The Mayor of Casterbridge

"The Mayor of Casterbridge is an underrated work. I think it’s where you should start, when you start reading Hardy. It’s a good read, and it introduces his idea that character is fate. It’s about Michael Henchard, a man who sadly sells his wife and daughter at the beginning of the novel, while intoxicated by alcohol. And he pays for what he has done for the rest of the novel. His ex-wife, Susan, returns, with a child she calls ‘Elizabeth Jane,’ his daughter. I don’t want to spoil it for everybody, so I won’t share all the details, but we see the rise and fall of a man, of a character. After the sale, he is full of regret, makes a vow not to drink for 21 years, and becomes the Mayor of Casterbridge. But ultimately he will end up a very lonely man at the end of the novel. It’s a tragedy that plays on coincidence, on fate, on tragedy, on character, and it will really introduce the reader to Hardy. There are elements of melodrama, elements of the Gothic . But I would call them elements. He’s a very different writer to Charles Dickens , for example, who really uses caricature, even satire at times. Hardy isn’t like that. He has a rustic chorus of characters who are endearing, but also representative of the period in which he was writing. Hardy was concerned with institutions like the workhouse, but not to the extent of Dickens. So the writing is very different in that sense. So, yes, Hardy does use melodrama: melodrama through coincidence and fate."