Some eighteen years later, Susan has received word that Newson has been lost at sea. The next morning, Henchard is horrified at the realisation of what he has done, and, unable to track down Newson and "his" family, he swears off alcohol for the next twenty-one years. Henchard proceeds to get drunk on rum-laced furmity and, in the novel's most famous scene, finally carries out his long-made threat to auction off his wife and daughter so that they are no longer a burden to him the winning (and only) bid of five guineas is made by sailor Richard Newson. Some time in the early 19th century, Michael Henchard, a 21-year-old journeyman hay-trusser, is wandering the Wessex countryside with his wife Susan and their infant daughter Elizabeth-Jane in search of work when he arrives in the village of Weydon-Priors note Fictional counterpart of Weyhill in Hampshire. Like many of Hardy's novels, it is set in the fictional county of Wessex in south-west England, and particularly in and around Casterbridge, the fictional counterpart of Hardy's childhood hometown of Dorchester. The Mayor of Casterbridge (or, to give it its full title, The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character) was Thomas Hardy's tenth published novel, written in 1884-85 and published in 1886.
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