Viewed from ethical literary criticism, the tragedy of Henchard, the hero in Hardy' s The Mayor of Casterbridge, is an ethical one. The main manifestation of his tragedy lies in that he is at last deprived of any conceivable kind of ethical care, is abandoned to sheer ethical loneliness, and ends his life as an ethical castaway. The roots of his tragedy lie in the wrong ethical ideas he holds and the wrong ethical conducts resulting from them. His tragedy is the ethical punishment he is bound to receive for the ethical errors he commits. The journey of his ethical redemption is on one hand the...
