Novel: The Mayor of Casterbridge

Overview
Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge traces the rise and fall of Michael Henchard, a man defined by a single rash act and a lifetime of remorse. Set in the rural West Country town of Casterbridge, the novel examines how character, chance and past deeds converge to shape destiny. Hardy crafts a tragedy of ordinary people whose choices and misunderstandings have poignantly large consequences.
The narrative moves between public success and private catastrophe, following Henchard from proud, impulsive youth to wealthy, respected civic leader and finally to isolation and decline. Interwoven are the lives of those closest to him, his abandoned wife and daughter, a genial rival, and a woman whose presence exposes his vulnerabilities, so that personal failings become deeply social and moral reckonings.

Plot
As a young man at a country fair, Michael Henchard, drunk and incensed, sells his wife, Susan, and their infant daughter for a handful of guineas. Stricken with remorse, he vows temperance and begins a relentless ascent: a skilful trader, he becomes prosperous and is elected mayor of Casterbridge. Years later, Susan and the now-grown Elizabeth-Jane return to the town, believing Susan's seafaring purchaser to have been lost; their reappearance forces Henchard to confront the consequences of his earlier crime.
Henchard takes Elizabeth-Jane under his care, attempting to make amends while hiding the truth of her parentage and his own guilt. Into this tense moral landscape arrives Donald Farfrae, a young Scotsman whose kindness and business acumen win the town and Henchard's trust. When Lucetta Templeman, a woman with a complicated past, becomes involved with both men, jealousy and misjudgment escalate. Henchard's pride, envy and a series of ill-considered decisions erode his fortunes, producing a slow, inexorable downfall that leaves him bereft and penitent.

Main characters
Michael Henchard is impetuous, proud and capable of deep feeling; his one reckless act haunts every subsequent choice. Elizabeth-Jane grows into a figure of quiet goodness, providing the moral counterpoint to Henchard's passionate volatility. Susan, the abandoned wife, embodies the novel's themes of endurance and the tangled consequences of industry and fate.
Donald Farfrae brings modernity and genial competence, his success highlighting Henchard's inability to adapt. Lucetta Templeman is complex and socially vulnerable; her past and temperament become catalysts for the crisis between the two men. Together these figures create a tightly drawn social drama in which personal history and public reputation collide.

Themes and style
Hardy explores fate, responsibility and the persistence of the past with psychological acuity and rural realism. The novel interrogates the notion of moral reparation: can a man atone for an act that altered others' lives so irrevocably? Social mobility, the clash between old instincts and new mercantile energies, and the fragility of civic standing are recurrent concerns.
Stylistically, Hardy blends an atmospheric evocation of the Wessex landscape with sharp moral observation. The narrative voice balances sympathy and irony, allowing readers to see Henchard's nobility even as his flaws precipitate tragedy. The result is less melodrama than a sober, wrenching study of character and consequence.

Legacy
The Mayor of Casterbridge remains one of Hardy's most admired novels for its tragic intensity and moral complexity. Its portrait of a flawed protagonist caught between past guilt and present aspiration has influenced subsequent realist fiction and continues to provoke debate about fate, justice and human fallibility. The novel stands as a powerful meditation on the costs of impulsive acts and the slow arithmetic of remorse.