Small thought on ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’

When Henchard decides to sell his wife he not only degrades her but interferes with social class. The fact that he does this at the end of the market day lowers her to the level of ‘few inferior animals, that could not otherwise be disposed of’. An indirect consequence of this is that social order is further disrupted; when his wife returns with Elizabeth-Jane she is forced to become part, arguably, of a different social class. Though affluence works in her favour, Elizabeth seems to find it difficult to leave behind her past and is always too willing to help or serve others. It is possibly because of this disturbance of social order that the mayor’s fortune fluctuates and the four central characters continually switch positions in society and wealth. The first chapter, in which the mayor is nameless, leaves the ‘lurid colour’ of his mistake hanging over the other characters, and affecting the intricate chain of events that follows. Yet his mistake leads to the one truly good character in the novel, ‘that flower of nature, Elizabeth-Jane.’

Some Research on Thomas Hardy

1894

Hardy was born in 1840, at Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester. His father and grandfather were master-stonemasons; his father had a fierce passion for music, leading some to speculate that this may have been an important influence on Hardy’s writing. After being schooled at Lower Bockhampton, his mother transferred him to a school in Dorchester. Here he trained to become an architect.

A Case Against ‘Death of the Author’ theory (Roland Barthes): criticism of criticism

It would typically be said that readers find a connection to the characters of a novel. Yet I have always felt that characters of a novel are never really individuals; they are fragments of the writer themselves. Yes, on the surface it may seem that it is ‘Pip’ in ‘Great Expectations’ speaking, or ‘Holden’ in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, but I personally always feel the presence of the writer. Maybe because we are taught to be aware of a writer’s techniques, I am always conscious of what I may say is the initial voice, the writer, constantly crafting and putting the words into their characters’ mouths.

Hence, my process of reading a novel is finding out more about the writer themselves, gathering information on the author’s own perception of life; I believe that no two people will ever perceive something in exactly the same way, and this must be a result of our different experiences. F. Scott Fitzgerald said writers

aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

which seems to express that writers are able to become different people, which they then write about; therefore they inevitably put some of their own personality and experience into their work.