The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy's almost supernatural idea of the course of life, his instinctive sense of the beauty of the rural landscape, and his power to invest morally in this landscape are extremely loosely blended in Casterbridge Town Hall. Incubated in the harsh world of nineteenth-century rural England, and the classically constructed story of the rise and fall of the sometimes ruthless Michael Henchard, the mayor of Casterbridge, is a symbolic product of Hardy's maturity – energetic, powerful and incomprehensible by illusions.
