Fate in The Mayor Of Casterbridge

In the book "The Mayor of Casterbridge" written by Thomas Hardy, the

character Michael Henchard experiences a dramatic rise to grace and even
more dramatic fall from it. He tries to demonstrate how fateful coincidences,
character, and temperament act together in life to determine the outcome of a
person's life.
Fate plays a very important part in "The Mayor of Casterbridge". Thomas
Hardy uses the plot of the novel relies on number of coincidences.
In ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge” For Hardy, Fate is blind, arbitrary and
merciless and always brings misery, pain, sorrow and suffering. There is no
fate that is a good fate. Fate is delivered through coincidences and the
incidents that cannot be foreseen. Once an opening allows for the working of
fate's designs, there is little or nothing that can be done to stop its hard flow to
a harmful and tragic end.
In The Mayor of Casterbridge, coincidences and unforeseen incidents work in
concert with Michael Henchard's tragic character flaws, and fate is loosed
upon him and will push him to his miserable end regardless of what he does
or does not do. Once Michael yields to the choice to sell Susan and the baby
despite all the protestations and efforts to bring him to his reason, his fateful
end is sealed. This leads to the twin theme of how personal choice interacts
with Fate.
Hardy explores how, and whether, fate can altered and avoided by personal
choices. He explores how personal choice may or may not influence the
outcome of a person's life.
Henchard illustrates how a person may dismiss the forces of fate through
immoral, rash, unethical, cruel choices. He shows how fate is loosed in all its
final fury by choices that are unreasoned, unsound, and unseeing: no
perception is employed to calculate future effects of present choices. Farfrae
illustrates the opposite. He shows how calm well-ordered thought and choices
can lead to a smooth in life by forestalling any opportunity for Fate to unleash
calamity that dooms life to a miserable end.
Henchard, as a magistrate, is in the court on the day when the furmenty
woman is on trial. This course vent like so many others is a fateful coincidence
that changes Henchard's life forever. The cruel timings of fate occur many
times throughout the novel, right up to the closing chapter when Elizabeth-
Jane goes to see Henchard half an hour after he has died.
Henchard is as much a plaything of Fate as Farfrae or Eliabath-janc. All are to
be equally pitied; none is to be blamed, for all are creatures of circumstances,
helpless victims of a blind, indifferent and all powerful Fate.