Beginning of Essay
One of the most striking aspects of the novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, for example, is the role of festival and the characters' perceptions of, and reactions to, the festive. The novel opens with Henchard, his wife and baby daughter arriving at Weydon-Priors fa ....

Middle of Essay
.... individual culminating in the ancient custom of the skimmington ride. This motif forms a counterpoint to the dominant theme of work and the novel develops on the basis of a conflict between various images of the isolated, individualistic, egotistical and private forms of 'economic man' (Bakhtin's term) and the collectivity of the workfolk. The many images of festivity - the washout of Henchards' official celebration of a national event, Farfrae's 'opposition randy', the fete carillonnee which Casterbridge mounts to receive the Royal Personage, the public dinner presided over by Henchard where the town worthies drank and ate 'searching for titbits, an ....