TRAGEDY, CONCEALMENT, AND REVELATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN HARDY’S THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

Abstract

This study attempts a reading of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge with the critical lenses of psychoanalysis, with a view to understanding the role of the unconscious in the tragic sequence of the text. Some readings of tragedy in the text have been based on the cosmic myth in which the hero rises like the sun in the morning, reaches the apex in the afternoon and wanes in the evening. Although this sequence is seen in the text, the cosmic myth offers no logical reason as to what leads up to the tragedy of Henchard in the novel. But we can circumvent the imprecision behind the determination of which event holds the key to the tragedy of the hero by studying the events that lead to the tragedy of the hero as systems of constraint’ that create the necessity of tragedy. The visions of fear are found in the unconscious’ of characters in the novel and are either concealed or revealed in language, especially the fear of scandal. It is even from the revelation of some contents of the unconscious that we get to know about Henchard’s key tragic flaw, which is fear of loss of honour, respectability and dignity which retains him on the path to his tragic destination as a constraint. The dispossession which he fears manifests in different patterns, with pride as the centripetal point to which other instances of deprivation are drawn. In this study, we draw analytic insights from the psychoanalytic views of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.