Is it true that a complex and sophisticated literary response involves a

disinterested and detached state of analytic reflection that is inconsistent with

feeling any definite emotions about characters, even if those emotions can be
relatively weighted, combined, and played off against one another? the answer is
"no." Authors do indeed probe "complicated questions about human motivation,
vulnerabilities, the messy business of being human." But ambiguity and complexity
are not equivalent to emotional neutrality. Characters are depictions of human
beings. Authors are human beings. And readers are human beings. Remove the emotion
in the response to other humans, and literature would lose much of its point and
value.

Henchard is a particularly turbulent, unstable character, and in the course of his

life, his motives undergo some changes. Late in the novel, Hardy summarizes some of
these changes:

He experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking back upon an
ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as
what he has gained in substance; but the superadded bitterness of seeing his very
recantation nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago; but his attempts to
replace ambition by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself.

Henchard is complex, and his motives vary over time. That is true of many
characters in serious literature. Does anyone really believe that Hardy's
characters are more complex, or less determinate in motivation, than the characters
of George Eliot? It is nonetheless possible to give a relative weighting to the
total force any given motive has over the course of a lifetime. If Henchard had
never tried to replace ambition by love, his profile would be different, but it
would still be a profile in which the respondent weighed the relative force of love
and ambition in the total economy of Henchard's motives.

The goals related to the inevitability of characters -- and hence their "goals" --
changing over the course of a novel, and therefore the pointlessness of phrasing a
question in such a way as to suggest that characters remain static. "Goal" itself
is a somewhat unfortunate metaphor, since it is so single-dimensional and end-
determined (once the ball is in the net, the immediate end has been achieved and
has no further motivational significance, other than the pursuit of the next
"goal"). The way round this problem would have been for your survey to try and
factor in changes in character over time. I don't know how you would have done
this, and the presupposition about character implicit in your questions suggested
that you hadn't noticed its necessity. But it would have gone some way to
circumventing the suggestion that characters have single/simple motivations that
can be assessed on a five-point scale. Of course characters frequently declare
their motivations in books, or have them declared on their behalf by narrators.
Does that mean that we accept them at face value? Is the narrator's voice always
right? Is a first-person narrator when speaking of his/her own motivations always
to be trusted? These are the kinds of question that your apparent assumption (given
what you revealed to your respondents) of motivational
singularity/transparency/consistency blithely ignored, which is what made your
questions unanswerable on the terms in which you phrased them (with all due respect
to the 1700 people who you claim valiantly made the attempt).

Mayor of Casterbridge, attempts to identify what "seem to be" Henchard's "deepest,

most compelling motives . . . over the course of his life" with such things as
"Survival," "Finding a short-term romantic partner," "Finding a keeping spouse,"
"Gaining or keeping wealth,"

And here are a couple of passages on Henchard--passages from which most competent
readers will be able to abstract and give a relative weighting to motives such as
the desire for marriage, the desire to care for kin, and the desire to achieve
wealth and standing in the world.
The conversation took a high turn, as it often does on such occasions. The ruin of
good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the frustration of many a promising
youth's high aims and hopes and the extinction of his energies by an early
imprudent marriage, was the theme.
"I did for myself that way thoroughly," said the trusser with a contemplative
bitterness that was well-night resentful. "I married at eighteen, like the fool
that I was; and this is the consequence o't.". . . .
"I haven't more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet I am a good
experienced hand in my line. I'd challenge England to beat me in the fodder
business; and if I were a free man again I'd be worth a thousand pound before I'd
done o't. But a fellow never knows these little things till all chance of acting
upon 'em is past."
Susan later returns and Henchard remarries her. Here is a passage on his motives
during that phase:
He pressed on the preparations for his union, or rather reunion, with this pale
creature in a dogged, unflinching spirit which did credit to his conscientiousness.
Nobody would have conceived from his outward demeanour that there was no amatory
fire or pulse of romance acting as stimulant to the bustle going on in his gaunt,
great house; nothing but three large resolves--one, to make amends to his neglected
Susan, another, to provide a comfortable home for Elizabeth-Jane under his paternal
eye; and a third, to castigate himself with the thorns which these restitutory acts
brought in their train; among them the lowering of his dignity in public opinion by
marrying so comparatively humble a woman.

"The question that Professor Wilson raises about emotional response is in one
respect parallel to the question he raises about being able to attribute relatively
weighted motives to characters. He objects that "no room is provided for variation
of response at different points in the novel," and he infers, mistakenly, that this
"presumably means that the novel's characters are conceived of as being entirely
static." What it means, actually, is that the reader is being asked to abstract a
set of emotional responses, consolidate or combine responses of similar emotions at
different points in the story, and give a relative weight to that combined
emotional response. One emotion is "anger," another "disgust," another
"admiration," and so on. For a large number of respondents, it evidently is in fact
possible to perform this act of abstraction and consolidation.

Virginia Woolf�s essay suggests that The Mayor of Casterbridge wishes

to present us with an �impression� of life rather than an �argument,� to make her
point she contrasts MOC with Jude the Obscure. You have to understand, my love own
love for the novel forces me to defend it. Although there is a strong social
commentary element to Jude, it is no less profoundly tragic than MOC. Woolf
suggests that MOC is more tragic because Henchard fights �against something outside
himself,� whereas Jude is limited by human antagonists. I would argue, however,
that the human antagonists in Jude are simply manifestations of the larger
instruments of fate, seen in microcosm. Hardy�s ultimate goal is the same: to
suggest the determinism and ultimate futility of life. Woolf probably just prefers
MOC and wishes to make an argument as to why (which I do not buy, of course).
Woolf believes that Hardy creates impressions but does not present
arguments or conclusions. He leaves it up to the reader to do this. I would agree
with this statement but only in the context of this novel. The reason that Woolf�s
argument holds true is that the presence of the omniscient and interrupting
narrator is absent. In Far from the Madding Crowd, it seemed like the role of the
narrator was to present clear conclusions about situations. In MoC, it is up to the
reader to do so. Woolf also argues that Henchard is standing up to fate in this
novel. This must be true because the title of the novel indicates his fate. It is
almost as if Henchard knows this and fights to die a good man- not a successful or
happy man- but a good man.

Showalter�s essay is interesting in that it contrasts masculinity and

femininity in MOC, and within Michael Henchard himself. Showalter sees the
�feminine self as an estranged and essential complement to the male self,� and
Henchard�s emotional development throughout the novel as not a violent
emasculation, but a gradual discovery of those very human qualities which are
socially feminized: �passion, tenderness, loyalty.� Showalter suggests that
Henchard becomes �humanly reborn,� which I very much agree with.

I didn�t really enjoy much of what Showalter had to say about Henchard.
The emphasis on the unmanning of our tragic hero reduces him so much in character.
Showalter reads this novel in a very psychoanalytical point of view and I was
really thrown off. She says that the feminine self is the estranged part of the
male self that Henchard is just trying to repress. She argues that his progression
of unmanning is what leads him to tragic vulnerability. I would argue and say that
the moment he sold his wife and child in the beginning is what made him vulnerable
for tragedy. I do agree with Showalter when she says that paternity is a subject
that is far more important than conjugal love. There exists no conjugal love
between Henchard and Susan. Without Elizabeth-Jane, I wonder if he would have
bothered to remarry her. When he begins to treat Elizabeth-Jane as his daughter, at
the end of the novel, he becomes this man of character.
I also agree that Henchard bases all of his relationships around the
male community. But I do not agree that he is unmanned when he loses all of his
material possessions. His instance of becoming unmanned is when he sees Lucetta at
the amphitheatre and after he fights Farfrae. These are instances involving
personal contact with people who he cared about deep down but drove away. Showalter
says, �In Henchard the forces of male rebellion and female suffering ultimately
conjoin; and in this unmanning Hardy achieves a tragic power unequalled in
Victorian fiction� (p. 405) She is insisting that in order for Henchard to become a
tragic figure, he must �unman� and show femininity. His character does soften, but
I don�t agree with the notion that he must be unmanned. This story is about a man
of character. It is his character that is built by the end of the novel, not torn
down. If we wanted to read about a character that has been torn down, we would look
to ROTN at Clym. There is a hollow man at the end. Clym dies a man of character at
the end.

Millgate suggests that Hardy believes that Henchard�s death was

necessary. The death of Henchard is the death of the old world and old ways. His
death will allow for the birth and survival of the modern world and modern ways. So
Henchard�s death just a big extended metaphor for the dawn of industrialism and
modernism?

I really liked the conclusion of The Mayor of Casterbridge. Henchard's fall from
grace turns out, in some manner, to be the catalyst for the development of his own
moral self. Of course his success seems partly due to luck, for he seems to rely
more upon chance and conjecture than upon actual knowledge of economics,
agriculture, or the weather. He fails in business because he trusts the words of a
seer. This is a pretty stupid decision, but one which determines his fate. Farfrae
seems far more cautious, he buys a little and then sells a little, and then
suddenly rises to the top when he buys a corn surplus at a low price-from which he
makes a considerable profit. Henchard does become a better man through his fall-he
becomes closer to Elizabeth-Jane and decides not to blackmail/expose his former
lover-Lucetta, instead to put her happiness first, he does not kill Farfrae-his
rival, instead he shows him mercy and later accepts his charity. Henchard
ultimately redeems himself, first by coming to Lucetta's aid and attempting to
inform Farfrae of her condition after the skimmety ride. Later he makes the choice
to leave Casterbridge behind, so that Elizabeth can be free to marry Farfrae-
putting her own needs above his own. He cannot force her to grow old alone, caring
for him and make her continue to serve him. In the end he seems to atone for his
past sins. This man of character, through fate's actions, is finally able to find
his own.

At the conclusion of this novel, I believe that Michael Henchard is a

man more sinned against than sinning. Fate is the force acting against Henchard in
this novel. I am certain that I like Henchard by the end of the novel and his
transformation from an unlikable character to the dignified character is what
allows this novel to be a tragedy when he dies. He has the power to ruin Farfrae
and Lucetta�s happy marriage but he exercises restraint. Instead of acting on
impulse like we have seen in so many instances, he actually thinks about what he is
doing and does the right thing. As we have seen before in Return of the Native,
Henchard makes the mistake of sending someone else to do his job. He sends Jopp
with the letters which eventually leads to the Skimmity-ride which leads to
Lucetta�s death. It is amazing how Hardy uses such a small stitch to weave a
tragedy. However, it is Henchard�s impulsive personality that tells Newson that
Elizabeth-Jane has died which eventually leads Elizabeth-Jane to push Henchard
away. It is easy to understand that Henchard just wanted to hold on to someone.
Elizabeth-Jane was the only one left in Henchard�s life but his decision to tell
Newson that she was dead was an extremely selfish one. But surprisingly, when
Henchard did this, I found myself siding with him and hoping that Newson would just
go away. The end of this novel was just peppered with tragedy. A dead bird, a dead
Henchard, and the terrible last wishes of Henchard left the reader just sad. But
once again, Hardy leaves us with yet another bland wedding and this time with the
promise that something grand has died with Henchard. This novel was so much more
Shakespearean and tragic than the others.