers the world described above. Here, Hardy employs his talent for description that serves to make the physical world of the characters real and accessible, while carrying a symbolic meaning that resonates with the larger themes of the work as a whole. First, he evokes beautifully the natural world of Weydon-Priors: the horses, the surrounding woods, the “rosy cloud[s]” at sunset. With the patient horses that rub their necks lovingly and stand as a counterpoint to Henchard’s patently unloving treatment of his wife, the passage departs from strict realism and veers toward symbolism. By contrasting the human and natural worlds in this way and determining that “all terrestrial conditions were intermittent,” that love and hate, kindness and cruelty are in constant flux, Hardy effectively sets the stage for his drama.

Several times throughout the novel, Hardy evokes details of a kind of life that was becoming extinct even as he described it. Casterbridge is a town situated between two times: the age of simple, agricultural England and the epoch of modern, industrialized England. The drama enacted between Henchard and Farfrae is, in part, the conflict between tradition and innovation, between the past and the future. Given enough time, the strongest traditions will fade as surely as memories of the past. Thus, Hardy plays the part of the amateur anthropologist, recalling rather fondly the details of rural living that were eclipsed by the advent of modern technologies. In Chapter XVI, he colorfully describes the day of celebration that Henchard plans. It is a world of simple pleasures—smoked hams and local cheeses—a world in which neighbors have not yet succumbed to the brutal competitiveness of industrial capitalism but instead share ownership of livestock. It is essentially a romantic and nostalgic view of a world that, even during Hardy’s time, no longer existed. Nevertheless, Hardy cannot resist including details that confirm his understanding of the brutality of the universe, as in the cruelty inherent in such pastimes as “boxing, wrestling, and drawing blood generally.”

This passage from Chapter XVII relates to Farfrae’s enormous business success after Henchard requests that he leave his employment and stop courting Elizabeth-Jane. The phrase “Character is Fate,” from Novalis, an eighteenth-century German novelist and poet, offers us a context for understanding much of Henchard’s ensuing struggle. Henchard blames much of the suffering he endures on cruel forces that are bent on human destruction. In Chapter XVII, however, Hardy reminds the reader that Henchard has much to do with his own downfall. In the same chapter, we read that “there was still the same unruly volcanic stuff beneath the rind of Michael Henchard as when he had sold his wife at Weydon Fair.” This “volcanic stuff” refers to Henchard’s passionate disposition. Whatever he feels—be it love, hate, desire, or contempt—he feels it overpoweringly. The same holds true for his guilt over selling Susan, which tracks him from Weydon-Priors to Casterbridge, where it overshadows his life for twenty years. His desire to right these past wrongs and his conviction that he deserves to suffer for them account for his suffering as much as any malignant force of the universe.

In his introduction to Modern Critical Interpretations: Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, Harold Bloom cites the above passage, taken from the novel’s final chapter, as the most powerful and eloquent of all of Hardy’s writing. Indeed, there is a remarkable power and beauty in the simplicity of these lines. Henchard’s will is the tragic last statement of a tragic man whose unremitting doubts regarding his life’s worth not only lead to his death but also follow him there. From the moment Henchard sells his wife at the Weydon fair, he feels a keen anxiety over the value of his name. He pledges a twenty-one-year reprieve from alcohol and sets himself on a course that delivers him to the most honored business and social offices of a small country town. Unsatisfied with this seeming reformation of himself, however, he continues to let his guilt eat away at him and eventually relinquishes the name and reputation he has built for himself. His last wish, to be allowed to die anonymously and to go unremembered, is the ultimate gesture of a man who craves good repute but doubts his own worth.

These lines make up the final passage of the novel and provide a thoughtful, balanced summary of its proceedings. Elizabeth-Jane decides to honor Henchard’s last wishes as best she can. She does not mourn him or plant flowers on his grave. She does, however, come close to honoring him inwardly, when she reflects here on the unfair distribution of happiness, which she considers the most valuable human currency. Her reflection mitigates Henchard’s obsession with the worth of his name and reputation, for in the face of such a “sorry world,” all honor seems “doubtful.” But it also grants the fallen mayor a quiet, unassuming kind of forgiveness. She certainly has Henchard in mind when she thinks of the many people who “deserved much more” out of life. Indeed, given that the world emerges as “a general drama of pain,” both we and Elizabeth-Jane begin to understand better Henchard’s disastrous mistakes and missteps. Even his lie regarding Newson becomes less grievous when we consider that he meant only to secure a happiness that had, for so many years, eluded him. In such a bleak world, the course of Henchard’s life seems not to merit punishment so much as it does pity.