Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge

I liked this book. I liked it mostly because of the way Hardy depicts the times and places of the novel. I really don't find his characters or their behaviours believable. An earlier comment here likens it to a modern-day soap opera and I have to agree. It is contrived. I know novels have to be invented and they are fictional but this one in particular I find to be almost too contrived to give it the more serious consideration that it deserves for its strengths. I find it a naive melodrama. It reminds me of the types of stories used in the early days of film. <br>There are circumstances, like the sale of Susan, that would at first seem unbelievable but when you consider the times and the proximity to the legality of slavery are beleivable. What do I find unblievable then? I find that everyone was always in the right place at the right time. It is just too implausible that everyone would find out what they needed to know by overhearing, that people would die or disappear when the story-line required it etc. For instance Susan Henchard was listening or evesdropping at the hotel right when Henchard admitted to Farfrae that he was ashamed of his past drunken behaviour, ie. when he sold Susan to Newson. Also Elizabeth-Jane was listening at the window exactly when Henchard relayed to Farfrae his strong desire that Farfrae remain in Casterbridge. This was so that she would see how easily Henchard took a liking to a stranger so that her and her mother would have the courage to approach him. <br>I found these things throughout - unbelievable not because of each instance because of the amount of them in total. <br>But I still liked reading it although I don't like it as much as I do more believable works.

I read a quote from Thomas Hardy himself in a book once that said that he only believed that he should tell a story if it was worth telling. He said that people won't read normal things because they are not interesting but it's the out-of-the-ordinary things that make it happen.

In the preface to one of his novels Hardy has said--" A novel is an impression, not argument. A tale-teller writes down how the things of the world strike him without any intentions whatever." Thus though Hardy is concerned with recording his impression of life, as it presented itself to his sensibilities, without any preconceived philosophical view of life, yet as we read the novels of Hardy, we find that a definite view of life stands out prominantly from the pages of his novels. The truth is that Hardy is a philosophical novelist, a deep thinker on life. That is why in the pictures of the men and women that he he has drawn in his major novels, there is always implied a definite philosophy of life. This is Hardy's main contributuin to the development of the novel and it is this which makes for the enduring charms of Hardy's novel to many readers.

I think with Hardy what matters is not so much the plot as the characters, the emotional significance of events and the local atmosphere that Hardy creates. The sale of Susan is just a device that Hardy creates to heighten the dramatic effect. But it could easily have been abandonment of Susan without changing the essence.