Casterbridge 的市长,1886年原始出版, 是迈克尔 Henchard的尝试的托马斯强壮强迫的探险atone为被卖他的妻子和女儿于村庄市场。这atonement 起头事件链导致悲剧和Henchard 的自己的最后毁坏。剧烈的故事和结构平行对Shakespeare的Lear国王建议人类有贵族和力量忍受。
From its spectacular opening--the astonishing scene in which drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passing sailor at a country fair--to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy"s finest and most powerful novels.
Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in earlynineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power--only to achieve a most bitter downfall Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction,Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, “Hardy"s Lord Jim,his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction”