THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

      

        HARDAY'S VIEWS OF LIFE IN THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE 

While reading Harday's novel like Tess Jude The Obscure,The Woodlanders and The Mayor Of Casterbridge, one faces the inevitable question- what is Harday's view of life? To this question one may answer that it is futile to seek for any coherent systematic philosophy of life in Harday's novel or in any novels presenting a study in the character and situation of human life. For philosophy generally has a root in religion and involves a spiritual or an intense intellectual thought process and expounds the mysteries of life and death and of human existence upon this fevered planet of ours. Clearly, there is no such ambition effort t philosophy in Harday's novels. By Harday's philosophy of life we perhaps mean Harday's attitude to life, The Immortals and the dark sinister force of nature, chance and coincidence acting against the welfare of human beings. In Harday's characters, we find that happiness is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain of life." Clearly, Harday is quite different from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in his conception and experience of human life and predicament.
Harday's interpretation of the human situation is that man is fatally pitted against an omnipotent and indifferent fate which is hostile to, and works against the malevolent nature which never fails to wreck his happiness. As L.   David Cecil says;
"Man in Harday's book is ranged the impersonal forces, the forces conditioning his fate in The Mayor Of Casterbridge."
Henchard is ambitious wealth and happiness but a turn  of weather ruins his ambition. The weather personifies the  fate. Chance and love are the other personifications of fate,which play a dominant role in the life of his characters Harday, it seems is aware of the presence and dominance of a blind force which is brute and nothing sort of a blackguard.Man to this force is what flies are to wanton boys. All this gives an easy impression of pessimism in Harday's novels. But this is a misnomer or a gross misinterpretation of Harday's presentation of human characters and situations. Clearly, we may call Harday's view of life tragic rather than  pessimistic.
Harday also rejects pessimism in his novels.Replying to the charge of pessimism, Harday says in  his apology to his Late Lyrics  and Earlier;
"What is today alleged to be the present another pessimism is a truth only questioning in the exploration of reality and is the first slip towards the soul's betterment and the body's also."
Thus Harday's concern seems to be with the reality and truth of human situation and character. He places human beings against a particular situation and studies than their character, propensities and emotional reaction. From the very beginning Henchard faces an adverse situation in his life. Poverty struggles and disappoint forces him to sell his wife at Waydon Fair.But as soon as he repeats of his sin and takes a solemn vow not to touch wine for twenty one years to come just to make amends for his sin.Again when Susan returns to him he arranges his re-marriage with her to make up for the earlier moral lapses in his chapter. But she does not live long with him. She dies leaving him alone to plod the weary ways of his life. Donald Farfrae, Elizabeth, Jane, Lucetta all come in his life and desert him one after the other.Whatever Henchard may to do make his life better and happier, all his attempts fail,making him worse than before. Even his attempts in business transaction to succeed and prosper is frustrated by a sudden change of weather. All their event seems to conspire against his welfare and happiness and cause him a deep gloom and despair. Driven by despair Henchard says to himself;
"I am to suffer,I perceive. This much scourging than it is for me."
Though he feels he will suffer, he does not give up his attempts to fight and get over them.He opposes the force of the circumstances and does not yield. As Harday says about Henchard;
"Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it."
Toward the end of the novel Henchard says to himself;
"If I had only got her with me if only had!Hand work would be nothing to me then; But that was not to he. I can go alone as I deserve an out-cast and vagabond. But my punishment is not greater than I can hear."
Clearly, there is a protest,a rebellion in the tone of Henchard, which suggests that Henchard may break but he will not accept defeat in life. There is no denying the fact that Henchard is a strong man of character, will and passion. He has a courage and patience,a sense of struggle and fight against the situations of his life. He struggles, endeavours, fights and does not submit or yield. He keeps up the spirit of rebellion and endurance till the end of his life. As Walter Allen says;
He(henchard) has innate elementary grandeur. He is like a force of nature whose power is as much destructive as veneficant. He is capable of immense and sustained effort..." 
Again as Professor Pintu says;
"What saves him(Harday) from pessimism in his high and noble conception of human nature.To transform this view of the universe from pessimism tragedy, it unnecessary to show that human beings can resist their destiny,if not physically at any rate,in the spirit.It is this resistance of enduring the blows of fate with courage never to submit or yield, that is the essence of Harday's great novels. Like the tragic drama of Sophoeles and Shakespeare, they leave the readers in no mood of disgust or depression,but rather in one of admiration at this greatness and magnificence of human passion and courage and of awe at the insoluble mystery of human suffering."
Clearly, Harday's view of life is tragic rather than pessimistic. There are no doubt,misery, suffering and futility of human endeavour in the character of Henchard .But there is also a strength of will,character,courage, endeavoring,patience and endurance in him.It is this sense of struggle, endeavour and patience in Henchard that saves Harday  from being pessimistic