A New Historical Analysis Of The Mayor Of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy(1840-1928) is a famous Victorian novelist and poet. Born in the transitional period of England from a rural aristocratic society to an industrial democracy, Hardy has an insight into the industrial development of eroding and patriarchal society in the United Kingdom, which has disturbed all sorts of lifestyles and habits of farmers formed in the rural environment in the long term. As Hardy’s most classic character novel among famous “novels of character and environment”, The Mayor of Casterbridge has been a controversial work all along. Critics at home and abroad have studied the main themes of the novel, the main characters, the narrative techniques. They also studied it from a large number of other aspects. A great many studies of Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge illustrate the profundity of thought and academic value of the novel. New Historicism has become an important school of literary criticism recently. This thesis tries to analyze The Mayor of Casterbridge from the perspective of New Historicism, and then reveal how the author succeeded in deepening the theme.New Historicism stresses the study of some repressed and marginalized historical and cultural factors. New historicist critics try to focus on the history of literary texts, get rid of the control of the accepted social, political and economic biases. New Historicists proceed from the social and cultural field which produced literary works in the first place, and find new ideas of literary texts through comparison of prevailing social customs and non-discursive practices. This paper discusses The Mayor of Casterbridge from the new historicists’ perspective and reveals that the novel has a close association with the Victorian historical context. This paper is made up of two chapters. Chapter One studies the textuality of history. Hardy reflects contemporary history through common people’s daily life and makes a sharp contrast between the former and the latter parts of the novel, describing historical changes in terms of nature in Victorian Age, so nature is given a certain amount of metaphorical meanings in the novel, with a sense of history. However, in Hardy’s opinion, historical changes does not necessarily mean development and progress but often means loss and regret. Just because he shares the loss and regret, Hardy sings to us a song of pastoral Elegy, which reveals the epic theme of the rise of social disintegration and the emerging bourgeoisie society. New Historicists’ emphasis on the anecdotes of the historical periods and seemingly unimportant detail of the text will help to uncover some unknown historical truth, so as to reconstruct the history of Hardy’s own interpretation. Chapter Two explores Hardy’s historical consciousness and studies outer factors of the novel as well as the impact of the work on social and historical developments. According to New Historicism, literary texts are subject to historical background, personality of the author, and effect of ideology and ethics while literature texts also have a role in shaping the social and historical developments. The thesis states that the Victorian society has undergone rapid development during late 19 th century and early 20 th century; Hardy’s family background has left him with a mark; In terms of literary achievements, he was greatly influenced by Henry Havelock Ellis and other great writers. All of these features are demonstrated in The Mayor of the Casterbridge. As one of the greatest of the late 19 th century and early 20 th century novels, The Mayor of the Casterbridge promotes the development of society.According to New Historicism, Literary criticism is not only under the influence of social and historical background of the text creation but also will be influenced by the social and historical background of literary criticism. Therefore, New Historicism inspires sustainable literature researches on the different social and historical context. As a method of literary theory and criticism, New Historicism presents a unique vision to study the relationship between the text and history. So, this paper studies The Mayor of Casterbridge with the method of New Historicism, which is used to warn people of the protagonist’s tragedy due to the reason of his defective character and social factors. And at the same time, the paper purposes on encouraging us to ponder on our own culture in this new century.