The Mayor of Casterbridge

This essay aims to investigate the major characters’ relationship with the Victorian patriarchy, that is, how the Victorian patriarchy influences and distorts the lives of major characters-not only women (Susan, Lucetta, and Elizabeth-Jane), but also men (Henchard and Farfrae)-in The Mayor of Casterbridge. In dealing with this problem, it especially focuses on examining the characters many traditional or feminist critics have overlooked, namely, Lucetta and Farfrae. This article also attempts to solve the problem of inconsistency of the narrator’s viewpoint of this work. In the work Hardy demonstrates his concern for humanity, vividly representing how male characters as well as female characters are victimized by the Victorian patriarchy. It can be said that the narrator’s change of viewpoint is closely related to Hardy’s concern for humanity, rather than to the inconsistency of the viewpoint of the narrator. By manipulating the narrator’s relationship to the characters, namely, assimilation with them and distance from them, which makes the narrative seemingly inconsistent, Hardy vividly illustrates the characters’ suffering and his concern for them. It is at this point that we can say Hardy is a great writer interested in humanity, going beyond the level of a feminist writer in the political sense.