That is the novels of Thomas Hardy there always lies astray on fate and chance is now a long established fact. From novel to novel, he highlights the strange coincidences and shows how big they important in human life. Sometimes it feels a little odd that a modern novelist like Hardy should be so fatalist, but Hardy in this respect loves to be an ancient then to be a modern. Hardy, Bing a lover of rustic life, shared with these people their orthodox, beliefs and dogmas. Apart this, Hardy is deeply influenced by Sophocles and Aeschylus – The great tragic playwrights of Greece. In Greek tragedies the hallmark run as destiny his character and man figures out nothing more then a puppet at its cruel hands. It affirms the view that man is born free but everywhere he is in chains. As such, Hardy too consider fate as a significant phenomenon that governs the graph of human life.
Like other novels of Hardy, The Mayor Of Casterbridge too deals with the saga of ups and downs of human life. It portrays strikingly The key role of fate and chance in it. Through these supernatural agencies Hardy has been able to show the fragility of human will and the over riding influences of the unknown forces on human life. According to him, man suffers because there is an imminent force which is bent on seeing man suffer.
What Hardy aims at in this abstract is to point out the pervasive presence of fate and chance in human life. Fate and chance are meant to perform only evil in the world and nothing good or wholesome is supposed ever to come out of them. “But the ingenious machinery is contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum……..”. It is clear enough that supernatural powers are interested in seeing man wallowing in suffering and thus unhappy.
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In Hardy’s novel, certain events are such as can be explained and interpreted in terms of fate and chance alone. For example, accidental deaths take place in almost all of his recognized novel. There is a case of a snake-biting in “Tess of D’urbervilles” and collapse of the bridge in The Return of the Native. Both accidents result in death leaving us aghast and without explanation such cashes are also presented in The Mayor Of Casterbridge. It is a sheer chance that Henchard drinks to his throat at Three Mariners and sells his wife. In like manner it is a piece of chance that Henchard meets with Farfrae.
On the score of these intense is, it can safely be said the chance has a big say in the novels of Thomas Hardy. However, fate ushers in a rosy and prosperous chance in the life of Henchard and Farfrae. Rise from the lower rung of a hay-trusser to the respectable chair of The Mayor Of Casterbridge and vice versa is the story of Henchard life. Almost similar in the case with Farfrae. He also rises along the line of Henchard, although his fall is not indicated in the novel. Here we are reminded of Tolstoy’s famous line ‘fortune turns like a wheel and due to its movement man receive ups and downs in life. In Hardy, the fortune plays hide and seek with human life and over it man has practically no control.
To conclude, fate and chance play the warp and whoop in the novels of Hardy. In shaping his character in their actions and behavior, they play a very important role. Due to this dual elements he is able to justify the train of accidents and mishaps that take place in his novels. Over and above all fate and chance cast a role of consequence in The Mayor Of Casterbridge giving us a clue to the proper understanding and enjoyment of the novel.
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