The Mayor of Casterbridge: 5th thread: Chapter 37-45

[Claudia]

Great comments Peter!

I am really very ignorant about Shakespeare, King Lear and all, although I know them from hearsay.

Instead, I am bothering you (all) one last time:

The last, but not least, common feature in Les Misérables is interesting.

The very last chapter shows Jean Valjean's unmarked grave at Le Père Lachaise cemetery. I have read the novel about four times within five years and each time I am weeping buckets at the end.

"Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon [Jean Valjean's gravestone] in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, to-day, probably effaced:

Il dort. Quoique le sort fût pour lui bien étrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n’eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d’elle-même arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s’en va."

Closing lines of Les Miserables, Isabel Hapgood's translation.

The little poem, typical for Victor Hugo's simplicity, referred to Jean Valjean's declining health when he lost his angel, i.e. when Cosette married.

[Peter]

Claudia

Never a bother. One of the many wonderful features of our group is how much we openly share, and thus collectively learn.

And now a confession. Many years ago I did see the stage version of ‘Les Miserables’. I have fond memories of it but have forgotten most of the nuances of the plot and characters. Is there an English translation of the play you would recommend? I am Canadian but confess that all the French I learned in school has left me long, long ago.

Thank you.

[Claudia]

Peter wrote: " Claudia

Never a bother. One of the many wonderful features of our group is how much we openly share, and thus collectively learn.

And now a confession. Many years ago I did see the stage versio..."

It is a novel that became famous in the English speaking world because there has been a musical adaptation shown in London and New York for several decades and recently in Paris too, and many, many screen and stage adaptations. Victor Hugo completed it while in exile in Guernsey. He had left France in a hurry to Belgium, but was expelled to Jersey and then settled in Guernsey.

If you click on Les Misérables, you will find the most recent English translation - I suppose it is the best one. I mentioned Isabel Hapgood's because it is the one in Gutenberg, most probably the first one, but she seems to stick a bit to the text, which is not always fine.

I am very cautious about translations - better read the original text if possible. (Even if a translation is very good, we always miss something.)

Here is my review, but there would have been so much to say!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

To bring us back to Thomas Hardy, he and Emma had visited Jersey before he wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge so this will have informed the parts about Lucetta.

Bridget has done such an excellent job in covering the different endings, including the goldfinch episode. It wasn't straightforward, so thank you so much. I am enormously grateful to have a co-mod to work with who is so knowledgeable and diligent. Thank you Bridget for leading this second half, and making our group read of another novel by Thomas Hardy so very enjoyable for us all.

Thanks to Connie also, for her stellar work on the associated poems. I can honestly say that incorporating these was a new experience for me, and one I hope to be able to repeat. (Don't miss the final two, everyone!)

And of course thanks to everyone who participated, especially to those who have generously shared their insights with us. I believe we have all benefited from this, and gained a wider and more in-depth experience of this novel.

I'll can now add more about the different endings; please forgive me though if I inadvertently repeat anything already mentioned ...

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

Different Plans and Editions

We've talked of this at various points, but some might have entailed spoilers. One which intrigues me is that at one point there were to be two daughters: one staying with Henchard and one going with Susan and Newson; the Elizabeth Jane of the opening chapters was not to die, so the young woman in the body of the novel was to be Henchard's real daughter. Newson himself was to die, instead of returning in the final chapters to supplant Henchard.

We can see that if he had gone with this plan, then Hardy's intention to make the relationship with Farfrae the centre of the novel would have been more fleshed out.

There are quite a few scenes which were missed out in the ongoing American serial, which were restored in later editions, so we will have read most of these.

And the opposite applies too: scenes which were in both British and American serial editions, but removed when published in book form.

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

One major one is that in the serials, Henchard and Lucetta were married 2 weeks before Susan's return, on the assumption that Susan was dead. Hardy had originally planned to have an irregular sexual liaison between Henchard and Lucetta, but needed to conform to the public's perception of decency (on both sides of the Atlantic), In the early book editions they do not marry but have a non-sexual relationship. By 1895 the book had reached the shape it is most often printed in most essentials, including that of Henchard and Lucetta's previous liaison as Hardy had originally planned.

There are other chance encounters, sometimes secretly observed, and also letters which were passed through intermediaries in the serial were greatly simplified.

Bridget has explained about two alterative endings. The goldfinch episode came and went in various editions, but stayed in the Wessex edition of 1912 (the later Mellstock edition of 1920 only has minor changes.

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

The most interesting difference for me in the American and British editions concerns Elizabeth-Jane, and suggests a different view of her.

In both the original serial and the American edition, Elizabeth-Jane knows that Newson is still alive, and she has in fact been meeting him for some time without Henchard's knowledge. (Once we know this, we can see that parts of the text near the end where we assume she is secretly meeting Farfrae, could just as easily have been when she was meeting Newson). In the English edition the situation is reversed.

This is the version of the story that we mostly read, I think. Henchard knows of Newson's return, but Elizabeth-Jane does not. So in effect in the American edition Elizabeth-Jean deceives Henchard, while in the English edition he deceives her. This seems a whopping difference to me!

Consequently, in the English edition it is the realisation that she is about to be reunited with her real father (since Hardy had abandoned his "two sisters" version) - rather than her forthcoming marriage to Farfrae - that causes Henchard to leave Casterbridge.

Bridget summarised the resulting variations for us superbly. This edition necessarily omitted Henchard's return to see the wedding , bringing the goldfinch.as a present, only to be rejected by Elizabeth-Jane; this episode was retained (as Bridget explained) in the American edition. Taken together, these changes cause Elizabeth-Jane to appear in a less sympathetic light in the American version.

All these variations, plus others, are detailed in the Norton edition.

I find I have a peculiar attitude to it all. Perhaps because these characters are so familiar to me, they are "real" in my mind. So I have a sort of mix-and-match approach, retaining different parts of the various editions, according to what best fits my view of how they "really are"! 😆 (An example of this is Elizabeth-Jane, whose motivations seem to be a bit muddled by the end.)

But maybe it's not so shocking. After all, I suspect that Thomas Hardy himself struggled to accord what he had written, constantly striving to accommodate it to his belief in his invented characters as real living beings too.

[Bridget, Moderator]

Bionic Jean wrote: "For me Farfrae has an elusive personality. In fact, even if he had been described more fully, and a little time given to his inner thoughts, I find the bright, cheerful, talented and "kind-as-long-as-it-doesn't-interfere-with-business" Donald Farfrae a little shallow.

How about Elizabeth-Jane? Did she grow to be the good and true heroine we hoped for at the start?"

Jean, I'm so glad you brought up your thoughts about Farfrare, because I feel exactly the same. Farfrae is a character who could use more "fleshing out", and IMO that doesn't really happen. Because of that so many of his actions seem "shallow", as you say.

For instance, his affections move so quickly from Elizabeth to Lucetta. When Lucetta dies, Farfrae seems to rationalize it and then move on quickly back to Elizabeth. Again, just shallow.

About Elizabeth-Jane - I wish she had been "fleshed out" more as well. There were comments from us along the way of wishing we could have Eliabeth's POV. There are many times where she's not heard from for many chapters. But particularly at the end of the story where (as Jean says) she just seems content and not passionately happy about her life with Farfrae. Did everyone catch that Elizbeth is pregnant as she and Farfrae go searching for Henchard as month after their wedding? Or at least I think she's pregnant for the text says "her complexion somewhat richer than formerly, and an incipient matronly dignity".

But then perhaps given the life she's led, practical contentment is the best we can hope for from Elizabeth.

[Bridget, Moderator]

Bionic Jean wrote: "Different Plans and Editions

We've talked of this at various points, but some might have entailed spoilers. One which intrigues me is that at one point there were to be two daughters: one staying ..."

Thank you so much Jean for adding in the other BIG changes between the different editions of this story. I wrote so many posts trying to explain them all, and had to delete them because everything I wrote was so confusing LOL. But you summed it all up brilliantly!!

The changes are so huge, that we really would have been reading a completely different story. Henchard and Lucetta married when Susan returns . . . totally different!

And the changes to Elizabeth you rightly say make her a very different character. That she knows Newson is alive means her walks toward Budmouth were for a purpose, to see her father.

Anyway, my brain struggles to contain all the differences! I can't imagine how Hardy coped with editing the story to accommodate his changes. In fact, I'm not sure he always succeeded at that.

[Bridget, Moderator]

I also need to apologize to everyone for not keeping up with adding chapter and poem links to the first message in this thread. I'm so sorry. My paltry excuse is that I was posting late at night, right before bed and in my tired stupor I forgot. I've just added them now, so future users will have an easier time navigating this discussion.

Thank you for your patience with my derelict duty!

And thank you so much Jean for making this such a wonderful co-moderator experience! You are such a joy to work with - it was a priviledge to moderate with you.

I have to also thank every single one of the members who followed along on this journey. Each of you added buckets of insight and information to this read. I want to echo Cindy's sentiment about the one-chapter-a-day approach to reading the classics. I too stumbled across it in the Dickens group (as probably we all did), and it is so rewarding! I often think, where has this been all my life! Imagine all the classics I could have read by now if I'd known about this twenty years ago!

Please feel free to keep posting! I'm sure there is more to say. :-)

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

I don't usually do this, but maybe I can take up this segue ...

Since several have said how much they like the chapter-a-day format, I'd like to alert you to the annual Big Read which is starting right now in "Dickensians!" It's of Martin Chuzzlewit and the first thread is LINK HERE. Chapter 1 is on Saturday.

Like I say, I've always taken a dim view of advertising one group in another, (and although many of you know how nuts I am about Dickens, I try not to mention any of his works/characters unless they are directly relevant). But the notifications are so appalling now that if I can alert just one person to something they would regret missing, it will be worth it. I hope you agree!

[Connie]

Jean and Bridget, thank you for leading such an enlightening discussion. I looked forward to getting on the computer and reading your summaries every morning. I appreciate all the time you put in researching each chapter.

[Connie]

The final poem, "The Puzzled Game-Birds," has been posted. I hope you've enjoyed a taste of Hardy's poetry.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Brian]

Henchard fights Farfrae. I'm trying to remember other instances of violence in Hardy. Of course there was the attack on Tess. Otherwise I'm struggling. Doesn't seem to have been Hardy's cup of tea.

Henchard a few times takes things to the brink of a major (bad) act, and then backs off. Hardy does the same, in reverse - takes characters to the brink of great happiness and then slaps them down.

It is particularly moving to me, as a private person, when I read someone exposing their innermost pain to another. Farfrae, in speaking with Elizabeth-Jane, says, "A secret cast a deep shadow over MY life", referring to Lucetta's past life finally exposed.

Novels' plots usually take major twists and turns - that's their nature. It seems to me that TMOC is packed with the most surprises of Hardy's works. If not, I'd like to be reminded of which has (have) even more.

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

Brian wrote: "It seems to me that TMOC is packed with the most surprises of Hardy's works ..."

Yes, Thomas Hardy himself said that it was the novel which was damaged most by the serial format, with the need to insert "cliffhangers". At least one of the information posts here lists some of these - plus the ones he removed for the book editions - which makes us wonder whatever the serial must have been like! Quite a Victorian "shocker" 😆

It's good to get your take on things, Brian. You have made me wonder about the prevalence or not of violent episodes in Thomas Hardy's works.

I think usually they tend to be critical and major, rather than incidental, and that may be the difference here. Not much changed as a result of this forced "fight" did it, apart from it adding to Henchard's despair. The feeling remind me of the scene in Far From the Madding Crowd where (view spoiler)[ Francis Troy, having married Bathsheba Everdene, throws farmer Boldwood's proffered coins at his feet (hide spoiler)] as opposed to the later very dramatic and devastating (view spoiler)[ fatal shooting of Troy by Boldwood. (hide spoiler)]

[Brian]

Bionic Jean wrote: "Brian wrote: "It seems to me that TMOC is packed with the most surprises of Hardy's works ..."

Yes, Thomas Hardy himself said that it was the novel which was damaged most by the ser..."

Yes, of course - I forgot that one.