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Get every literary device explanation for The Mayor of CasterbridgePlus so much more...
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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—A Flushed Face:
Throughout the book, Michael Henchard’s body is associated to varying degrees with images of redness, flushing, and blood, particularly in his face. Hardy does this because the color is traditionally associated with lust and anger, but also for another important reason that would have been more evident to a Victorian audience. At the beginning of Chapter 33, when Henchard is found to be publicly carousing, his face has taken on the tell-tale hue of alcoholism:
The flush upon his face proclaimed at once that the vow of twenty-one years had lapsed, and the era of recklessness begun anew.
A red face in Victorian literature, particularly a red nose, was a warning sign of a habitual drinker. Though Henchard is a teetotaler for most of the book, he is morally “stained” with the aftereffects of his vices, literally making his face take on a reddish hue. When he succumbs again in Chapter 33 to his “era of recklessness” after 21 years of sobriety, the “flush” returns, signaling his downfall.
The “recklessness” referenced here is also associated with Victorian tropes of redness or bloodiness. When characters become “flushed” in Hardy's novels, it is usually “with anger” or “with embarrassment," not necessarily with the overconsumption of alcohol. The way Hardy employs the imagery of redness in The Mayor of Casterbridge evokes all of these sensory implications together to complete the picture of the “lapsed” Henchard as an angry, drunk figure whose "red" physical body betrays his mental state.
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