McTeague and the Mayor of Casterbridge

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Shelly Moy

M. Regan

ENG261AC

April 28, 2003

Thomas Hardy and Frank Norris are artists, painting portraits of men filled with character, that is distraught with regression. The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy is a powerful and searching fable. Frank Norris’ McTeague is a documentation of the animalistic pursuit of empty dreams. Both authors withhold the protagonists of their dreams, in a grotesque world, which provides no sign of escape. Each emphasizes themes of greed and devolution, while carefully detailing character portraits. Both Hardy and Norris broadcast a network of symbolism to enhance the meaning of their works. Hardy and Norris’ use of complex character portraits, simplistic settings and love subplots employ correlating themes of decay and provide similar and contrasting insights into their novels.

The settings of both novels are based in small simple structured towns. Each take place during the post-Victorian era. Both authors base their novels within these small towns and avoid the introduction of a new setting. The development of a single setting story allows for both Hardy and Norris to manifest a greater complexity in the protagonist’s plight. In McTeague, “All the needed data are given at the start, and the main action-except the ending-glows out of the data; no face is withheld to allow the story to take an unexpected twist, and the facts are given mean what they purport to

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mean” (Frohock 10). The Mayor of Casterbridge also follows the setting structure of a small town filled with all the necessary elements for Henchard’s undulating character progression. It is unique that both authors focus solely upon one small town, both only escaping its confides once, either in the very beginning or in the end. Both Hardy and Norris spin a complex web of symbols, characters and love subplots within their settings.

The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a drunken Michael Henchard selling his wife and child to a sailor. The next day he rises feeling remorse for his actions, he seeks them, yet they are gone. Henchard eventually winds up in the simple town of Casterbridge. Here he seeks to create a sense of justice for the “tragic error which is the result of [his] moral weakness” (Gibson 97). Eighteen years pass and Henchard has cycled to the top of his wheel of fortune, his is a successful businessman and the eventual mayor of Casterbridge. Henchard suffocates the growing guilt within him; he sold his wife and then lets down the grain merchants of his town. His feelings of guilt serve as a fuel that continues to propel him to his own demise. “Time after time, one or another of Henchard’s basic needs presses him into action which lead within an ever-increasing sense of fatality to his eventual doom” (Carpenter 105). However, Henchard’s constant efforts to bring value to his name and character set the ironic tone for the novel’s end. It is Henchard’s consistent resilience which, in the end, allows Hardy to elevate him to the level of a hero, in the end providing value to his name, Michael Henchard, a name that deserves to be remembered.

Norris begins McTeague simply with McTeague. He is a simple man with simple intention and simple pleasures. He spends Sundays alone in his dental parlor, smoking

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his cigar and drinking his steamed beer. “McTeague’s mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draft horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient” (Norris 7). The beginning of McTeague almost seems like the end, “when he opened his Dental Parlors, he felt that his life was a success, that he could hope for nothing better” (Norris 7), here no conflict or foreshadowing exist, this is only Norris’ beginning statement to the devolution of McTeague’s character and lifestyle. From here, Norris seduces McTeague to his eventual demise through intense acts of animalism. Upon meeting Trina, his best friend Marcus’s love interest who comes to him because of a broken tooth, his psyche begins to change and animalistic feelings begin to well up inside McTeague. During turbulent days for McTeague and Trina, his character qualities begin to take a form all their own, and are governed by a strange savage primitiveness. His civility then dissolves, and a rather brute animalism ruptures within him. The laws of humanity no longer govern McTeague, and his abusive qualities foreshadow imminent doom. McTeague becomes obsessed with the greed that has overcome his wife, Trina and assaults her in order to get her to give him the money she