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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 45 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Hardy, Thomas
Michael Henchard--twice. Susan and Michael marry for the first time when they are about 18. Susan lives with Newson and bears his child, but she never marries him. Then she marries Henchard again when the two are middle-aged.
Susan Henchard and Mr. Newson. The first little Elizabeth Jane, Michael's daughter, dies after Susan goes off with Mr. Newson. When Susan and Newson have their own little daughter, Susan names this child Elizabeth Jane, as well.
Her husband sells her to Newson. Michael Henchard gets drunk at a country fair and offers his wife for sale to whoever will offer him five pounds. Mr. Newson happens to come along and offer this sum. Susan, who is fed up (and naive enough to think her husband may lawfully sell her), goes with the man who has "bought" her. Luckily, he turns out to be very kind.
They are searching for Michael Henchard. After Mr. Newson is lost at sea, Susan decides to search for her lawful husband, even though he treated her so poorly long ago. She and her daughter have very little money, and Susan hopes that Henchard can help to support them.
refrain from drinking alcohol. Henchard believes that strong drink led him to wrong his wife and child.
Mr. Farfrae. Before Henchard's wife returns, Lucetta falls in love with him while nursing the man through an illness. Henchard breaks his engagement to Lucetta after Susan reappears. After Susan's death, Lucetta happens to meet and fall for Farfrae when she moves to Casterbridge in hopes of finally getting Henchard to marry her.
pretty, highly-strung, loving. Lucetta takes Elizabeth Jane's beau, but the older woman does not know that Elizabeth loves Farfrae. Lucetta deeply loves Donald and will do anything to keep him from finding out that she had a bad reputation in her former home, Jersey. After the skimmington reveals Lucetta's former connection with Henchard, the woman dies of shock (plus, she is pregnant).
pretty, long-suffering, smart. She does not get her just reward until the very end of the novel: finally, Donald marries her as he had meant to do before Lucetta appeared on the scene. At first I liked Elizabeth far better than Lucetta, but by the end of the book I was not so sure: E. is just a little too much of a martyr and a goody two shoes (like Fanny Price in "Mansfield Park").
He is deeply flawed but the reader feels sorry for him. Henchard keeps making grave errors due to his impulsiveness, his hot temper, his distrust of others, and his addiction to drink. However, he often repents of his misdeeds and tries very hard to make up for them. Penniless and friendless, he dies a sad death. The novel is a typical Hardy-esque tragedy.
that no one should mourn for or remember him. His will is all about what NOT to do for him after he dies. The short document ends: "...and that no man remember me. To this I put my name. MICHAEL HENCHARD."
she feigns pregnancy. Hardy's treatment of the unhappy marriage of Jude and Arabella exemplifies an important theme in the novel: marriage as a trap. Hardy critiques the permanency of a contract negotiated due to a fleeting lust between two individuals. Soon after their marriage, Jude realizes that although the "transitory instinct" of sexual attraction had passed, "the marriage remained."
her hair. Jude learns that Arabella wears a hairpiece when she removes it in preparation for bed. He does not discover Arabella's ability to produce false dimples or her feigned pregnancy until later.
in a portrait owned by his aunt Drusilla. When Jude moves to Christminster, he asks his aunt to send the portrait to him. He later spies Sue at her place of employment and at church, and she comes to see him at the stonemason's yard. However, they do not actually converse until their arranged meeting on a street in Christminster.
Venus and Apollo. Sue's purchase of these figures significantly shows her appreciation of antiquity and her veneration of classical values rather than Christian teachings. To conceal the identities of the statues from her landlady, Sue lies that they are representations of Peter and Mary Magdalen. The opposition of philosophy and reason with Christian morality is a major theme of the novel.
they are cousins. Jude and Sue both mention society's disapproval of cousins getting married.
Jude. Phillotson was Jude's teacher in Marygreen. When Jude discovers Sue's desire to teach, he introduces her to Phillotson in Christminster.
at a bar in Christminster. Jude finds Arabella working as a barmaid in Christminster when he accompanies an old friend to the bar for a drink. Depressed by the advent of Sue's recent marriage, Jude is tempted to drink at the bar, and is later seduced by Arabella.
Sue jumps out of a window to escape Phillotson. When Sue first asks Phillotson if he will allow her to leave him, her husband refuses. It is only after Sue jumps out of her bedroom window when Phillotson accidentally enters the room that he lets her go to be with her lover.
she wants to marry another man. While she is in Australia, Arabella meets another man. Believing Jude is dead, she and the Australian marry. She realizes a divorce will make her second marriage legal.
he was hanged. The Widow Edlin recounts the story of Jude's and Sue's ancestor whose wife ran away from him, taking their child with her. The child died, and the husband attempted to steal the child's coffin from his wife's house. He was caught and hanged for burglary. Mrs. Edlin tells this story to illustrate why Sue's and Jude's family has always had bad luck with marriage.
she feels it will destroy their happiness. Sue believes, based partly on previous experience, that once two people are married their passion for each other dissolves: "'it is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall be that person's lover.'" She thinks that marriage "'is destructive to a passion whose essence is its gratuitousness.'"
because their family has bad luck with marriage. Drusilla spends her entire life unmarried, and advises against any member of her family marrying because none who have married have found happiness.
Jude and Arabella. Little Father Time is a product of their marriage, although Arabella does not tell Jude about their son for many years. The child spends the first years of his life in Australia with Arabella's family.
they never marry. Although Jude and Sue comes close to legally marrying several times in the novel, Sue always changes her mind shortly before they go through the ceremony. Finally, the couple begin to tell people that they are legally married, even though they are not.
Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day, held at the University, honors graduating scholars. Hardy models the University at Christminster on Oxford University. The following year, Jude dies on Remembrance Day, after remembering his own failed ambitions.
they commit suicide. After Sue reveals to Little Father Time that so many children make it difficult for the family to survive, he and the other two children hang themselves.
she renounces her ties to Jude. The deaths of the three oldest children, shortly followed by Sue's delivery of a stillborn, convince Sue that her life with Jude is immoral and cursed. She decides that she is still bound to Phillotson, and resolves to return to him.
women and alcohol. Jude tells Sue that she is the only one who can keep him from his two "arch enemies."
not to marry Phillotson. Mrs. Edlin tells Sue that she is making a mistake by marrying Phillotson, and that she should not marry him because she is still in love with Jude. However, she does not specifically tell Sue to go back to Jude.
she gets him drunk. Arabella manages to keep Jude so intoxicated that he is not thinking clearly. She then tells him that he promised to marry her, and believing her, he feels obligated to fulfill his word.
she consummates her marriage with Phillotson. Although Sue's and Phillotson's marriage is only nominal at first, Sue ultimately decides that the moral thing to do is to submit fully to her husband, even though he repulses her.
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