H05030 DATING *THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE* - 4/1/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________
From: michael@perceptivecreation.co.uk
Subject: Mayor period?
Date: March 31, 2005 4:21:36 PM PST
Can anyone help on the period setting of Mayor of Casterbridge? I had assumed that it was the same as the period of writing - early/mid 80s. I don't recall any dates mentioned in the text itself. The big new agricultural machine on display in the market-place may well suggest a concrete date? But I've just been re-viewing the Alan Bates videos, to find they are set in the 40s. The major effect for a theatre production of course is jackets and frocks (but not smocks!) - and of course men's hats!
Any help welcomed!
Michael Barry
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From: apalling@tbaytel.net
Subject: Re: Mayor period? 1820-1845, definitely not circa 1885
Date: April 1, 2005 4:28:28 AM PST
The "days recalled by the tale" are initially those immediately following the Napoleonic Wars, when Michael and Susan Henchard enter Weydon-Priors' furmity tent with disastrous results. After the prologue, we jump ahead two decades, to the 1840s, and the Dorchester ("Casterbridge") of Hardy's boyhood. The Corn Laws, repealed in 1846, are still in force in the novel--hence, the importance of the Wessex harvest to the economy of the country as a whole, and the economic significance of the masters of the Corn Exchange. The repeal of the Corn Laws by Sir Robert Peel was probably brought on by several years of bad harvests and the attendant rise in domestic corn prices. Finally, the Royal Personage who visits Casterbridge is probably Prince Albert, who had been dead some 25 years by the time Hardy wrote the novel. Note also an absence of references to railways in the book, again pointing to a period much earlier than the novel's date of composition.
Sincerely,
P. V. Allingham, Associate Professor,
Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada
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From: kgwilson@uottawa.ca
Subject: Re: Mayor period?
Date: April 1, 2005 4:32:26 AM PST
It is indeed the 1840s. There are a number of period pointers in the text.
The visit of the "royal personage" is thought to be inspired by the visit
of Prince Albert to Dorchester in July 1849. Hardy's preface notes that
the "incidents related" also arise out of "the uncertain harvests which
immediately preceded the repeal of the Corn Laws." This occurred in 1846,
and by 1849 the duties on corn had virtually disappeared. The time of the
capricious weather that ruins Henchard is said to be "in the years
immediately before foreign competition had revolutionized the trade in
grain" (Chapter 26). And in Chapter 44 there is a reference to "this
travelling without horses that's getting so common" (the railway came to
Dorchester itself in 1847, although strangely -- and unlike the actual
Prince Albert -- the "royal personage" doesn't come by it).
So all in all, and allowing for Hardy's deliberate approximations, the
present of the narrative -- i.e. the period that begins about 20 years
after the wife-sale -- would appear to be the mid-late 1840s.
Keith Wilson
--
Professor of English/President, ACCUTE
University of Ottawa
70 Laurier Avenue East
Ottawa
Ontario
CANADA
Tel: (613) 562-5800 Ext. 1160
Fax: (613) 562-5990
e-mail: kgwilson@uottawa.ca
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: Mayor period?
Date: April 1, 2005 4:38:13 AM PST
Hi Michael -
One of the simple guidelines scholars use is Boldwood, who is a middle-aged man in FFMC (contemporary setting--the early70s) and who appears marginally in the later work, MC, as a young man. Hence an earlier date for MC -- say late 40s-early 50s.
Hope this helps,
Rosemarie
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From: gary.alderson@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: Mayor period?
Date: April 1, 2005 5:33:00 AM PST
Given that the initital events take place "Before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span", then presumably they're between 1825 (when the century reached one quarter of its span) and 1832. So the subsequent events would be c 1846-52, since Henchard took his vow for 21 years.
best regards
Gary Alderson
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From: ttha@st-andrews.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Mayor period?
Date: April 1, 2005 8:59:39 AM PST
I'm not quite sure how reliable the reference to the timing in the first chapter is, Gary. Looking at the MS of the Mayor and at various editions of the novel it would appear that Hardy made rather drastic changes to it:
The initial version in the MS reads:
"One evening of late summer, before the present century had reached middle-age, a young man & woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors on foot."
Hardy changed this to:
"One evening of late summer, when the present century had hardly reached its middle-age ..."
In the first edition it appears as:
"... before the present century had reached its thirtieth year ..."
And the Wessex Edition contains (as you cite):
"... before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span ..."
The main action, as has already been mentioned in this discussion takes place during the late 1840s/early 1850s.
Best wishes
Birgit Plietzsch
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From: apalling@tbaytel.net
Subject: Re: The wife-sale as an index of the opening date of The Mayor of Casterbridge
Date: April 2, 2005 6:14:00 AM PST
Prior to writing The Mayor of Casterbridge for serial publication in the Graphic (whose illustrations reinforce a temporal setting of forty years earlier), the novelist had researched the wife-selling tradition in British newspapers of the early nineteenth century:
Thomas Hardy had heard of such a case at Portland, and that it suggested this incident to him. In the Observer of March 24, 1833, the following extract from the Blackburn Gazette appeared: "Sale of a Wife--A grinder named Calton sold his wife publicly in the market place, Stockport, on Monday week. She was purchased by a shop-mate of the husband for a gallon of beer. The fair one, who had a halter round her neck, seemed quite agreeable."
In the 1997 Penguin edition (revised in 2003), Keith Wilson notes that Hardy copied into his "Facts from Newspapers, Histories, Biographies, & other chronicles" notebook (now in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester) newspaper accounts of three such sales, in particular the Dorset County Chronicle, whose issues from the 1820s he explored in 1884 in preparing to write The Mayor of Casterbridge. Wilson remarks upon a particular article from the decade in which the tale is initially set:
Given the wife's price and the horse-trading mode of her delivery, one of these entries, dated 6 December 1827, is particularly relevant: 'Selling wife. At Buckland, nr. Frome, a labring [sic] man named Charles Pearce sold his wife to a shoemaker named Elton for £5, & delivered her in a halter in the public street. She seemed very willing. Bells rang.' See Christine Winfield, "Factual Sources of Two Episodes in The Mayor of Casterbridge (Nineteenth-Century Fiction 25 [1970], 224-31. (Page 328)
P. V. Allingham,
Contributing Editor,
The Victorian Web.
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: Mayor period?
Date: April 2, 2005 6:22:23 AM PST
Interesting, Birgit -- it seems that TH regarded 30 as "middle-aged." He was 45-46 yrs of age when he made these internal-dating peregrinations.
Cheers
Rosemarie
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From: michael@perceptivecreation.co.uk
Subject: Re: Mayor period?
Date: April 3, 2005 5:03:53 PM PDT
Thank-you all so much for such helpful replies - and apologies for the seemingly slow response but I've been away for a few days. Tremendously helpful - and points up for me an increasing acknowledgement of Hardy's strong agricultural themes, especially the conflict of the new against the old, the progress of science - something I remember having a strong presence in An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress (and I'm sure in many others of his works).
Thanks again
Michael Barry
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