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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
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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

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References

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