Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:42:40.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Crevice in the Canvas: A Study of The Mayor of Casterbridge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Annie Ramel
Annie Ramel
Affiliation:
Université Lumière-Lyon 2, France
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The second chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a metaphor that is worth considering: “The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when the man awoke” (17; ch. 2). The “crevices of the canvas” are, in my opinion, emblematic of the breach by which Henchard has just severed the bonds between himself and humankind. Not only has he shaken loose from his wife, he has also, more importantly, discarded his own daughter. As Elaine Showalter has pointed out, the sale of the child brings to the fore the question of paternity; Henchard has broken the symbolic chain which connected him to both his ancestors and his offspring, and he re-enters society alone, “the new Adam, reborn, self-created, unencumbered” (57). In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, as Jan Gordon observes, a similar rupture affects historical continuity (366). The pointed shaft of the mail-cart piercing the breast of the unhappy horse, Prince, and releasing a flood of blood that cannot be staunched, represents that breach metaphorically. In the two novels, Hardy deals with a breach in the succession of generations and the subsequent impossibility to re-unite what has been sundered. In both stories, a missing link in a chain of symbolic transmission sets off a tragic process that will end only with the death of the heroes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , fall 1998 , pp. 259 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Bloom, Harold, ed. Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. New York and Philadelphia: Modern Critical Interpretations, 1987.Google Scholar
Bullen, J. B. “Visual Appearance and Psychological Reality in The Mayor of Casterbridge.” Bloom 103–22.Google Scholar
Escuret-Bertrand, Annie. “L'oeuvre romanesque de Thomas Hardy (1840–1928): lecture.” Thesis. Montpellier, 1983.Google Scholar
Gordon, Jan B. “Origins, History and the Reconstitution of Family: Tess' Journey.” ELH 43 (1976): 366–88.Google Scholar
Gregor, Ian. The Great Web: The Form of Hardy's Major Fiction. London: Faber and Faber, 1974.Google Scholar
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. 1886. Oxford: World's Classics, Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Urbervilles. 1891. Oxford: World's Classics, Oxford UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Holloway, John. “Hardy's Major Fiction.” The Mayor of Casterbridge. Ed. Robinson, James K.. New York: Norton, 1977. 342–46.Google Scholar
Johnson, Bruce. “True Correspondence: The Mayor of Casterbridge.” Bloom 95–101.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre III: Les psychoses. Paris: Seuil, 1981.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre VII: L'Ethique de la psychanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1986.Google Scholar
Lecercle, Ann. “The letter that killeth: the desacralized and the diabolic body in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare et le corps à la Renaissance: Actes du Congrès 1990 de la Société Française Shakespeare. Ed. Jones-Davies, M. T.. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1991. 137–52.Google Scholar
Levine, George. “Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge: Reversing the Real.” Bloom 69–93.Google Scholar
Meisel, Perry. The Myth of the Modern. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Miller, J. Hillis. Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Moynahan, Julian. “The Mayor of Casterbridge and the Old Testament's First Book of Samuel: A Study of Some Literary Relationships.” The Mayor of Casterbridge. Ed. Robinson, James K.. New York: Norton, 1977. 326–39.Google Scholar
Ramel, Annie. “‘Poor wounded name’: le nom blessé dans Tess of the d'Urbervilles.” Etudes Anglaises 44.4 (1991): 385–98.Google Scholar
Rosolato, Guy. Essais sur le Symbolique. Paris: Gallimard, 1969.Google Scholar
Showalter, Elaine. “The Unmanning of the Mayor of Casterbridge.” Bloom 53–68.Google Scholar
Strauss, Marc. “La vraie fonction du père, c'est d'unir un désir à la loi.” Lacan. Ed. Miller, Gerard. Paris: Bordas, 1987.Google Scholar