Mayor of Darkness
In the book The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, the main character Michael Henchard is revealed as a selfish and prideful man due to his actions in the main events of: ‘the sale of a wife’, ‘uncertain harvests’, and ‘the visit of a Royal personage’ throughout the novel.
Before the actual sale of his wife Susan, Michael Henchard is depicted as indifferent toward his small family and further exposed as an irate man when intoxicated with spiked furmity, but appears to be prosperous after his drunken fit. As he, Susan, and the carried child first trek in the direction of Weydon-Priers, Michael is described as wearing a corduroy jacket, tanned leggings, a straw hat, and a rush basket of tools; his walk is that of a “skilled countryman… [with] a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself” (1). With that attire and gait, Michael seems to be a rather simple man in dress, yet has a sense of pride in his “measured, springless walk” as opposed to the “desultory shamble of the general laborer” (1). His perceived superior knowledge and skills in hay trussing having accosted for the indifference Henchard displays. This proud silence seems only natural to Susan as she “enjoyed no society whatever from his presence”, but Michael’s standoffish behavior toward wife and child is only a precursor to her eventual sale (6). Once inebriated with the rum and furmity mixture, Henchard turns a “deaf ear” to Susan when she questioned him about their lodging and Michael’s attitude progresses from “serene” and “jovial”, to “argumentative”, “overbearing”, and “brilliantly quarrelsome”(9-10). It is in this state that Henchard auctions off his wife, and though Susan was “accustomed to such remarks”, and an example in itself that Henchard was spiteful quite frequently in response to the burden of providing for his family, the transaction was made. The following morning, Michael now sober, is deeply concerned with the events of the previous night, yet...