For instance, Aristotle noted that ancient Greek tragedies are always the personal tragedies of a particular person, the protagonist, and that person is of the upper class, someone of social nobility. For a long time, this was seen as a rule, that in order to be a tragedy the protagonist must have a certain social standing. This can be seen in Hardy's choice to make Michael Henchard, the protagonist of his novel, the mayor of Casterbridge. He has the highest social standing of the town.
Also, nineteenth century interpretation said that Aristotle defined a tragedy as a certain structure. A Greek tragedy is constructed in odes and episodes. Episodes are sections that move the plot along, while odes are the ancient Greek equivalent of a song-and-dance number: a Greek chorus sang and danced, expressing the emotions in the play with song and dance, in lyrical, beautiful language. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy's descriptions are his odes. They do not advance the plot, but rather are full of lyrical language and convey an emotion, as in the following passage:
"The door was studded, and the keystone of the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had exhibited a comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of Casterbridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had been eaten away by disease . . . by the alley it had been possible to come unseen from all sorts of quarters in the town - the old play-house, the old bull-stake, the old cock-pit, the pool wherein nameless infants had been used to disappear. High-Place Hall could boast of its conveniences undoubtedly" (Chap. XXI).
This is Hardy's chorus; the narrator's lyrical language conveys a mood of ugliness and forboding, and no event of the plot is described.
Classical plot structure is linear, events happening one after the other. Classical tragedies fill you in on a situation, then somebody brings a piece of news, so the terms of the event keep shifting. This can be seen in The Mayor of Casterbridge when new characters are introduced who completely change the situation the narrator has set up. For example, when Susan returns to Casterbridge and Henchard in Chapter V, she completely changes his situation. When Farfrae enters the scene, also in Chapter V, he changes the course of events permanently. The influence of newcomers can also be seen in Lucetta's arrival (Chapter XX) and in Newson's arrival (Chapter XLIII) . The structure of a tragedy is shaped like a funnel; with each introduction of a character with a piece of news, with each choice made by the protagonist, options narrow, possibilities are closed off, until the final outcome is inevitable.
That final outcome of the plot results in the destruction of the protagonist. This event is a moment of both destruction and realization; the protagonist is destroyed, but he also sees how he has destroyed himself; he realizes who he is. This tragic moment occurs in The Mayor of Casterbridge in Chapter XLIV. Henchard realizes that his whole life he has sought after love and then destroyed that love, and finally the last person who loved him.
"The remembrance would continually revive in him now that it was not Elizabeth and Farfrae who had driven him away from them, but his own haughty sense that his presence was no longer desired. . . To make one attempt to be near her: to go back, to see her, to plead his cause before her, to ask forgiveness for his fraud, to endeavor strenuously to hold his own in her love; it was worth the risk of repulse, ay, of life itself" (Chap. XLIV).
But then the moment of destruction occurs: the last person who loves Henchard denounces him. He makes the attempt to win back Elizabeth-Jane, but it is too late.
. . . 'Do ye save a little room for me!
She flushed up, and gently drew her hand away. 'I could have loved
you always . . . but how can I when you have deceived me so - so bitterly
deceived me!' (Chap. XLIV).
Henchard is brought to the moment of destruction in the classical model. The many ways in which Hardy echoes a classical tragedy in The Mayor of Casterbridge, the nobility of the protagonist, the inclusion of both episodes in which new characters enter with news, and lyrical descriptive odes which convey emotion, and the self-discovery and destruction of the protagonist, show that the novel is written on the model of a classical tragedy.
Maynard, Katherine Kearney. Thomas Hardy's Tragic Poetry: The Lyrics and The Dynasts. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Birth of Tragedy. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.