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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Accessible Victorian Soap Opera, 24 Jan 2005
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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by Thomas Hardy
by Thomas Hardy
by Thomas Hardy
by Thomas Hardy
by Thomas Hardy
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