The Mayor of Casterbridge: Chapter 27 Summary & Analysis

The low prices of grain cause Farfrae to buy after Henchard has resold his grain and lost a significant amount of money. After three days of fair weather, at the end of August bad weather arrives and the harvest is poor. Farfrae who purchased at low prices before the harvest is able to make a large profit as prices rise. Henchard feels as if someone must have been making a voodoo doll of him to bring him such bad luck.

Henchard frets that Farfrae will soon be mayor, stepping up to fill the leadership position in town that Henchard once filled. Soon their workers take on the dispute between Henchard and Farfrae. One September evening, Elizabeth-Jane and Lucetta hear angry voices outside and discover a collision between two wagons in the narrow street, one driven by one of Henchard’s men, and the other wagon belonging to Farfrae. Henchard’s wagon spills and the two workers come to blows.

Henchard arrives and, seeing the state of his wagon, yells at Farfrae’s man. Elizabeth-Jane and Lucetta run down into the street, and Lucetta says that they saw it all, and that Henchard’s man was most in the wrong. Henchard’s man fires up that the women aren’t trustworthy in what they saw, as all women favor Farfrae. Lucetta and Elizabeth-Jane retreat inside before Henchard is able to speak with him further and question Lucetta about her favoritism of Farfrae.

As Henchard stands in the street, the constable arrives and asks him to fill in for the mayor, who is out of town, for a trial of an old woman to be held the next day. After agreeing to this, Henchard knocks at Lucetta’s door only to be told that she cannot see him that evening, as she has a prior engagement. Henchard hides nearby and watches her door, and at nine o’clock he sees Farfrae arrive and leave on a walk with Lucetta.

Henchard follows them, but to avoid meeting them face-to-face hides in the field where they are walking and overhears their conversation. He hears Farfrae’s expression of his strong feelings and Lucetta’s commitment to him, although she asks if they might not always live in Casterbridge, should she not like it. Henchard returns to Lucetta’s house and in his agitation opens her door, walks in, and waits for her return in her drawing room.

Lucetta returns and Henchard presses her about her connection to him, alluding to their past in Jersey. He says that it is wrong of her to “throw him over,” and she said she only came to Casterbridge because she believed she ought to marry Henchard, not because she liked him any longer. While she does not explain this, it is clear that her duty and conscience ruled until new love intervened. Henchard says that unless she agrees that night to marry him, before a witness, he will reveal their history, out of fairness to other men.

Lucetta bitterly agrees, and had she settled upon any man other than Farfrae, Henchard might have taken pity upon her in that moment. Elizabeth-Jane is sent for to serve as a witness. Lucetta swears to marry Henchard and then faints. Elizabeth-Jane implores her father not to force Lucetta to do anything that so clearly pains her. Henchard points out that this course of action will leave “him” free for Elizabeth-Jane, but Elizabeth-Jane insists that there is no one to whom the “him” could refer.

After Henchard leaves, Elizabeth-Jane asks Lucetta how Henchard can have this much power over her, and why she calls him Michael, as if she knows him very well. Lucetta will not confess, but Elizabeth-Jane says she will try to reason with her father, until Lucetta says only, “no, no, let it all be.”