Addicted
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I bought this book reluctantly, not being a fan of fictional books, as it was required as part of the humanities course I am currently studying. I forced myself to pick it up and start reading one morning during half term, and only managed to put it down that night when I had completed reading the whole book. A brilliant story, and definitely a better alternative to watching Eastenders or Hollyoaks, yet with similar outcomes, and a good selection of dodgy soap-like characters.
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Enjoyable read
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I think that Hardy is to English Literature what Dostoyevski was to Russian literature. He excels in his characterisations of people having deep internal struggles that eventually compromise their happiness and ultimately even their lives.
If you can relate to the difficulties of people who make one enormous blunder in their lives only to let it dominate their entire existence and they become their worst accusers, and indeed abusers, then read this novel.
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To review or not to reveiw
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It is unfotunate that Hardy must be judged by reviewers brought up on the pulp fiction of our age - but this is an open forum so ...
I have spent many a shecal and more hours to find an avenue in literature that re-creates a scene and allows any willing to spend time to visit it. I implore you to sit and really work at what Hardy is "telling" here - the re-creation is there for all to see, I can invisage Casterbridge and its inhabitants in my mind with no trouble - the train, bus, room around disappears to be replaced by a different reality - Wessex style.
I cannot lower myself to comment on the story as such - Hardy writes from experience, he potrays a story enveloped in the time it was written in such a descriptive and rich way the storyline hardly matters.
Wake and feel the furmity! This is a tale of the times, as much as a novel.
Authors of today please note the simplicity and yet great complexity required for a "classic" as this truly is.
Great overcomes good and this has stood the test of time - name me any modern day novelist that has quite the characteristic graft Hardy had, real life sucks and then you read Hardy.
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Accessible Victorian Soap Opera
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When it comes to "classics" of Victorian literature, this is certainly much more readable than most, and while it presents some memorable characters, and plenty of themes worthy of high-school English essays, it's hard to take it very seriously in many ways. Like many novels of the era, Hardy's was first published in a serial format in an illustrated magazine (The Graphic), and then collected as a book. This, no doubt, accounts for why so many chapters end with a spectacular revelation or plot twist. It also explains why it often comes across as little more than a literate soap opera, chock to the brim with misunderstandings, coincidences, and the mighty hand of fate. Indeed, while many seem content to classify it as a tear-inducing tragedy, I found it to be far too calculated and melodramatic to truly qualify as tragedy. There is no doubt that the prologue chapter is a masterpiece: a poor family traveling through rural Wessex stops for dinner at a small hamlet. There, young husband and father Michael Henchard gets drunk on rum and grows belligerent, eventually going so far as to sell his wife and child to a passing sailor. The next chapter leaps ahead almost twenty years, where we find that Henchard has pulled himself together to become a repentant and prosperous hay merchant and mayor. He hires a passing Scotsman to become his right-hand man-just the first of several characters that will come to the small town of Casterbridge and bring change. Soon, as in a good film noir, Henchard's past misdeeds come back to disrupt his position. Henchard is certainly one of the great flawed characters of literature, given to fiery bursts of temper and bullheadedness, but also surprising moments of compassion, and a running penchant for being his own harshest critic. He does much throughout the story that is is to be condemned, and yet he remains a sympathetic and pathetic characters, one never able to escape his nature. Some have compared his relationship to the Scotsman as that of Saul to David, but this is a facile parallel that only works in the broadest sense. It's more satisfying to view Henchard as representing the early Romantic era of Victorianism, with the emphasis on brute force, emotion, and becoming self-made through hard work-in contrast to the Scotsman, who represents the coming Industrial era, with the emphasis on intellect and ingenuity. So, there's clearly plenty food for thought in the book, but that doesn't change the fact that it's built on the wildest coincidences, contrivances, and misunderstandings. The other major flaw in the book is the women, who are passive tokens with zero depth. They exist in the book as objects whose possession represents triumph or failure, but rarely engineer their own fate. While this is certainly in keeping with the position of women at the time, it gets old quick when read from the mode. All in all, it sounds like the most accessible of Hardy's work, and even the most impatient reader is unlikely to get bogged down. For those who still can't be bothered, there was a nice adaptation for British TV that came out in 2003 and a silent version that was done back in 1922.
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Henchard, Titan with feet of clay.
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Henchard, the Colossus that dominates the town of Casterbridge is a titan with feet of clay.The 'respectable', feared Mayor and magistrate who judges his peers and minnions with a rough arcadian justice cannot escape the harpy that is fate pursuing him. Though he may try to make amends and regret the heartless, brutal recklessness of his youth, fate is slowly bringing the pieces of his denouncement together. He may pose as a modern man but beneath this veneer, the superstitious,unschooled rural yeoman remains - resorting to soothsayers in a moment of weakness,unable to muster the diplomatic skills of his rivals and tempted by grog and violence. The humulity and honesty with which he bears his final fate and his herculean attempts to discipline himself bear witness to a tortured soul, driven finally usunder by his contrary urges of passion and dimly observed Christianity ethics. In the end he is as a pathetic figure, pathetic as his wedding gift, a man who is unable to rise beyond his nature and doomed by fate to bitter regret.
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