The Most Admirable Character in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge

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The Most Admirable Character in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge Introduction - Thomas Hardy Thomas HardyHardy was born in Higher Bockhampton, Dorsetshire, June 2, 1840, and educated in local schools and later privately. His father, a stonemason, apprenticed him early to a local architect engaged in restoring old churches. From 1862 to 1867 Hardy worked for an architect in London and later continued to practice architecture, despite ill health, in Dorset. Meanwhile, he was writing poetry with little success. He then turned to novels as more salable, and by 1874 he was able to support himself by writing. This is also the year that Hardy married his first wife, Emma Gifford. Their marriage lasted until her death in 1912, which prompted Hardy to write his collection of poems called Veteris Vestigiae Flammae (Vestiges of an Old Flame). These poems are some of Hardy's finest and describe their meeting and his subsequent loss. In 1914 Florence Dugdale became Hardy's second wife and she wrote his biography after he died in Dorchester, on January 11, 1928. The Mayor of Casterbridge ========================= The Mayor of Casterbridge was written by Hardy in 1886, and uses many fictional devices such as Pathetic fallacy to bring out the emotions of his characters. In many ways this is a tragedy, with Michael Henchard as our 'Macbeth', but also flawed by fate and disasters beyond his control. As with many other tragedies, the reader is made to feel sympathetic for the protagonist, but in the end, Henchard, of course, dies. Henchard Michael Henchard is the first character that we meet in the Mayor of Casterbridge. We see him to be a rash, volatile young man with a dangerous drink habit. He does whatever he thinks of on the impulse, and then regrets it later. Take the first chapter, for example. After eating/drinking some 'furmity' (a sort of broth of soup and sometimes alcohol) he decides to sell his wife. "This woman is no good to me," he says, showing

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