Comparative Study: Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge

Characterization

My essay is a study of the characters of Tess and Michael Henchard as well as some basic similarities between the two protagonists.

Characterization is an important aspect of any novel and especially for those novels that are single character-centric, such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge. While reading both novels the reader is aware at all times of the importance of the two protagonists; the seduced, innocent female and the impulsive, brash male who are at odds with fate. Readers like to have a central character with whom they can identify and in both these cases we find plenty of examples.

The story of Tess is basically very simple, however, its Hardy’s creative imagination, his vision and tenderness towards the spirited heroine of his novel makes the story unforgettable. Tess is a female who would perhaps be the best example of the fallen Eve as time and again she is made to suffer for the “original sin”. I believe Tess is the novel herself, since it is her story. Hardy weaves his story around her and plans it all with a sense of structure that might convey to the reader that he was trained as an architect.

It is hard for a writer to write about “good” characters and make them interesting and acceptable and yet Hardy manages to adroitly perform this feat. If we take up the example of Tess, then, in one way the character of Tess, like her story, is simple and straightforward. At one level she is just a natural girl, a young, lovely, open-hearted milk-maid. Hardy makes her real to us by constant references to her physical appearance. She has deep dark eyes, a fluty voice, pink hands, a ripe red mouth and, significantly, an “immense rope of hair” hanging on her shoulder. Angel is distracted, and infatuated by her lips and teeth, but they are not perfect – “it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity”.

This for Hardy was the important point, and it is worth thinking about. It applies not only to Tess’s physical appearance but also to her character because here again Hardy does not paint her as perfect. She is sweet and honest, her influence over her friends is of “warmth and strength quite unusual”; she is modest, kind, loving, conscientious – but not flawless. More than once the reader is told of her pride, she is impulsive and has a “slight incautiousness of character”. Both of these characters are comparable with Henchard whose pride left him

sleepless many a nights. Henchard is also impulsive in his decisions and reactions to people and events; his actions speak of a basic, rawer human interaction that has been unschooled and untutored.

Tess’s mother describes her as “tractable” and Hardy himself tells us that “the greatest misfortune of her life” was her loss of courage when she fled from Emminster without meeting Angel’s parents. But it is these flaws which make her human and which mean that as we watch her develop from a sixteen-year old village maiden to a complex woman and then after all her wanderings and sorrows to that moment at Stonehenge when she says “I’m ready”, we are all moved by her tragedy.

With concern to The Mayor of Casterbridge, Henchard’s character is worthy of note. Just as before we see the story taking shape around the central character: Michael Henchard. Essentially, the mayor of Casterbridge is Michael Henchard; and Michael Henchard is The Mayor of Casterbridge. Henchard – an inarticulate, selfish man, incapable of manifesting affection consistently – possesses a depth beyond the explicable. On the one hand, his ability to absorb punishment despite his often narrow perspective and aggressive and transitory passions justifies the simple but form label “tragedy”. Henchard lays fair claim to being the most Greek-like hero of the Victorian novel, bearing analogies at once with Oedipus, Creon, Agamemnon and the Prometheus of Aeschylus.

On the other hand, are all the indications of Henchard’s contradictory nature on quite basic human levels of motivation. Most striking is perhaps his attitude towards love. The point is established early on that he is a “woman hater” by nature and yet he complains about the pervading gloom in his domestic life which makes him curse his loneliness. The most prominent character trait that speaks to me is Henchard’s dissatisfaction with life, a dissatisfaction masked for a good part of the novel by aggressiveness, competitiveness and a will to conquer but which is eventually laid bare when he is stripped of all the trappings of wealth and status.

Tess and Henchard are essentially loners; that is to say they go through their life in eternal loneliness without reprieve. I think their inability to connect with anyone is because of their refusal to give all that they have. Tess, as a young idealist has her ideals shattered by the wealthy Alec and later her girlish tendencies to find the one true soul mate to share her life with her shattered by Angel. Tess is unable to come to terms with Angel’s rejection and time and again tortures herself with the thought of not being good enough. It is only towards the end when she accepts herself completely that we see her elevated to a level higher than Angel. The ending sequence at the Stonehenge speaks volumes of the woman we see before us, one who is ready to accept her punishment, much like Michael Henchard, who for all his flaws is willing to bear the punishment for his past misdeeds.

Hardy redeems both characters in our eyes by making them choose the paths of their deaths of their own volition. We are never witness to Tess’s hanging and Henchard’s last hours; both characters leave their unhappy lives with their integrity intact. It is Hardy’s brilliant characterization that for all their flaws, we find a semblance of truth in their lives and think of them as characters that are larger than life.