April 2020
ISSN 2278 0742
70
Resonance of Female’s Struggle in The Mayor of Casterbridge Shobhana Singh Abstract
The Mayor of Casterbridge interrupts a custom that has typically assigned that role to a man. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy boons to the Victorian society that in how difficult situations women faced in the patriarchal society. Hardy firmly pointed out that the only way for a woman to achieve deliverance and contentment in the outmoded world was to be independent. Of all the women in The Mayor of Casterbridge, only Elizabeth Jane meet the requirement of being an independent woman: which was challenging for the male based society of the time combined with her unique upbringing with independent education, the continual pursuit of knowledge and persistent fighting spirit for happy life.
Keywords: society, ritual, remarriage, feminism, custom.
Elizabeth-Jane was the child of Michael Henchard and Susan, when Henchard sold his wife at Weydon-Priors. She took Elizabeth-Jane with her and immigrated to Canada with Newson. The child died three months after the sale. She is a part of the tragic irony of the story, and of Henchard‘s nemesis, that his affection for the second Elizabeth-Jane is rooted in the assumption that she was his daughter. He did not discover that she was Newson‘s daughter until after Susan‘s death. On her first appearance she appeared as a well-formed young woman of eighteen, completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence, youth, which is itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour. She was almost look-alike of her mother, Susan A glance was sufficient to inform the eye that this was Susan Henchard‘s grown-up daughter. While life‘s middle summer had set its hardening mark on the mother‘s face, her former spring-like specialities were transferred so dexterously by Time to the second figure, her child, that the absence of certain facts within her mother‘s knowledge from the girl‘s mind would have seemed for the moment, to one reflecting on those facts, to be a curious imperfection in Nature‘s powers of continuity.(MC- 24-25)
Volume 9 Issue 1
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