"THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE" AS AESCHYLEAN TRAGEDY

Author(s): DUANE D. EDWARDS

Source: Studies in the Novel , winter 1972, Vol. 4, No. 4, THOMAS HARDY (winter 1972),
pp. 608-618
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29531559

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THE MA YOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
AS AESCHYLEAN TRAGEDY

DUANE D. EDWARDS

Since The Mayor of Casterbridge was published in 1886, Michael

Henchard has met with a variety of critical responses. Thus as early as
1922 Joseph Warren Beach called him the prime mover of his own fate;1
in 1959 John Paterson described him as a hero whose defection profound?
ly disturbed the morality of a universal order;2 in 1960 Frederick Karl ob?
served that "All of Henchard's acts reveal a fatalism, as if he must drive
himself until he falls."3 Although no simple explanation can be given for
the existence of such disparate views, it can be said that much of the con?
fusion results from a failure to see The Mayor as Aeschylean tragedy.
When the structure of the novel is duly considered, it becomes clear that
Michael Henchard's life resembles Agamemnon's more than Oedipus's.
Illustrating the tendency to see the novel as Sophoclean rather than
Aeschylean tragedy, John Paterson calls attention to the first two chap?
ters which he describes as a "structural peculiarity" dramatizing the caus?
al relationship between Henchard's "crime and punishment." He uses
this to suggest ultimately that the novel reveals a moral order, "a reli?
gious sanction." He maintains that the fate which controls the novel "re?
sembles . . . the ideal wisdom that Hegel found presiding over the tragic
drama of Sophocles and Shakespeare."4
What Mr. Paterson says proceeds from the assumption that in a
typically Sophoclean tragedy it is the past which destroys the hero in the
present, whereas in fact the Sophoclean hero?whether Oedipus or Antig?
one or Ajax or Deianeira?wreaks his own destruction in the present and
the Aeschylean hero is doomed in the present because of what he did in
the past.5 There is, then, a relationship between the deeds of the Prologue
(chapters 1 and 2) and the Mayor's eventual fate but not the causal rela?
tionship suggested by Mr. Paterson.6 Instead, the situation is as follows:
When Henchard chooses to sell Susan, he performs that deed which seals

[608]

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 MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE / 609

his fate by ensuring that certain unspecified events will transpire. What
these events will be remains, for a time, uncertain, since the cause?the
sale of Susan?is indeterminate: it precludes some results and allows the
possibility of a number of others. Accordingly, the inevitability of Hen?
chard's fate results not from his one deed alone, but from the way in
which that deed combines with other later events (the second return of
Newson, for example) which are, in turn, indeterminate. It can be said,
then, that the nature of Henchard's suffering is what it is because of the
events that combine with the sale of Susan and that the suffering would be
different or nonexistent if Henchard had not sold Susan. The sale of Su?
san does not cause the suffering; however, the suffering depends for its
existence on the fact that Henchard sold Susan.
Such a relationship between past and present is, of course, a con?
trast to the causal relationship between deeds and suffering found in
Sophocles. Accordingly, it is not the patricide and incest that cause Oedi?
pus to suffer, nor are they the central emphasis in the play.7 Like other
Sophoclean heroes, Oedipus seals his fate within the context of the play
when he decides to "Let all come out,/ However vile." The center of in?
terest in the play is the combination of events with various aspects of the
hero's character.8 The present holds all our interest, since Oedipus has a
number of alternatives: he can refuse to learn the truth; he can learn the
truth and keep it to himself; he can deny the truth. In contrast, neither
Henchard nor Agamemnon is an "Ajax or Oedipus who deserved a better
fate"; each is, instead, a man "built for ruin from the start."9 When Aga?
memnon sacrificed Iphigenia and Henchard sold Susan, each sealed his
fate by acting freely.
Regarding the relationship of the past to the present, The Mayor of
Casterbridge resembles not only the Agamemnon, but also the Prome?
theus Vinctus, the Choephori, the Persae?in fact, most of the seven ex?
tant Aeschylean tragedies. Intent on illustrating this relationship, Hardy
uses both the Prologue and the general structure (including plot) to sug?
gest that choices made freely in the past bind an individual to a given fate
in the present. Emphasizing the fact that the Mayor makes choices in the
Prologue, the narrator records that Henchard persists in making his offer
to sell Susan and, in fact, at one point waits ten minutes before repeating
his offer. That the Mayor is acting in character when he proposes the sale
is confirmed by Susan's remark: " 'Michael, you have talked this non?
sense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it once
too often, mind!' "10 What he does, then, is neither the impulse of a mo?
ment nor an isolated instance of a wrongdoing. Furthermore, circum?
stance is not to be blamed, since Henchard could have escaped from it, as
the following lines indicate: "At the moment a swallow, one among the
last of the season, which had by chance found its way through an opening

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 610 / EDWARDS

into the upper part of the tent, flew to and fro in quick curves above their
heads, causing all eyes to follow it absently. In watching the bird till it
made its escape the assembled company neglected to respond to the work?
man's offer, and the subject dropped (p. 17).11 In a number of ways, this
passage suggests that Henchard could have acted in such a way as to
avoid the fate that is eventually his. First of all, it is safe to assume that
Henchard is to be identified with the swallow that chances to be in the
tent and yet escapes, since elsewhere in the novel Henchard?and Hen?
chard alone?is identified with birds and animals.12 Secondly, since the
swallow makes its escape only after a delay which causes the subject of
Susan's sale to be dropped, Henchard has an opportunity to change his
mind about selling his wife. When he persists in his attempt to sacrifice
her for his future prosperity, he becomes like Agamemnon, who sacri?
ficed Iphigenia for his future prosperity.13 Also like Agamemnon, he has
helped to determine his future.
Since chapter 3 begins nineteen years after the Prologue, it seems
certain that Hardy wanted to stress, first of all, that there is a relationship
between the past and the present and, secondly, that this relationship is in?
determinate rather than causal (as I suggested above). In addition, he
wants to stress that the past is unalterable but may be revived in the pres?
ent and work to an individual's disadvantage.14 Thus when the past, in
the form of Susan, intrudes on the present, a connection between the two
periods of time is suggested: Susan enters through a dense "avenue" of
trees which form a tunnel (p. 36). Significantly, Susan's return does not
result in suffering or decline for the Mayor as it would if Paterson were
right in saying there is a causal relationship between the "crime and pun?
ishment." However, because there is a relationship between the past and
the present, when the past is revived, Henchard does suffer. The past is re?
vived when the furmity woman reveals that Henchard had sold his wife.
Intent on stressing the fact that Henchard's downfall and consequent suf?
fering begin here?rather than much earlier, as some critics have as?
serted?the narrator says: "On that day?almost at that minute?he
passed the ridge of prosperity and honour, and began to descend rapidly
on the other side" (p. 215). Signalling the revival of the past in the pres?
ent, Henchard begins to drink again.
That the cause of Henchard's suffering is not the sale of Susan is
made abundantly clear in chapter 31 where the narrator stresses, first of
all, the lapse of time between the original deed and the townspeople's dis?
covery of the deed, and, secondly, the amends Henchard has made for his
deed. Furthermore, and most important, when the narrator says, "New
events combined to undo him" (p. 215), he suggests that the furmity wo?
man's revelation alone could not have destroyed Henchard; a combina?
tion of events is required. Finally, it is not the deed itself, but the fact that

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 MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE / 611

the townspeople respond to the deed as if it were a recent deed that causes
Henchard to decline socially and morally.
In the paragraphs above I have referred to the sale of Susan as Hen?
chard's "crime," as Paterson does, but have refrained from calling his
social decline "punishment." In doing so, I wish to stress, first of all, my
refusal to accept Paterson's contention that "Henchard's terrible retro?
gression obeys, certainly, a law so distinct and irrefutable in its logic as to
suggest an origin more supernatural than natural."151 wish to stress also
that Hardy's world?unlike Aeschylus's?has no gods and is not moral.
Most of Hardy's readers are familiar with his statement that fifty years of
looking for god had revealed that there was no god. Perhaps not many are
familiar with his contention that the world is not moral: "My imagina?
tion may often have run away from me; but all the same, my sober opin?
ion?as far as I have any definite one?of the Cause of Things, has been
defined in scores of places, and is that of a great many ordinary thinkers:
that the said Cause is neither moral nor immoral, but immoral: 'loveless
and hateless' I have called it, 'which neither good nor evil knows?etc.,
etc.?' "16 Thus while Aeschylus's world is populated by people whose
misdeeds will without fail be punished by the gods, Hardy's Mayor lives
in an "unmoral" world and will probably be punished by his fellowmen if
his wrong deeds are discovered. The contrast between Aeschylus's moral
and Hardy's unmoral world is made clear in the treatment given the fami?
ly lineage theme by the two authors. In the Oresteia it is used to suggest
that the gods will punish a wrong act "unto the third and fourth genera?
tion": Atreus's crime against Thyestes results in a curse that settles on the
family. In The Mayor of Casterbridge it is used to suggest that men suffer
at the hands of other men: the Mayor suffers because he loves Donald and
Elizabeth-Jane. That he responds to the former as a brother is suggested
when he says: " 'Your forehead, Farfrae, is something like my poor
brother's?now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn't unlike his' " (p.
55). Later the narrator observes that Henchard puts his arm around Don?
ald "as if Farfrae were a younger brother" (p. 94). And while he loves
Elizabeth-Jane initially because he believes she is his daughter, certainly
that love is fostered by the fact that she, like a natural daughter, resem?
bles him: she is shy and proud; she is concerned with social propriety but
remains socially awkward.
It is clear, then, that both Hardy and Aeschylus use the family lin?
eage theme but in different ways.17 The former uses it to suggest that man
lives in a godless world, the latter to suggest that man's world is insepara?
ble from the gods'. Since Hardy's world is godless, it is necessary that
the past be revived in the present if the past is to be an indeterminate
cause of the present deeds and suffering. This has already been suggested

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 612 / EDWARDS

in the discussion of the furmity woman above but is suggested more force?
fully by a consideration of the importance of character in the novel.
In the Preface, Hardy states that The Mayor of Casterbridge "is
more particularly a study of one man's deeds and character than, per?
haps, any other of those included in my Exhibition of Wessex life" (pp. v
vi). In saying this Hardy stresses that the novel is about the effect of one
man's character on his destiny. Since the novel is also about the relation?
ship of that man's past deeds to his present suffering, it is appropriate to
study the relationship of Henchard's character to both past and present.
When Susan sees Henchard's strong response to Farfrae, she says:
"He was always so" (p. 65). In saying this, she stresses the fact that the
past?in the form of character?is always with us, although it may be la?
tent. When Henchard is seen sitting in his chair of dignity, the narrator
says: "Susan Henchard's husband?in law, at least?sat before them,
matured in shape, stiffened in line, exaggerated in traits; disciplined,
thought-marked?in a word, older" (p. 40). What this passage points out
is that the Mayor is potentially what he has always been, although there
has been a change: what formerly was expressed is now controlled. That
those traits which formerly governed Henchard could do so again is sug?
gested in a later passage: "Those tones showed that, though under a long
reign of self-control he had become Mayor and churchwarden and what
not, there was still the same unruly volcanic stuff beneath the rind of
Michael Henchard as when he had sold his wife at Weydon Fair" (p. 115).
It is clear, then, that the past within Henchard could be revived just as his
past deeds are revived. It is perhaps not so clear that neither past had to
be revived, in fact, would not have been revived, if circumstances had been
somewhat different. However, if Hardy is intent on writing tragedy, he
must suggest, first of all, that, given the particular combination of events
which comprise Henchard's life, his downfall was inevitable and, second?
ly, that individual events?and therefore the combination of events?
might have been different.18 In a number of ways, he succeeds in doing
this. First of all, he reveals that Henchard prospers for twenty years after
selling his wife. If Farfrae or Susan or the furmity woman or Newson had
not appeared in Casterbridge, Henchard's fate would have been different;
his prosperity might have continued. That any one of these might not
have appeared is suggested in a variety of ways. Farfrae, for example,
nearly does not remain in Casterbridge, as the following lines suggest:
"He might possibly have passed by without stopping at all, or at most for
half a minute to glance in at the scene, had not his advent coincided with
the discussion on corn and bread. . ." (p. 45). Susan is undecided about
making her presence known to Henchard when she sees five large hay
wagons bearing the words "Henchard, corn-factor and hay-merchant."
The narrator says that "The spectacle renewed his wife's conviction that,

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 MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE / 613

for her daughter's sake, she should strain a point to rejoin him" (p. 65).
The furmity woman would not have confronted Henchard if he had not
substituted for "Dr. Chalkfield, the Mayor for the year, being absent. .."
(p. 197). If Newson had not returned after being fooled by Henchard's
lies, he would not have affected the Mayor's life significantly. In brief, if
any one of these four characters had not acted impulsively, events would
have progressed differently and Henchard's fate would have been differ?
ent.
In a second way Hardy suggests that Henchard might have escaped
his fate: he shows us that no one event can destroy the Mayor. Thus when
the past in the form of Susan and Newson closes in on him, he deals with
it successfully. When he loses Farfrae's love and friendship, he adjusts.
When Lucetta moves to Casterbridge, he glosses over the past. Ultimate?
ly, he is ruined not by one event, but by a combination of unlikely events,
as the following passage indicates: "Had she lost her heart to any other
man in the world than the one he had rivalled, cursed, wrestled with for
life in days before his spirit was broken, Henchard could have said, 'I am
content.' But content with the prospect as now depicted was hard to ac?
quire" (p. 300).
Confirming the fact that only a particular combination of events
could have ruined the Mayor is the plot. As Roy Morrell says, "The
whole rhythm and tension of our interest is controlled by the reprieves,
the rallies, the second chances; by our sense of what might, even at a late
stage, be done to prevent the disaster."19 When we consider that Hen?
chard rallies after Susan returns, that he does fairly well running a seed
shop, that he is revived upon seeing his effigy floating in the river, the
truth of Mr. Morrell's statement is confirmed.
It is safe to conclude, then, that no one event destroys the Mayor. In?
stead, the plot of the novel suggests that a combination of events?includ?
ing the sale of Susan?is required. Since this is true, it follows that other
characters could be destroyed should their pasts be revived in the present
in just the right circumstances. To emphasize this point, Hardy's narrator
reveals some characters' pasts, but not others'. Accordingly, the skim
mington reveals Lucetta's past and destroys her because her love affair
with Farfrae has progressed as far as?but no farther than?it has. In
contrast, Donald, a character whose past remains hidden, prospers. That
his past is sinister and therefore potentially dangerous is suggested both
by the mysterious carpetbag which has a lock on it (p. 54) and by Chris?
topher Coney's question: " 'What did ye come away from yer own coun?
try, young maister, if ye be so wownded about it?' " (p. 59). That his past
has no effect on his success is suggested by the fact that people respond to
what he is in the present, that is, his personality, rather than to the sum?
mation of the deeds of his past, that is, his character. Eventually he is seen

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614 / EDWARDS

by others only "through a golden haze" (p. 60). His past remains securely
hidden, and he remains prosperous.
Since Farfrae's past remains hidden, the suggestion is that the pasts
of others might have remained hidden as well. At the same time, once an
individual's past is revealed, what happens seems inevitable. In particular,
what happens to Henchard seems both avoidable and inevitable with the
result that hope and hopelessness are presented simultaneously. It is this
mixed, self-contradictory feeling that converts The Mayor of Caster
bridge into tragedy and Henchard into a tragic figure.20 It heightens the
emotional effect of the novel without obscuring the action behind senti?
mentality or despair. It remains clear that Henchard "put on the harness
of Necessity" in selling Susan just as Agamemnon did in sacrificing Iphi
genia. To ensure his future prosperity, each man did what he believed was
imperative. At the same time, each man contributes to making his life
catastrophic. If others such as Farfrae and Aegisthus avoid catastrophe,
that not only intensifies the hero's tragedy, but also makes us more hope?
ful even while the past is being revived.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is, then, tragedy; specifically, it is

Aeschylean tragedy. As a result, what Henchard did in the past is more
important than what he does in the present. It is this that makes The
Mayor unlike either the Oedipus Tyrannus or Jude the Obscure, two
works in which the central character's motives and errors combine with a
particular situation so that the central character is forced to make a
choice.21 In each work the emphasis is on the choice that the hero can
make in the present.
It is this emphasis on the past that makes The Mayor unlike Tess of
the D'Urbervilles, Hardy's version of Euripides' Hippolytus. In both Tess
and Hippolytus the two central characters find themselves, in the present,
the victims of their own and one another's passions. Since these passions
are a part of the characters, they cannot eschew them; instead, they must
adjust to them by giving them their due weight and emphasis, by relating
them to ideology, ideas, and ideals. What matters both in Hardy's novel
and Euripides' play is how successfully the characters learn, in the pres?
ent, to reconcile their ideas and their passions.
What Hardy has done, then, is write three different kinds of tragedy,
one modeled after an Aeschylean, one after a Sophoclean, and one after a
Euripidean tragedy. Within each work the view presented is presented
consistently. And while the separate viewpoints are not contradictory,
they are inconsistent. Since Hardy made no attempt to reconcile these in

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 MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE / 615

consistencies, he asserted that he was no philosopher. He was, he said,

satisfied with tentativeness from day to day.
Because this was his conclusion and one of his firmest convictions
he was at his best in writing drama where the relationships of the char?
acters foster a point of view free of dogma. That he intended The Mayor
of Casterbridge to be drama is, then, both appropriate and conclu?
sive. The appropriateness has been dealt with; the conclusiveness can be
determined from a study of the narrator.
To begin with, the narrator uses many words which suggest that the
action of Hardy's novels resembles the action of a play. Thus characters
in The Mayor are called "the chief actors" (p. 19) or "an actor" (p. 88);
what happens outside the tent at Weydon Priors is called "some grand
feat of strategy from a darkened auditorium" (p. 21); a slice of action is
called a "scene" (p. 21); at one point the action is described as "the scene
in its dramatic aspect" (p. 88). In general, the details emphasize the nov?
el's dramatic qualities.
Creating such an emphasis is one of the narrator's functions in the
novel. That it is by no means his major function is suggested by a consid?
eration of his role in the novel. Robert B. Heilman has pointed out that
what the narrator says is at times at odds with the "dramatic definition"
of a character.22 He sees this inconsistency as a flaw, as another example
of Hardy's carelessness as a writer. He assumes, like William E. Buckler,
that Hardy "regularly chose the role of the omniscient narrator who
moves at will among the objects he is describing and the minds and emo?
tions he represents."23 Nothing could be further from the truth since the
narrator in The Mayor is no more than another character who, like Con?
rad's Marlowe or a member of a Greek chorus, is subjective and incon?
sistent.24 What he says about a character's mind is, as in drama, inferred
from that character's deeds. Accordingly, we are surprised and even re?
motely embarrassed when we read Henchard's will?that dry, factual
document?since it reveals the inner Henchard more personally than any?
thing the narrator says. The inner or private Henchard has not been re?
vealed because the narrator is not omniscient.
That the narrator is not omniscient he himself makes abundantly
clear by using such words as "perhaps" and "seems" repeatedly, by of?
fering several possible interpretations of one scene, by tentatively sug?
gesting the significance of a scene. Accordingly, he uses the "Whether it
were ... or whether it was" construction a number of times and uses such
wording as "She must have appeared interesting in some way" (p. 62) to
suggest tentativeness.25
It is true that the narrator occasionally reveals a character's
thoughts. However, as stated above, he merely infers from deeds?or
from gestures and facial expressions?what those thoughts probably are.

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616 / EDWARDS

Stating this specifically, the narrator says:, "His general demeanor was
enough to show that he was surprised and nettled that his wife had taken
him so literally" (p. 24, italics mine). Later he says of Farfrae, "And his
mind could be seen flying away northward" (p. 159, italics mine), but
stresses how limited his knowledge of that mind is when he adds: "Wheth?
er its origin was national or personal...."
The narrator is, then, a storyteller, an Ancient Mariner, as Hardy
wanted him to be.26 As such he is entitled both to editorialize and to be in?
consistent. He certainly is appropriate to a novel which emphasizes what
is hidden in the past and in an individual's life and character. He is also
appropriate to a novelist who insisted he was no philosopher, who in?
sisted that his novels are impressions, who endorsed the stoic dictate that
life is an opinion.
That life was an opinion?a frame of mind?for Hardy is suggested
by his insistence on being a pessimist.27 A pessimist, he says, is ready for
the worst when it materializes and pleasantly surprised when it does not.
Accordingly, a pessimist controls his response to the uncontrollable
events of his life.
It was this view of life that enabled Hardy to record unflinchingly the
deaths of Henchard, Tess, and Jude. It should be emphasized that this
same view, this pessimism, did not prevent him from citing that hope
comes from hopelessness; from recording what Angel learned as a result
of Tess's death; from recording Jude's hope that he was a sacrifice for the
good of future generations; from sprinkling the closing pages of Jude the
Obscure with flower imagery.
The narrator of The Mayor of Casterbridge also cites the gain that
derives from loss when he says that although Henchard has not succeed?
ed in replacing ambition with love, "out of all this tampering with social
law came that flower of Nature, Elizabeth" (p. 312). And although the
narrator must record that Henchard?like the caged goldfinch?starves
to death, yet he concludes his story by recording what Elizabeth-Jane has
learned.

FAIRLEIGH DICKINSON UNIVERSITY

NOTES

1 Joseph Warren Beach, The Technique of Thomas Hardy (Chicago: Russell and Russell,
1922), p. 16.

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 MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE / 617

2 John Paterson, "The Mayor of Casterbridge as Tragedy," Victorian Studies, 3 (Dec.

1959), 163.

3 Frederick Karl, "The Mayor of Casterbridge: A New Fiction Defined," MFS, 6 (1960),
203.

4 Paterson, pp. 153-58.

5 On p. 113 of Greek Tragedy (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1954), H. D. F. Kitto
says that in Aeschylean tragedy "There is no character to be developed, for we see the
hero instantaneous, complete. He is already doomed, we can see it; he must fall."

6 That this is true is suggested by the fact that approximately twenty years elapse between
the time when Susan is sold and the time when Henchard begins to suffer.

7 Since he killed his father and married his mother in ignorance, Oedipus was not, in the
mind of a Greek, legally guilty of either murder or incest.

8 Kitto says: "The essentials of the Sophoclean tragedy are that the various aspects of the
hero's character should so combine with events as to lead to a disastrous issue" (p. 112).

9 Ibid., p. 69. Kitto is, of course, describing Agamemnon.

10 It may be objected that the Mayor does not act freely in this instance, since he has been
drinking. However, in Hardy's or Aeschylus's view one is responsible for what he has be?
come. That Henchard can will either to drink or not to drink is suggested by the fact that
he does abstain from drinking for twenty-one years.

11 All page numbers which appear parenthetically in the body of this paper are references
to the Signet edition of The Mayor of Casterbridge (New York: The New American
Library, 1962).

12 Karl maintains that Henchard is ironically the bull and that the caged goldfinch is "a
sentimentalized but effective symbol of the isolated Henchard" (pp. 202, 203). He does
not observe that Henchard is described as having "tigerish affections" (p. 95) and is
called "the netted lion" (p. 296). In passing, it should be mentioned that bird, animal,
and net images are also used in the Agamemnon.

13 In a number of other ways Henchard's career parallels Agamemnon's. Following the

sacrifice, each prospers for a number of years. In fact, when we see Agamemnon for the
first time and Henchard for the first time after the Prologue, each is at the height of his
fortune and each has already performed that deed which?combined with the great
crime each has committed in the past?will result in suffering. Henchard has sold bad
wheat; Agamemnon has returned home with Cassandra.

14 In the world of Aeschylus, a wrong deed such as an act of hubris by Agamemnon will
certainly be punished in the present: "The gods do not fail to punish those who trample
upon holy things," the chorus says. Thus Agamemnon is punished for his insolence and
pride in overthrowing the altars of the gods. At the naturalistic level, however, Agamem?
non is punished by Clytemnestra for purely selfish and human motives. What Agamem?
non did in the past, that is, sacrifice Iphigenia, is what she claims is her motive; however,
her lack of maternal love suggests this is not genuinely a motive. Nevertheless, the sacri?
fice of Iphigenia is what frees Agamemnon to become prosperous in Troy, to sail away
and gain glory. It is this deed, then, in combination with other later events (Clytemnes
tra's decision to have a lover, for example), that results in Agamemnon's death. If he had
not sacrificed Iphigenia, he would not have died; however, he does not die because he
sacrificed Iphigenia.

15 Paterson, p. 155.

16 Florence E. Hardy, The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928 (New York: Macmil
lan, 1930), p. 217.

17 Ironically, Agamemnon suffers because he has a family; Henchard, because he does not.

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618 / EDWARDS

18 Kitto says: "The disastrous issue must, in retrospect, appear to have been inevitable"
(p. 112).

19 Roy Morrell, Thomas Hardy: The Will and the Way (Kuala Lumpur, Malaya: Univ. of
Malaya Press, 1965), p. 80.

20 If we did not hope for a favorable outcome each time we read about Hamlet or Oedipus,
we would soon lose interest. Desirable alternatives to a hero's fate must be suggested in a
work of fiction, or the work ceases to be tragedy.

21 Elsewhere I have worked out in elaborate detail the many similarities between Jude the
Obscure and the Oedipus Tyrannus.

22 Robert B. Heilman, Introduction, The Mayor of Casterbridge (Cambridge: Houghton

Mifflin, Riverside Editions, 1962), p. xxii.

23 William E. Buckler, Introduction, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Cambridge: Houghton

Mifflin, Riverside Editions, 1960), p. ix.

24 Characters in Hardy's novels, like characters in Greek tragedy, are often subjective, es?
pecially in responding fatalistically to their experiences.

25 Another striking example of this appears on p. 167 where we read: "Then something
seemed to occur which his stepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers. A
murmur apparently came from her lips...."

26 The Later Years, p. 16.

27 Ibid., p. 91.

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