Style

In most respects The Mayor of Casterbridge is written in a fairly conventional style.  First published in 1886, it shares a lot of stylistic qualities with other Victorian-era novels.  That said, Hardy's sentence-to-sentence writing does stand out in a few ways.  In particular, Hardy's technique of making an allusion via simile is very noticeable.

Hardy uses this technique all the time.  He describes a character whose eyes are "as if Nature had been advised by Correggio in their creation."  After a disappointment Henchard wanders around "like Bellerophon" (that is to say, "cankered in soul").  In one scene Elizabeth-Jane is troubled by Henchard's presence, "like the brethren at the avowal of Joseph."  Elizabeth-Jane has poor penmanship, not at all "like the Princess Ida."  At 10:30 the town avenues are "deserted as the avenues of Karnac."  This list goes on, and on, and on...

For the most part these allusions are lost on me.  I think that's mostly since Hardy was writing with a very different audience in mind than myself.  With some quick Googling, though, I can usually get myself up to speed.

Correggio was a Renaissance-era painter.  In Greek myths Bellerophon was a hero who was, late in life, doomed to wander around blind and miserable.  Joseph's brothers, in Genesis, resent Joseph's favorable standings with their father and with God.  Furthermore, the brothers sell Joseph off to get rid of him (certainly an appropriate allusion for this book).  Karnak was an ancient Egyptian city—long-abandoned and in ruins by Hardy's time—whose roads would understandably be empty.

Hardy's idea is, of course, to develop further his characters and descriptions by drawing comparisons to well-known people, events, etc.  For a reader like me, though, it's hard to say these allusions are really adding anything.  And—again—I'd like to think it's a consequence of 150 years passing since the book was written, and of not total ignorance on my part.

At first I kind of enjoyed looking up these allusions.  I felt like I was getting some insight into Hardy's audience.  Who knew 19th century readers could catch all these references?  But Hardy uses this technique a ton, and for me it has reached a point of over-saturation.  Like with the infamous Wilhelm Scream, what started off totally innocuous has quickly become grating, if not quite unbearable.  I can't help but notice (and become irked) as I read.

In wrapping up, I want to clarify that I enjoy Hardy's style overall.  It's pretty engaging, and I think he's got a great ability to write about serious things with a sense of humor.  He just abuses his right as an author to make allusions.