THOMAS HARDY'S “THE MOCK WIFE,” MAUMBURY, AND THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

Abstract

In a 1908 review article for the Times of London, Thomas Hardy commented on the previous months of excavation of the Neolithic earthwork amphitheater in Dorchester, known as the Maumbury Ring(s). Hardy had returned to Dorchester from London in 1883, and the town is most famously fictionalized in the 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. Hardy's description identifies the defining moment in the Ring's history as the execution there in 1706 of the nineteen year-old Mary Channing for allegedly having poisoned her husband. Quoting extensively from a contemporary report of Channing's trial and execution, Hardy asserts that he could find little in the statements of the case to support Channing's execution. His opinion is rather that this was a high spirited young woman forced by her parents to marry a man she did not love, whose weak indulgence of his new wife merely served to contribute to the sense of her being a woman of “careless character” that would see her wrongly condemned.

Darwinism in The Mayor of Casterbridge

“…In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy makes a vivid portrayal of the rise and fall of Henchard, the inevitable ruin of agricultural society is also lively presented (Donnelly, 2016). In the novel, the transformations Henchard and the town underwent are the demonstrations of Hardy's acceptance of Darwinism.…”

The Conflicts Between Henchard and Farfrae in the Mayor of Casterbridge

“…He is unwilling to accept the new trends, and satisfies with the old backward life. He is doomed to fail in the modern world [8].…”