Thomas Hardy: 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'

Recently watched a really good film version of Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' with Ciaran Hinds brilliantly playing the role of Michael Henchard:

Why did I watch this film version?  Well, I read 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' back in the early/mid-1980s, and my mind has become a lot greyer since then, so I just wanted to quickly remind myself of the novel.

After watching the film adaptation of 'The Mayor of Casterbridge', I found myself asking the obvious main question of why we, the readers or viewers, empathise so much with such a figure as Michael Henchard, who, after all, can be seen selling his wife and baby child away at a country fair at the beginning of the novel.

And I guess that to answer such a question, we have to compare Henchard with his nemesis, Donald Farfrae:

While Henchard is well-built, passionate, impulsive, and above all else, real; Farfrae is a rational, highly moral, and fair-minded man, almost an idealisation of what a man should be (or what Henchard would like to be if he wasn't 'restricted' by his passionate nature).  Moreover, Henchard seems to have a quality of being authentic, as he ceaselessly suffers from a moral tug-of-war within himself, and gradually becomes a victim of forces and events beyond his control (as the wife-selling episode repeatedly comes back to haunt him during the novel).

Also, there is a fundamental class difference between the two main male protagonists:  whilst Henchard has built himself up from humble origins to be the Mayor of Casterbridge, Farfrae is from an educated, middle-class background, and everything just seems to nicely fall into place whether this be business/civic success or women.  Thus, while Farfrae's class background somewhat pre-determines his success; Henchard builds himself up through force of will and effort, going beyond what his lowly origins tried to pre-determine for him, and this is why his downfall (essentially caused by his fierce envy/jealousy of Farfrae) is so painful to observe.

Really like this aspect of Hardy where he brings out the nobility of passionate and gifted 'lower' (non-middle) class characters who are sadly destined to fall, such as Michael Henchard; Tess; and Jude Fawley.