Being a successful businessman he is naturally given a seat on the town’s council from which he has also won a term as mayor. Industrious and opportunistic, Henchard has managed to work his way up from a hay-trusser to a gentleman farmer in his own right, dominating the town’s corn and wheat crops. They find Henchard in the town of Casterbridge where he is now the mayor. It is her only hope for her daughter’s future. Her plan is to seek out Henchard and hope that he may be in a position to support them.
Susan is also keeping the fact that her health is failing to herself. Susan never told her daughter the truth about her past Elizabeth-Jane believes Newson is her father. Though he provides well for his new family, it is not a happy marriage and when he is lost at sea, many years later, it placed Susan and Elizabeth-Jane in a difficult situation. Newson, the man who bought Henchard’s wife and child, is a sailor. Before he can, though, Henchard makes an oath to not drink for twenty years. A stranger on the road, if he moves on now he has the chance to reinvent himself no one would know the disgraceful thing he has done. The man who took his family was a stranger no one knows where he has come from or gone to. His attempts to undo his actions prove fruitless. Morning sobriety reveals to Henchard the horror of what he has done. Though the practice has been made illegal, it still endures in some rural settings, and when a man appears with money ready to take up the offer, Henchard’s pride forbids him to back down and the man walks out with Susan and Elizabeth-Jane. Not to be dismissed as hyperbolic, Henchard even claims that he will gladly sell his wife and child if a good enough offer was made. But Henchard starts drinking and, once inebriated, begins boasting to the patrons of how loathsome it is to be burdened with his wife and child. Henchard’s status as an unemployed farm labourer, when he feels he is worthy of much more, and his belief that his wife and child are impediments to his ambition, are the sources of his spiteful discontent.Ĭoming across a country fair, the young family take the opportunity to rest. Beneath the quiet exterior, he is an angry and frustrated man. They walk in silence, exposed to the sun, an arduous enough journey for a young man let alone a young mother carrying a baby. Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser, walks down a lonely country road in 1820’s England with his wife, Susan, and infant daughter, Elizabeth-Jane.
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