The novel opens on a dirt road near the village of Weydon-Priors, in the English county of Wessex. Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser, is traveling with his wife, Susan, and young daughter, Elizabeth-Jane. However, a passing farmer tells the Henchards that there is no chance of finding employment or housing in the village. Discouraged, Michael takes his family to a furmity seller's tent in Weydon-Priors. The furmity seller adds liquor to Michael's meal, and after several servings Michael becomes an angry drunk. Because he believes his marriage at a young age ruined all his chances for success, he offers to sell his wife and daughter to the highest bidder. After several unanswered calls for bids, Susan says that someone should buy her, since her present owner isn't to her liking. Most of the other customers in the tent treat the auction as a joke, but soon a passing sailor hears the announcements and enters the tent. He offers to buy Susan and Elizabeth-Jane for five guineas, first making sure that Susan is willing to go. When Michael takes the money, Susan and Elizabeth-Jane leave with the sailor. Before leaving, Susan hurls her wedding-ring at Michael. Michael merely falls into a drunken slumber as the rest of the shocked customers leave.
The next morning, Michael awakens. Seeing the wedding ring and the money brings the events of the previous evening back to him. He realizes that he was partly to blame for his actions, but he also blames Susan for actually thinking that the auction would be binding. Nevertheless, because his excessive drinking caused the whole situation, he makes an oath: he will abstain from all liquor for twenty-one years. Then he sets out to search for his wife and daughter. At first the search is unsuccessful because Michael refuses to explain the circumstances of their parting. Finally he learns that three people matching the descriptions of the sailor, Susan, and Elizabeth-Jane have just emigrated. Resigned, Michael gives up the search and goes to another town in Wessex, the town of Casterbridge.

Eighteen years later, Susan and Elizabeth-Jane return to Weydon-Priors searching for Michael. Elizabeth-Jane believes that Michael is just a relative, since Susan has kept her previous marriage a secret. Susan seeks Michael because she believes that he can help them now that the sailor, named Newson, has died. The women stop in the furmity seller's tent, which is still there. They learn that Michael stopped in the tent a year after the auction and left word that he lived in Casterbridge. Susan and Elizabeth-Jane leave for Casterbridge right away.

When the women arrive in Casterbridge, they learn that Michael has become extremely influential as a prosperous merchant and as the mayor of the town. The night they arrive, the townspeople are discussing Michael's bad business deals in selling sprouted grain. A young Scotsman, Donald Farfrae, overhears the discussion and gives Michael some suggestions for making the grain usable. Farfrae also engages in a light flirtation with Elizabeth-Jane

Eventually Michael and Susan meet secretly. They decide to keep their past relationship a secret from Elizabeth-Jane. In fact, Michael suggests that they begin their relationship again. Susan should rent a cottage and allow Michael to court her in a respectable manner. Susan complies, and soon after they marry. Michael hopes that someday he can openly acknowledge Elizabeth-Jane as his daughter. At the same time, Michael has success in business as well by choosing Farfrae as his general manager and confidant. Farfrae's charm impresses all the townspeople and gains the attentions of Elizabeth-Jane once again. Michael has taken the young man under his wing and regards him almost as a brother. The only enemy Farfrae has is Joshua Jopp, a man who wanted the position of general manager.

When Susan and Michael remarry, Michael has another period of prosperity thanks to Farfrae's skills. The new wealth to which Elizabeth-Jane has been introduced produces a new beauty in her. Michael becomes fond of her and wants her to take his name legally. Susan, however, is reluctant to agree. Farfrae also takes an interest in Elizabeth-Jane. However, Elizabeth-Jane's shyness and discord between Farfrae and Michael have stopped any hope of a romance. Farfrae and Michael first have a disagreement over the punishment for an habitually late worker, Abel Whittle. Next, during a public celebration, Farfrae's diversions are a success while Michael's are a complete failure. The townspeople openly praise Farfrae, which leads Michael to remark that Farfrae's term as general manger is ending. Farfrae resigns and opens up his own corn and hay store.

Susan dies, leaving a letter for Michael that is not to be opened until Elizabeth-Jane's wedding-day. Michael is lonely from the arguments with Farfrae and the lack of any tie with Elizabeth-Jane, so he tells the girl that he is her father. After thinking it over, Elizabeth-Jane is convinced. Meanwhile, Michael finds Susan's letter and reads it. The letter reveals that Michael's own daughter died, and this Elizabeth-Jane is the child of the sailor Newson. The discovery shocks and angers Michael, and he becomes cold to Elizabeth-Jane without telling her the truth.

Elizabeth-Jane is confused, but tries to win the love of Michael by immersing herself in her studies. She also visits her mother's grave. One day she meets a wealthy and charming young woman at Susan's grave, and she pours out her story to the woman. The lady, Miss Lucetta Templeman, says she will soon be a resident of Casterbridge, and she would like it if Elizabeth-Jane can be her companion. Michael allows it despite his misgivings, and Elizabeth-Jane leaves that day.

Lucetta invites Michael to her home, even going so far as to send Elizabeth-Jane away on errands just to convince him to visit. Michael and Lucetta had an agreement long ago when he was in Jersey, but it had been put on hold because of his marriage. Now that Susan is dead, Lucetta wishes to renew the agreement. To her joy, a caller comes--but it is Farfrae coming to call on Elizabeth-Jane. Lucetta and Farfrae are instantly attracted to each other, and she begins to ignore Michael completely. While Michael tries to propose to Lucetta despite the presence of an unknown rival, Elizabeth-Jane realizes that Farfrae and Michael are in love with Lucetta, and she renounces any interest she may have had in Farfrae.

The competition between Farfrae and Michael extends into business, complicating the situation. Michael hires Joshua Jopp as his general manager, and orders Jopp to do all he can to force Farfrae out of business. Michael tries to base his grain purchase on the predictions of a weather-prophet, but the prediction is incorrect, and the bad investment drives Michael into debt. Farfrae buys wisely and gains money.

Despite his losses, Michael is still determined to marry Lucetta. After learning that Farfrae is the secret suitor, Michael forces Lucetta to agree to marrying him--or he will reveal their past connection by using her earlier love letters. Lucetta reluctantly agrees. The next day, Michael hears the trial of an old woman. The old woman is the furmity seller from long ago, and she tells the story of the wife auction. Lucetta is so horrified that she runs away to Port-Bredy. There she marries Farfrae secretly, and she tells Michael a few days later.

Meanwhile, Michael has terrible luck in business. One of his debtors fails; his men make bad decisions about corn to bring about Michael's bankruptcy. Farfrae takes the opportunity to buy Michael's headquarters and offer a job to Michael. Michael accepts, but feels real hatred at Farfrae's success. After all, Farfrae is the popular choice for mayor, and he has Lucetta. Michael looks forward to the ending of his oath not to drink liquor.

Elizabeth fears that Michael will hurt Farfrae, and the townspeople know all about Michael's hatred of Farfrae. Although Farfrae gives up the idea of giving Michael his own shop, he cannot leave Casterbridge because he is offered the position of mayor. Lucetta begs Michael to return her letters, and a combination of pity and contempt makes him agree.

Joshua Jopp meets Lucetta after her meeting with Michael. He asks her to help him get a position with Farfrae. Lucetta refuses. Michael gives Jopp a package to deliver to Lucetta, and Jopp reasons that they are love letters. He shares the letters with some poor townswomen who hate Lucetta. They plan to have a skimmity-ride through town the next night. When the effigies of Michael and Lucetta ride through town, Lucetta sees and is so shocked that she has a seizure that kills her.

The whole world has crashed around Michael, yet he still has the love of Elizabeth-Jane. Even this reconciliation is threatened by a surprise visit from Newson, whom everyone thought dead. Michael tells him that Elizabeth-Jane is dead, and the sailor accepts this, then leaves. Although Michael and Elizabeth-Jane soon settle into a peaceful life, Michael constantly worries about Newson's return.

Meanwhile, Farfrae returns to court Elizabeth-Jane. Michael is nervous about their courtship, and he becomes even more nervous when Elizabeth-Jane says she must meet someone. She meets Newson, who tells her the truth about her birth. At the wedding of Elizabeth-Jane and Farfrae, Michael comes to reconcile with his step-daughter, but he sees Newson and decides to never trouble Elizabeth-Jane again. Later, Elizabeth-Jane realizes that Michael wanted to make peace with her, and she sets out to find him. Abel Whittle, the man whom Michael wanted to fire once, cared for Michael in his last days. He tells Elizabeth-Jane that Michael is dead. Michael's last will states that no man should remember him. Elizabeth-Jane resolves to do as she is told, preferring to concentrate all her love on her husband and family

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《卡斯特桥市长》：命运交错在卡斯特桥



　　不读哈代，你不会真正明白经典的魅力。我们似乎已经习惯沉湎于用各种理论解构文本，而往往忽略了阅读的乐趣。哈代的《卡斯特桥市长》（曾胡译，译林出版社）却不仅可以让人从容批评，更带给你久违的读书之乐。在这篇人物命运交错的小说中，固然蕴涵着文学批评家所看到的人性与资本、个人与社会的争斗与发展，即便是纯粹地欣赏，故事和人物也同样让人掩卷良久，依然动容。

　　与哈代的其他后期小说一样，在《卡斯特桥市长》中，主导故事和其他人物命运的依然是小说的标题人物，卡斯特桥市长迈克尔·亨查德。亨查德年轻时酗酒轻狂，酒醉时卖妻鬻女，幡然醒悟后凭借执著与努力经商成功，还被选为卡斯特桥市长。然而，当他的前妻与女儿来到卡斯特桥后，一心赎罪的他在与命运的抗争中逐步走向崩溃。亨查德是小说的中心，他几乎左右着其他所有人物的命运，上至妻女，下至仆役，他们的生活几乎都在亨查德的操纵中。在改变他人命运的过程中，亨查德却无法改变自己的命运。卖妻让他觉醒发奋，事业有成，最终还是这一事件使他没落。从这个意义上说，亨查德试图改变命运的努力从来没有成功过。

　　值得注意的是，在亨查德与他人的命运交错中，对伐弗雷的挽留，却改变了伐弗雷和他自己的命运。与亨查德的相识，使伐弗雷从籍籍无名的苏格兰小子成为富甲一方的殷商，并取代亨查德当上卡斯特桥市长。亨查德却由于对伐弗雷的妒忌、排挤，招致生意失败，并失去市长之尊。如果放弃以亨查德为中心的既定阅读模式，以及传统的人性对比阐述，那么伐弗雷的重要性就不言而喻。与亨查德一样，他也是作品的题名人物，同样是卡斯特桥市长。他的发迹经过带有亨查德的影子，恰好是对小说中没有交代的亨查德生活中一段空白的补充。在深沉的亨查德和单纯的伐弗雷之间，哈代并没有加入任何过渡性人物，他以两人经历、情感和生活的相互补充，喻示着两者统一的必然性。亨查德和伐弗雷所包蕴的品质、人性和命运，存在于每个人的身上，生活就是在两者的矛盾与和解中演化。

　　作为生活场景的卡斯特桥是一个四四方方的城市，象征着社会道德规范的严谨有序。古罗马人的路经过卡斯特桥通往各方，小说的主要人物也经过这里，走向成功或没落。如果说人生如冬鸟过舍，那么卡斯特桥就是飞鸟在风雪中的庇护所。在这里并没有绝对的安逸，失意的人们要在卡斯特桥上作出哈姆雷特式的选择。亨查德和伐弗雷的故事表明，哈代从来不是个宿命论者，在他看来，生活就是选择与别人命运交错的结果。

　　出于对女性人物的钟爱，哈代在伊丽莎白·珍妮的命运中写出了理想的生活态度。伊丽莎白·珍妮命运坎坷，面对复杂的家庭关系和爱人的背弃，她一直坚毅地生活，对亨查德的关怀和对伐弗雷的爱慕始终如一。对于生活，她的态度实际而通透：所谓幸福不过是一部完整而又痛苦的戏剧中一段偶然的插曲而已。哈代以伊丽莎白·珍妮幸福的家庭生活为小说作结，寄寓着面对生活中命运交错的坦然态度。即使欲说还休，也还要认真地生活。

　　印度哲人室利阿罗频多说，大多我们过忙于生活和思想，没有余闲沉默而观看。《卡斯特桥市长》让我们可以沉默观看他人的生活，又得浮生半日闲。

我把重要的内容改了颜色

I INTRODUCTION

Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928), English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, who powerfully delineated characters, portrayed in his native Dorset, struggling helplessly against their passions and external circumstances.

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy provoked readers with his 1895 tragic novel Jude the Obscure, a scathing attack on the institution of marriage and sexual repression in 19th-century England.Globe Photos, Inc./Camera Press, London

Hardy was born in Higher Bockhampton, Dorsetshire, June 2, 1840, and educated in local schools and later privately. His father, a stonemason, apprenticed him early to a local architect engaged in restoring old churches. From 1862 to 1867 Hardy worked for an architect in London and later continued to practice architecture, despite ill health, in Dorset. Meanwhile, he was writing poetry with little success. He then turned to novels as more salable, and by 1874 he was able to support himself by writing. This is also the year that Hardy married his first wife, Emma Gifford. Their marriage lasted until her death in 1912, which prompted Hardy to write his collection of poems called Veteris Vestigiae Flammae (Vestiges of an Old Flame). These poems are some of Hardy's finest and describe their meeting and his subsequent loss. In 1914 Florence Dugdale became Hardy's second wife and she wrote his biography after he died in Dorchester, on January 11, 1928.

II EARLY WORKS: NOVELS

Hardy anonymously published two early novels, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872). The next two, A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), in his own name, were well received. Far from the Madding Crowd was adapted for the screen in 1967. In the latter he portrayed Dorsetshire as the imaginary county of Wessex. The novel is, however, not invested with the tragic gloom of his later novels. Some lesser works followed, including The Woodlanders (1887) and two volumes of short stories, Wessex Tales (1888) and Life's Little Ironies (1894).


Along with Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy's best novels are The Return of the Native (1878), which is his most closely knit narrative; The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886); Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), made into a movie called Tess in 1979; and Jude the Obscure (1895). All are pervaded by a belief in a universe dominated by the determinism of the biology of Charles Darwin and the physics of the 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Occasionally the determined fate of the individual is altered by chance, but the human will loses when it challenges necessity. Through intense, vivid descriptions of the heath, the fields, the seasons, and the weather, Wessex attains a physical presence in the novels and acts as a mirror of the psychological conditions and the fortunes of the characters. These fortunes Hardy views with irony and sadness. The critic G. K. Chesterton wrote that Hardy “became a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot.” In Victorian England, Hardy did indeed seem a blasphemer, particularly in Jude, which treated sexual attraction as a natural force unopposable by human will. Criticism of Jude was so harsh that Hardy announced he was “cured” of writing novels.

III LATER WORKS: POETRY AND DRAMA

At the age of 55 Hardy returned to writing poetry, a form he had previously abandoned. Wessex Poems (1898) and Poems of the Past and Present (1901) contained poems he had written earlier. In The Dynasts, written between 1903 and 1908, Hardy created what some consider his most successful poetry. An unstageable epic drama in 19 acts and 130 scenes, it deals with the role of England during the Napoleonic Wars. Hardy's vision is the same as in his novels: History and the actors, who are racked by feeling, are nevertheless dominated by necessity. Hardy's short poems, both lyric and visionary, were published as Time's Laughing Stocks (1909), Satires of Circumstances (1914), Moments of Vision (1917), Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922), Human Shows, Far Fantasies (1925), and Winter Words (1928). Hardy's techniques of rhythm and his diction are especially noteworthy. Among his most successful shorter poems are “Channel Firing, April 1914,””Wessex Heights,””In Tenebris, I,””God's Funeral,” and “Nature's Questioning.”

巨汗。。。

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