THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE IN A GLIMPSE

1. Michael Henchard sells his wife Susan and one-year-old child Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor called Newson in a fair in utter tipsiness.

2. Realising his grave error the following morning, he swears that he won’t drink for next 21 years.

3. In a jump of a chapter, 20 years elapse, and Susan and Elizabeth-Jane seem to be in search of Henchard.

4. Henchard meanwhile has become a rich corn-merchant and the mayor of a rustic town called Casterbridge.

5. Jane being ignorant of the fact that Henchard was her biological father, the secret which Susan didn’t reveal, Henchard and Susan reunite by a marriage.

6. Henchard hires a Scotchman called Donald Farfrae as his clerk, and there grows a suppressed intimacy between the latter and the former’s daughter.

7. Farfrae puts all business complications right, and becomes popular among the town folk to the jealousy of his master.

8. Farfrae is sacked, and starts a business of his own and becomes more powerful than Henchard.

9. Susan dies, and leaves a letter in which is instructed not to be opened until Jane’s marriage.

10. Henchard reveals the truth to Jane, saying he, and not Newson, was her real father, and adds all that happened two decades ago.

11. In a fit of curiosity, he opens the letter very next minute, and learns that Jane, his real daughter, died 3 months after the sale, and the present Jane was born to Newson.

12. From then on, Henchard grows a dislike towards Jane and find faults with whatever she does.

13. Meanwhile, Lucetta, who once loved Henchard, settles at Casterbridge, with a view to marry him as his wife had passed away.

14. Jane befriends Lucetta and goes and settles with her as her father grows absolutely unbearable.

15. Knowing Jane is no more his, Henchard letters to Farfrae saying that he didn’t have any objection as to his courtship with Jane.

16. Farfrae comes to meet Jane, but falls in love with Lucetta and they marry.

17. Henchard descends into a financial crisis, and is pushed to bankruptcy and therefore loses everything including his home.

18. Farfrae becomes the mayor of Casterbridge, and Henchard becomes an ordinary employee at Farfrae’s corn factory.

19. As business, Lucetta, and mayoralty, all three were grabbed by Farfrae now, Henchard wants to kill him.

20. Farfrae and Henchard lock horns in a wrestling tussle, and at the brink of killing Farfrae, Henchard lets him free.

21. Lucetta dies of a severe faint caused by the scandal raised by a pack of bad hats of her early affair with Henchard.

22. Henchard grows sudden fondness towards his step-daughter, and asks her to come and live with him.

23. one day Newson comes to Henchard to claim his daughter, but the latter turns him down saying Jane had died.

24. A year passes, and Farfrae and Jane renew their love, and all set to marry.

25. Henchard runs into Newson one day, and resolves to go away from Jane and does so.

26. Newson comes to Jane and all the truth is revealed.

27. After some time, Henchard learns that Jane is going to marry, and on the wedding day, comes with a present of a cage and a bird in it.

28. Henchard meets Jane and says that he wouldn’t disturb her anymore thenceforth.

29. Henchard, with none or nowhere to go, dies.

30. Jane and Farfrae find Henchard dead, and bury him without much ceremony as per his will.

Note: I’ve read Dickens, George Eliot, Twain, Lawrence, Bronte sisters, and more recent ones like Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Hermingway, Golding, J.M. Coetzee, but none had struck me like Thomas Hardy. Even critics have hailed him of his portrayal of tragic characters more efficient than that of the legendary Shakespeare.