Social mobility in Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge

England in the later part of the eighteenth century underwent the social effects of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution opened up several possibilities to the lower classes of society to earn money in the form of technical or clerical jobs that required education and training thus enabling them to rise in social standing. This resulted in a surge of upward mobility in the society as the middle and upper middle classes rose to power mostly through education and occupation.  Family lineage was no longer a requirement to belong to the genteel class and along with this the necessity of strong moral character in a gentleman became questionable. Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge is set in such a time. The events in the novel take place in a small town called Casterbridge in the Wessex region of England. The town is chiefly agricultural but is slowly beginning to show the signs of industrialization such as the use of machinery and scientific methods. As such it provides prospects of upward social mobility in the form of business and administration. The novel is a poignant account of the tragic life of Michael Henchard. The concept of social mobility is constantly intertwined with the tragic events of Henchard’s life. Apart from Henchard several other characters in the novel also display the desire or aptitude to move up the social ladder either through money, skill, or education.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is the highest social position that is accessible to the characters in the novel and we see two characters- Michael Henchard and Thomas Farfrae rise to the post through different means and circumstances. The novel begins with twenty one year old hay trusser Michael Henchard walking along a dusty road with his tool basket in his arm and his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth Jane walking alongside him. They go to a fair where in a drunken state Henchard ends up selling his wife and daughter to a Sailor named Newson for a sum of five guineas. The next morning he realizes his mistake and swears never to drink alcohol for twenty one years. He then goes to the town of Casterbridge in search of a job. He takes up a corn dealing business which gradually grows into a successful one and along with this his respect and position in society also move upwards. He becomes a member of the town council and eventually rises to the position of the Mayor. Henchard used “his one talent of energy to create a position of affluence out of absolutely nothing”. As a Mayor he is very aware of his position and the respect he commands. All through these years he has carefully kept the incidents of his past life a secret so that it does not interfere with his present rise in situation. He is also very conscious of the mannerisms of the people he is associated with. After he remarries Susan, he realizes that Elizabeth Jane, having been brought up in a seaside cottage, is not up to date with the kind of genteel behavior expected from the daughter of a Mayor.  He reproaches her in anger and she leaves the house. The downfall of Henchard begins when he starts growing jealous of his more talented and educated manager Thomas Farfrae. His jealousy mounts to such an extent that he fires Farfrae. Farfrae then starts his own business and the rivalry intensifies. Henchard’s term as Mayor being over he still held the position of a magistrate in the town council. But his endeavors to beat Farfrae in business leave him bankrupt. His business and property is auctioned and Farfrae buys it and employs Henchard as a laborer in his business.  Meanwhile his past sins are also revealed. Thus Henchard loses not only his higher social status but also the dignity and respect associated with it or with his personality itself. Henchard’s journey beginning from a hay trusser, rising to a Mayor and falling to a common laborer is captured by Hardy in the following words. “Then he had worn clean, suitable clothes, light and cheerful in hue; leggings yellow as marigolds, corduroys immaculate as new flax, and a neckerchief like a flower-garden. Now he wore the remains of an old blue cloth suit of his gentlemanly times, a rusty silk hat, and a once black satin stock, soiled and shabby.” “And thus the once flourishing merchant and Mayor and what not stood as a day laborer in the barns and granaries he formerly had owned.” In the end of the novel Henchard leaves Casterbridge and takes up the profession of a hay trusser once again, thus going back to the point where he began.

Donald Farfrae’s journey reflects upward social mobility through education, skill and hard work. In the beginning of the novel he is an enthusiastic young man educated and trained in the latest scientific developments and on his way to America to try his fortune. He meets Henchard in Casterbridge who is impressed by the young man’s talent and employs him as the manager of his business which at that point of time was going through a difficult phase. With his advanced knowledge he implements newer scientific methods and recover’s Henchard’s business. His management skills and charming personality soon make him the talk of the town. After Henchard fires him he starts his own business and succeeds tremendously. For all of Henchard’s jealously Farfrae never bears any ill will towards him and always treats him with the respect he deserves. Eventually his respect in society increases and he becomes a member of the town council. Finally he is appointed the Mayor of Casterbridge, a position that he truly deserves. Thus Farfrae climbs the social ladder with the help of skill and maintains his position with his strong moral character.

In case of women, social mobility solely depends on inheritance of money or higher position in society acquired through marriage. However in order to be married to ‘gentlemen’ they must also belong to a certain level of gentility. This is seen in the three important female characters in Mayor of Casterbrige- Susan Henchard, Elizabeth Jane and Luccetta Templeman. After Susan Henchard comes back to Casterbridge she takes up lodging in The Three Mariners inn which is the most that she can afford. But after meeting Henchard and deciding to marry, he sets her up in a cottage to give her the image of a gentlewoman before he can actually proceed to marry her. Meanwhile he pays off his erstwhile mistress Luccetta. But after Susan’s death Luccetta arrives in Casterbridge as a gentlewoman. She has inherited a sum of money from a dead aunt, and now calls herself Miss Templeman, and takes up residence in High Place Hall. She also conceals her past social position and her relationship with Henchard. Her newly acquired inheritance is the sole factor that makes her an interesting prospect for marriage with attracts not only Henchard but also Farfrae lending another cause to their already existing rivalry. Eventually Luccetta marries Farfrae and rises to the genteel position of the Mayor’s wife. However her past relationship with Henchard is exposed in a public display of effigies and she dies of shock.

Elizabeth Jane is the only character in the novel who displays a conscious effort to gain better social standing through education and by refining her manners. As her newly achieved position as the step daughter of the Mayor she is aware of her expectations. She tries to increase her knowledge by reading lots of books on various subjects and improve her appearance by wearing clothes of the latest style. However she cannot help but utter colloquial language in her conversations which irritates Henchard. She is also not capable of writing in a long hand as is expected of genteel ladies. That is why she leaves her house to stay with Miss Templeman in hopes of better exposure to a genteel lifestyle. Initially she is courted by Farfrae but Henchard forbids it. Farfrae’s subsequent rise in fortune and the arrival of Miss Templeman completely negates this prospect from Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s prospects for a genteel marriage are also negated by the declined social position of Henchard. However after Mrs. Farfrae’s death Elizabeth does end up marrying Farfrae and thus rises to her well deserved position as the wife of the Mayor of Casterbridge.

This novel highlights the fact that social mobility in case of the lower and middle classes comes with its associated expectations. The aristocracy commands respect regardless of its skills or morals. The lower and middle classes on the other hand have to earn this respect through perseverance or rise to a respectable status by earning or inheriting large sums of money. Through Mayor of Casterbridge Hardy shows that social mobility for the progressive classes is ephemeral. It is very difficult to climb the social ladder but at the same time it is also very easy to slide down the ladder at the slightest misfortune.

Why The Novel Matters| D.H. Lawrence | Summary and Analysis

D. H. Lawrence’s critical essay ‘Why the novel matters’ was published in the collection titled Phoenix in the year 1936. In this essay Lawrence speaks about the importance of the novel and tries to establish the superiority of the novelist above other professions.

In an attempt to illustrate the importance of the novel Lawrence explains the importance of life and the living man. He says that the whole living man, the man alive, is more important than his thoughts, ideas, his mind, or his stomach or liver or kidney or any other parts of his body. Lawrence says that this is what scientists and philosophers fail to understand. According to Lawrence a novel shows life and its characters are nothing but man alive. The novelist understands the importance of life and the man alive. Therefore the novelist is better than the scientist or the philosopher.

Lawrence begins the essay by commenting upon the saying ‘a sound mind in a sound body’. He calls it a funny superstition that people think of themselves as a body with a soul in it. He questions why one thinks of one’s hand as something subordinate to the mind that operates it. The hand has a life of its own. It has knowledge and can think and act for itself. The hand is as much a part of the living man as the mind. The pen held by the hand however is not alive. A man alive extends only to his fingertips. Lawrence says that whatever in a man is alive constitutes the man alive. The hand, skin, freckles, blood and bones are very much alive and part of the man alive. The living body therefore must not be compared to inanimate objects like tin cans or clay vessels.

Lawrence in this essay tries to explain why the novelist is better than the philosopher or the scientist and in order to do so he explains the importance of the man alive. According to Lawrence the novelist possesses an intricate understanding of the man alive more fully than a parson, a philosopher, or a scientist. The parson speaks about souls in heaven and the afterlife. But for the novelist heaven is in the palm of his hand and the tip of his nose which are alive. The novelist is not concerned about life after death. He is wholly concerned about life at present and with the man alive. The philosopher speaks about infinite knowledge possessed by the pure spirit.  But for the novelist there is no knowledge beyond what the living body can perceive. For philosophers nothing but thoughts is important. These thoughts Lawrence says are nothing but ‘tremulations on the ether’. They are not alive. They are like radio signals floating in the air which are meaningless until they reach the receiver – a radio device that decodes the signals into a meaningful message. Similarly when thoughts are received by a man alive they become meaningful and can alter the man’s life. But the thoughts nevertheless are not alive. It is only because the man alive receives them that they become alive. Only a man alive can be stimulated by thoughts. Thus the living body is more important than the message conveyed by thoughts.

According to Lawrence nothing is more important than life. Living things are more valuable than dead objects. A living dog is better than a dead lion but a living lion is better than a living dog. Lawrence says that scientists and philosophers find it difficult to accept the value of the living. For the philosopher nothing but thoughts matter. For the scientist a living man is of no use. He only wants a dead man whom he dissects and observes under the microscope. For a scientist a man is a heart, a liver, a kidney, a gland or a tissue. But for the novelist the only thing that matters is a whole living man. Lawrence refuses to believe that he is a body or a soul or a brain or a nervous system. He considers himself to be a complete whole made up of all these parts, a whole that is greater and more significant than the individual parts. And for this reason he is a novelist and he considers himself superior to the saint, the scientist or the philosopher.   

Having established the importance of the man alive and the novelist Lawrence proceeds to explain the significance of the novel. Lawrence calls the novel a book of life. According to him books are like thoughts - nothing but ‘tremulations on the ether’. They are meaningful only when a man alive receives them. But he says that the tremulations of a novel are more powerful than any other book and it can make a whole man alive tremble. This means that the novel has the capacity to influence a man more effectively than any other book.  For example the ideals of Plato makes the ideal being in a man tremble. Similarly the sermons or the Ten Commandments affect only a part of a man alive. But a novel is capable of shaking the whole of a man alive. This is because a novel deals in nothing else but man alive. In this regard Lawrence calls the Bible a ‘great confused novel’.  All its characters – Adam, Eve, Sarai, Abraham, Isaac – including God are nothing but man alive. For Lawrence, the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare are all great novels because they communicate to the reader. Their wholeness affects the whole of man alive. They do not stimulate growth in a particular direction but shake the whole man alive into new life.

According to Lawrence the strength and appeal of a novel lies in the dynamic nature of its characters which reflects the importance of constant change in the life of a man alive. Nothing is constant and if something is forced to remain constant it loses its value and power along with the passing of time. There are no absolutes. There is only a constant flow and change and even change is not absolute. A man today is different from what he was yesterday and tomorrow he will be different from what he is today. A man loves a woman because of the constant change in her. It is the change that startles and defies and keeps a man and woman in love with each other. Loving an unchanging person is like loving an inanimate object like a pepper pot. But even amidst change one needs to maintain one’s integrity. However Lawrence says that putting a finger on one individual trait makes one as fixed as a lamp post. It seems as if a man has made up an idea about himself and is trying to trim himself down to fit into it. Lawrence says that one can learn about the importance of change from a novel. In a novel the characters do nothing but live. But if they begin to act according to a fixed pattern – always remaining good or bad – the novel loses its life force. Similarly a man in his life must live and not try to follow a pattern or else he becomes a dead man in life. Lawrence however says that it is difficult to define what is living. Different men have different ideas about what they mean by living in life. Some go to seek God while others seek money, wine, and women, yet others seek votes and political reforms. In this Lawrence says that the novel is a guide which helps to differentiate between a man alive and a man who is dead in life. A man may eat his dinner like a man alive or merely chew his dinner as a dead man in life. A man alive shoots his enemy but a dead man in life throws bombs at people who are neither his friends nor foes.

Finally Lawrence says that the most important thing is to be a whole man alive and the novel provides guidance in this matter. A novel helps a man to see when a man is alive and when he is dead in life. The novel helps to develop an instinct for life. This is because the novel does not advocate a right path or a wrong path. The concept of right and wrong vary according to circumstances. A novel portrays this unpredictable and varying nature of life making the reader realize that life itself is the reason for living. The end result of the novel is the whole man alive.  Thus Lawrence asserts that the novel is a book that can touch the life of a whole man alive and that is why the novel matters.