Happiness And Happiness In William Hardy's The Mayor Of Casterbridge

Register to read the introduction… Clym's love of it is elaborately described in the following lines: "If anyone knew the Heath, it was Clym...his society, its human haunters." Thomasin Yeobright "considers the heath her natural and appropriate environment" (Deen). Silhouetted against the sky, the figure of Eustacia first appears on the Heath. Leonard W. Deen also points out how her standing on a grave is symbolically significant. With it "she is persistently associated throughout the novel." Wildeve avoids the Heath and he dies, and according to Deen, "Hardy intends his death to give him a certain dignity which he did not have alive." If Egdon stands for life, it also stands for death. "Without it", says Dobree, "not Eustacia, nor the Reddleman, nor Clym Yeobright,nor Thomasin, nor even deaf, grotesque old Grandfer Cantle would have been the same." The earth is alive in Hardy's novels and Egdon in The Return is the most impressive face of the earth.

Fate and Character: In the Mayor Hardy quotes Novalis : Character is Fate. Henchard often ascribes his failures to the working of some malignant force …show more content…
They are rebels who try to fight their way out of a social pattern and are as a rule annihilated. They are persons of passions but their passions are not compatible with the general pattern-the governance of the universe, so a Clym, a Henchard or a Jude is left in isolation; he dies miserably but no one sheds tears for him. Herein lies Hardy's pessimism, and not cynicism, because even though Hardy dislikes this pattern, he does not hate mankind; he loves them. That is the reason why we do not see too many villains in Hardy's novels. Farfrae, Wildeve and Fitzpiers are not villains - they are selfish, weak and volatile but not a bunch of scoundrels. They are also, in a different way, victims of the same