Hardy uses a simile comparing Michael Henchard’s nature to the sea, ultimately illustrating the many changes that people undergo throughout their lives and the strong pull that feelings have on their actions. In Chapter 33, Henchard describes how religious fervor moves him like the ocean both as a drunk and as a sober, successful man:
Hang Samuel Wakely’s tune, as improved by thee!” said Henchard. “Chuck across one of your psalters—old Wiltshire is the only tune worth singing—the psalm-tune that would make my blood ebb and flow like the sea when I was a steady chap. I’ll find some words to fit en.” He took one of the psalters and began turning over the leaves.
Henchard tells his appalled audience at the pub that the tune he is singing makes his blood “ebb and flow like the sea,” relating the ocean to the strong emotions provoked by stirring music. This was the case, Henchard tells them, even when he was a “steady chap,” implying that his body underwent tidal reactions to “psalm-tunes” even before he began drinking again. Language about the ocean also appears as a motif throughout the novel, as it plays a role of convergence and separation. This happens physically when people come to and leave England, and psychologically when people drift or are pulled apart.
People's interior emotions also move and flow like water, as Hardy shows in Chapter 25 when Lucetta and Elizabeth-Jane discuss their relationship and Lucetta implores her to stay by her side:
When the young woman came in, sweetly unconscious of the turn in the tide, Lucetta went up to her, and said quite sincerely— “I’m so glad you’ve come. You’ll live with me a long time, won’t you?” [...] Her emotions rose, fell, undulated, filled her with wild surmise at their suddenness; and so passed Lucetta’s experiences of that day.
The language Hardy uses here is deliberately “watery,” which likens Lucetta’s emotions both to the ocean and to Michael Henchard’s experiences. For both of these characters, feelings “rise, fall and undulate” in a way that seems beyond their control, like the tidal pull of the sea. This is also important for Lucetta as a character because she is often associated with images of the moon in this book. Her actions as his wife and as his lover affect Henchard’s “ocean” like the lunar influence on the tides.
Hardy uses a simile in Chapter 24 to illustrate Elizabeth-Jane's assessment of Lucetta's appearance, when the other young woman asks her if she looks visibly tired after a difficult and euphemistic conversation about second marriages:
“Bring me a looking-glass. How do I appear to people?” she said languidly. “Well—a little worn,” answered Elizabeth, eyeing her as a critic eyes a doubtful painting; fetching the glass she enabled Lucetta to survey herself in it, which Lucetta anxiously did.
In this segment, Elizabeth-Jane's appraisal of Lucetta's appearance is kind but honest, as a friendly critic might approach a painting that doesn't represent the best of a painter's ability. Hardy first describes Lucetta as being outwardly attractive in the language of visual art, as her appearance has "artistic perfection," and the simile of a "doubtful painting" here references that connotation. In contrast to Elizabeth-Jane, who shows her emotions gradually, Lucetta displays her reactions visually and quickly. Like a painting, much of what can be learned about her can be gleaned from looking at her and from context clues. Her emotions show on the "surface."
This interaction is another example of Elizabeth-Jane's innocence and restraint, as in the conversation previous to this Lucetta had been probing her about her views on romantic relationships and love affairs. Elizabeth-Jane refrains from going below the surface of the discussion, eventually saying such matters were "so difficult" that they "wanted a Pope" to settle them. Hardy extends the simile of visual art by having Elizabeth-Jane treat Lucetta literally like a painting here in order to avoid offending her. Although Lucetta speaks as if she is discussing someone else's actions, Elizabeth-Jane knows the scandalous story she is being told is about Lucetta herself. To avoid awkwardness and preserve her companion's dignity, Elizabeth-Jane only comments on the surface value of her remarks and appearance and refuses to interpret further, as "in spite of her philosophy" she is "very tender-hearted."
Hardy uses simile to liken Lucetta to the moon when Henchard begins seriously courting her, as he realizes the emotional power she holds over him in Chapter 25. Previously, Lucetta's influence over him wasn't particularly strong, but when he turns his "sun"-like warmth and attention to her, he realizes that she is actually not an object of pity but "the very being to make him satisfied with life":
He crossed the room to her with a heavy tread of some awkwardness, his strong, warm gaze upon her—like the sun beside the moon in comparison with Farfrae’s modest look—and with something of a hail-fellow bearing, as, indeed, was not unnatural. But she seemed so transubstantiated by her change of position, and held out her hand to him in such cool friendship, that he became deferential, and sat down with a perceptible loss of power.
This passage contains a combination of several other literary devices the book contains. Henchard is again characterized by sun-like "warmth," his intensity is compared to Farfrae's reticence and "modesty," and a biblical allusion to transubstantiation (the transformation of bread and wine into blood and flesh) is made. The imagery of the sun that Hardy so often links to Henchard makes Lucetta his matched pair, the "sun beside the moon" as she reflects and changes his "light." When she behaves in an un-moon-like way and outmatches the "sun's" power, Henchard is dejected and sits down, his "light" diminished.
Women in literature are often aligned with the moon, as men are aligned with the sun. Lucetta has now "grown up" and become an attractive prospect in Henchard's eyes. He has developed "smoldering sentiments" toward her, as she is now no longer a girlish figure but a "more matured beauty." Because of this new womanliness, the moon simile suddenly applies to her from this point onward. For example, when Henchard is describing Lucetta's marriage to Farfrae later in the book, he also "reflects" this simile, as he has a "new-moon-shaped-grin" when she comes up.
In Chapter 26, Hardy uses simile to liken the prices of corn to the uneven roads of rural England in the Victorian period. The Mayor of Casterbridge pays a great deal of attention to the lived reality of agricultural workers and those whose livelihoods relied on the harvest, as the narrator here explains:
A bad harvest, or the prospect of one, would double the price of corn in a few weeks; and the promise of a good yield would lower it as rapidly. Prices were like the roads of the period, steep in gradient, reflecting in their phases the local conditions, without engineering, levellings, or averages.
Like the roads in Casterbridge, the steepness and narrowness of which cause their own problems for the townsfolk, the corn harvest is an inescapable factor of life in the town. Good and bad conditions make the price of corn jump up and down sharply and disruptively like a road "without engineering, leveling or averages." This is problematic because nobody can decide the way the weather and the temperature will affect the grain. Indeed, the author writes that farmers themselves had to act as "flesh-barometers" for predicting rain, and that "the rural multitude saw in the god of the weather a more important personage than they do now." Although there are people like Farfrae who can use modern technology and accounting techniques to mitigate the effects of the natural world, ultimately it seems like a divine judgement when a "good yield" fails to come along. Roads are meant to make getting where you are going easier and more predictable, but both the roads and the corn prices don't do that in this novel.
It should also be noted here that this simile is also a commentary by the author on the harmfulness of the single-crop farming that Victorian landlords often forced on their tenants. The Victorian agricultural working class had very few rights and fewer privileges, and were compelled to accept many problematic social conditions without "levellings or averages." The risk of reliance on the corn harvest and the likening of its prices to the unpleasant roads is an admonition by Hardy against the ruling class, as a bad crop could ruin "a household whose crime it was to be poor." Risky farming behavior by the comparatively well-off endangered the rural people whose livelihoods depended on the harvest in the time the novel was published.
Hardy uses a simile comparing Michael Henchard’s nature to the sea, ultimately illustrating the many changes that people undergo throughout their lives and the strong pull that feelings have on their actions. In Chapter 33, Henchard describes how religious fervor moves him like the ocean both as a drunk and as a sober, successful man:
Hang Samuel Wakely’s tune, as improved by thee!” said Henchard. “Chuck across one of your psalters—old Wiltshire is the only tune worth singing—the psalm-tune that would make my blood ebb and flow like the sea when I was a steady chap. I’ll find some words to fit en.” He took one of the psalters and began turning over the leaves.
Henchard tells his appalled audience at the pub that the tune he is singing makes his blood “ebb and flow like the sea,” relating the ocean to the strong emotions provoked by stirring music. This was the case, Henchard tells them, even when he was a “steady chap,” implying that his body underwent tidal reactions to “psalm-tunes” even before he began drinking again. Language about the ocean also appears as a motif throughout the novel, as it plays a role of convergence and separation. This happens physically when people come to and leave England, and psychologically when people drift or are pulled apart.
People's interior emotions also move and flow like water, as Hardy shows in Chapter 25 when Lucetta and Elizabeth-Jane discuss their relationship and Lucetta implores her to stay by her side:
When the young woman came in, sweetly unconscious of the turn in the tide, Lucetta went up to her, and said quite sincerely— “I’m so glad you’ve come. You’ll live with me a long time, won’t you?” [...] Her emotions rose, fell, undulated, filled her with wild surmise at their suddenness; and so passed Lucetta’s experiences of that day.
The language Hardy uses here is deliberately “watery,” which likens Lucetta’s emotions both to the ocean and to Michael Henchard’s experiences. For both of these characters, feelings “rise, fall and undulate” in a way that seems beyond their control, like the tidal pull of the sea. This is also important for Lucetta as a character because she is often associated with images of the moon in this book. Her actions as his wife and as his lover affect Henchard’s “ocean” like the lunar influence on the tides.
