The Mayor of Casterbridge is the third Thomas Hardy novel I've read, the first two being Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd. Although I enjoyed Mayor slightly more than the other two, it seems that books by Hardy can never quite rise above a 3 star rating - he sits right in the middle of the classics as average. There is something about Hardy's general long-windedness and tediously long portraits of the Wessex landscape that puts me off, despite there being enjoyable and engaging stories underneath. The Mayor of Casterbridge is refreshing in that Hardy's descriptions are at their most sparing, there's no religious philosophising, and the narrative moves along at a brisk pace. I was able to read large chunks of the story in single sittings, something previously unheard of, and yet, it was this very lightness of tone that prevented the story from rising to a 4 star rating. It felt just a little too much like Victorian melodrama with a long string of coincidental events and convenient chance meetings.
The novel starts with Michael Henchard, a young hay trusser, who in a fit of drunkenness, sells his wife and baby daughter to a passing sailor for five guineas at a country fair. Eighteen years later, Henchard has become a respectable and affluent mayor of Casterbridge, his past transgression weighing heavily on his conscience. What follows is a dizzying series of reappearances and revelations concerning the characters in Henchard's life, along with a gradual descent into poverty and disrepute as his career, home, and prospective wife are usurped by Donald Farfrae, a former friend and employee turned rival. Although Mayor's female protagonist, Elizabeth-Jane, is less of a tragic figure than Tess, she nonetheless fills the role of the long suffering woman heaped with an unnaturally large amount of misfortunes. Whenever Thomas Hardy's name comes up, I can never stop Schubert's 'Standchen' from Schwanengesang playing in my head, such is the over the top pathos he goes in for.
Rating: 3/5
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