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‘'Market-Faces’ and Market Forces: [Corn-]Factors in the Moral Economy of Casterbridge’
Michael Franklin 
Review of English Studies, Volume: 59, Issue: 240, Pages: 426 - 448
Swansea University Author:
Michael Franklin
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DOI (Published version): 10.1093/res/hgm086
Abstract
Questions of appropriate behaviour, mercantile integrity and market forcesreverberate throughout Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. This articleattempts to analyse the ‘corn factor’: both the wife- selling self-destructive ‘hero’,and the ubiquitous presence of grain. Integral to almost every...
| Published in: | Review of English Studies |
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| Published: |
Review of English Studies
2008
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa11432 |
| Abstract: |
Questions of appropriate behaviour, mercantile integrity and market forcesreverberate throughout Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. This articleattempts to analyse the ‘corn factor’: both the wife- selling self-destructive ‘hero’,and the ubiquitous presence of grain. Integral to almost every con£ict or crisis inthe creation, continuation or destruction of human bonds within the novel is theconsumption or exchange of seeds, grain or the products and goods made fromthem. In tracing a path from furmity to skimmity, the article examines whatHardy reveals concerning the impossibility of restoring what has been spoiled.Concepts from the disciplines of political history and economic sociology, such asE. P. Thompson’s notion of ‘the moral economy’, or Mark Granovetter’s constructof ‘the strength of weak ties’, are applied to this market town to demonstrate thatbread is simultaneously a staple and a symbol of what binds individuals andfamilies together in society. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Issue: |
240 |
| Start Page: |
426 |
| End Page: |
448 |