Oops, I Sold My Wife!!

Well, Michael Henchard is dead at long last. In order to properly discuss the themes of this novel, I think it's necessary to provide a summary that is not necessarily extremely short. (To motivate you to actually read it, see if you can pick up on any similarities in Henchard's life and death and a discussion we had in class on Thursday....) Things really turned up in this last quarter of reading. For one, Donald's wife, Lucetta (the one Michael had a semi-scandalous romantic past with), ends up dying from shame when her secret past with Henchard is revealed by a sort of public exhibition of a woman's infidelity (past or present, apparently) involving effigies, affectionately called by the locals a "skimmity ride." You'll notice the accuracy of my prediction in my last blog post. Donald did indeed face some sort of reckoning (the public shaming and death of his wife). He also overcame it pretty fast, as I predicted, because soon after Lucetta's de...

If being the mayor of Casterbridge is equal to qualifying for the Olympic figure skating team, then Donald Farfrae is Nancy Kerrigan and Michael Henchard is Tonya Harding. That's not to say that Henchard's friend has hired bumbling criminals to smash in Farfrae's knee (at least not yet). I do, however, see some similar tension between these two sets of rivals. Tonya Harding was an underdog; raised in a poor family that was not a representation of what figure skating judges wanted their winners to embody, with a troubled past and present. Michael Henchard is a character with a just as troubled past who, like Tonya, tries to redeem himself in the eyes of society with only short-lived success. Also like Tonya, he has some raw talent that is eventually sabotaged by his past choices.  Nancy Kerrigan was America's sweetheart; a perfect representation of what the country wanted to believe it was. Donald Farfrae is a charming Scottsman who easily worms his way into the...

When I began forcing my friend Cooper to agree to read a Thomas Hardy book with me, I believe his exact reaction was "Ullchgghh." You see, someone had once told Cooper that Hardy specialized in depressive and tragic turns of event. This person wasn't wrong, really, because it is definitely true that tragedy has had (and Hardy's often fatalistic and foreboding tone promises that it will continue to have) a major presence in the novel. However, I do think this evaluation is shallow, as it is definitely missing an important facet of the tragedies Hardy chooses to incorporate. Though he certainly does torture his characters (see Tess of the D'Urbervilles , whose title character is ' a victim of her own provocative beauty '), the sadness the characters experience is still  evocative of beautiful, tender feelings; perhaps because of the way they, and many other elements of the novel, are exaggerated to a point just shy of surrealism. Hardy cultivates scene...

Michael Henchard (also known as the Mayor of Casterbridge) Michael Henchard is a pretty ordinary guy. He's a hay trusser, which means he ties hay into bundles for a living. He's described as swarthy and fine figured, and has a wife named Susan and a newborn daughter named Elizabeth-Jane. He's also a bit of a drunkard, which leads him into a little bit of trouble. You see, he sells his wife. The reader when Henchard sells his wife It's not really a big deal to him, in the moment, because Susan has been annoying him, and this sailor offers him 5 guineas, which translates to about 700 current US dollars. The going price for mail order brides these days is $1,000 to $15,000 (according to BroBible.com ). Apparently, the sailor got a pretty good deal. The next morning, Michael deeply regrets this decision and swears off drinking for the next twenty-one years. Surprisingly, he's been pretty successful in this so far! We catch up with him nineteen years later, and h...