Henchard himself believes that he is a victim of fate. He thinks, “somebody has been roasting a waxen image of me, or stirring an unholy brew to confound me!” When Henchard is at Hatchets Hole and he sees his effigy Hardy writes: “the sense of supernatural was strong in this unhappy man.”
Fate therefore plays a large part in the novel. Hardy uses incidents and references that parallel and echo each other. This helps us to be more aware of the fateful coincidences and the part destiny plays in the novel.
However, Henchard’s character and temperament also lead to his downfall. From the first chapter Henchard’s rashness and impulsive character become apparent. He behaves impulsively when he sells his wife, when he dismisses Jopp and disgraces Abel Whittle. Henchard is man who is ruled by feeling not thought. Hardy informs us that Henchard, “knew no moderation in his requests and impulses.” He also sometimes possesses very bad judgement and has a tendency to make the wrong decisions, for example confiding in Farfrae or selling his wife. When he gives Jopp the job, Hardy writes “that characters deteriorate in time did not occur to Henchard.” The decisions he makes are normally spontaneous, irresponsible and often callous. Henchard too is occasionally very cynical; this quality seems to effect many of his actions. He does not seem to ponder over anything. This is an unfortunate characteristic, which I think is one of the main reasons for his collapse. He is a man whose “momentum of his character knew no patience,” especially when he is dealing with Elizabeth Jane and Farfrae. Henchard loves Elizabeth Jane when he thinks she is his daughter and violently turns against her when he finds out the truth, never stopping to consider that she can’t be held responsible.
He also has a fiery temper. This temper causes him to overreact and lose control. Hardy describes him shouting “in a savage undertone.” This temper provokes Jopp into seeking revenge against Henchard. Henchard describes his trade with Farfrae as “a tussle of fair buying and selling.” When he loses his temper because Farfrae’s business is succeeding, whereas Henchard’s is declining, Henchard then says, we’ll “grind him into the ground – starve him out … snuff him out”.
Henchard is also a very proud man. It is because of this that he refuses to take a room in Farfrae’s house or to claim back his furniture. In many ways he is almost too proud and stubborn. This makes his own downfall seem much worse to him.
Henchard is extremely jealous of Farfrae. Farfrae seems to make Henchard feel subordinate. Perhaps because Henchard is a self made man, he suffers from a lack of security and feelings of inferiority that Farfrae makes emerge. Farfrae undermines Henchard’s authority by overruling him in their treatment of Abel Whittle. This is a major turning point in the novel and from here on Henchard’s life begins its demise.
When he is losing Henchard gives up easily, with a dumb-helplessness, “misery taught him nothing more than a defiant endurance.” When things are going wrong for Henchard he does not act, he accepts the situation resignedly, “I am to suffer I perceive.” He is also quite melodramatic which cause him to descend into deep periods of depression causing him in one case to become suicidal. “In the natural course of life he might possibly have to linger on earth another thirty of forty years – scoffed at; at best pitied. The thought of it was unendurable.”
Clearly these characteristics contributed to his downfall. His life was also plagued by ill luck. However I don’t think that either his character or fate led singly to his destruction. If he had had a different character and fate had still worked against him it might have made him a stronger person who could have faced his difficulties. By the end of the novel, “Susan, Farfrae, Lucetta, Elizabeth – all had gone from him, either by his fault or his misfortune.” There is a fateful inevitability to the plot. What happens has to happen because of destiny, but it’s not just fate that causes his downfall. It’s also because of his character.
Despite his many faults, we to some extent sympathise with Henchard. He does seem to have some redeeming qualities. In nineteen years this self-made man rose from a hay-trusser to Mayor. To do this he must have had some admirable qualities.
When Henchard’s life crashes around him he accepts the situation and returns to being a simple hay-trusser. This is a very admirable attitude. Henchard also acknowledges to the furmity woman that he has committed a wrong act in selling his wife. “No ‘tis true”. After that he “gazed more at the pavements and less at the House fronts.” Henchard also abstained from alcohol for twenty-one years as a form of self-punishment.
When Henchard became bankrupt the Senior Commissioner remarks, “I have never met a debtor who behaved more fairly.” Even later when Henchard is fighting with Farfrae, despite having, “nothing to lose” he insists on fighting fairly, having one arm tied behind his back so as not to “take advantage of ‘ee.”
Examples throughout the book also show Henchard to be gentle, remorseful, industrious, hardworking, kind and fair. Yet it is not really any of these qualities that make me sympathise with Henchard. They just seem to make him more of a real person. What does make me feel sympathy to Henchard, or perhaps pity him, is the way that he makes mistakes but experiences great suffering as a result. He is in many cases a very unlucky man. Perhaps as a modern reader we feel a general sympathy for Henchard. But, we never really as readers enter his subconscious. We pity his predicament and yet we don’t understand his personality. This ambivalent attitude is best summed up by the manner in which Hardy handles Henchard’s death.
He may in some circumstances appear to be quite a hard man, in fact “the harsher he became, so his fortunes declined,” but he is a decent man. Even in his death he doesn’t want to upset Elizabeth Jane. His last words to Elizabeth Jane being, “I’ll never trouble ‘ee again… no not to my dying day” then a month later when the dead song bird is discovered, poignantly described, “at the bottom of the cage a little ball of feathers” we realise this is heavy Victorian symbolism of Henchard’s own fate. After a long search Farfrae and Elizabeth Jane trace Henchard too late to his deathbed. The starkest words in Henchard’s will is “that no man remember me.” It would be a hardhearted reader who would forget such an unfortunate man.
Hardy himself worried that he would not be understood. His main character in this novel is a flawed man. Hardy wrote “The Mayor of Casterbridge” at a time when he himself was feeling insecure. Hardy lost his faith in religion and came to see human beings as victims of fate and chance. He felt lonely, gloomy and misunderstood as his diary testifies. Hardy’s life is perhaps in some ways mirrored in that of Michael Henchard’s.
It’s a fine distinction between fate and character and they are very often subtly intertwined. Fate and character coexist in the novel. They are dependent on each other. I believe that it is a combination of character and destiny that cause Henchard’s downfall. After twenty-one years Henchard walks back along the same path he travelled many years before. Still alone and with nothing to show for all his pain and suffering. He dies a lonely isolated man, a warning to us all, of character flaws and turbulent fate.