Quantifying Tonal Analysis in
The Mayor of Casterbridge is in basic ways an unusual novel. Its protagonist, Michael Henchard, has personality traits and motivational dispositions that are more typical of antagonists than of protagonists, and Hardy's own perspective on the events seem remote and detached, thus discouraging the reader's own emotional involvement in the story. Because of these peculiar features, Mayor constitutes an especially difficult challenge to interpretive criticism, and it is a challenge that previous criticism has been only partially successful in meeting. The main interpretive models that have been made available for Mayor presuppose passional involvement with a protagonist and seek resolution in some kind of affirmation embodied in the protagonist's own experience—an affirmation of ethical order, grandeur, freedom, dignity, human amelioration, or a more complete humanity. We collected data from 85 readers about the characters in Mayor and about the readers' emotional responses to the characters. This data suggests an interpretive structure very different from that which is embodied in the interpretive history of the novel. Our data suggest that readers of this particular novel do not commonly experience passional involvement with the protagonist or with the other characters. As many critics of the novel have recognized, Hardy identifies closely with the perspective of Henchard's step-daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, and, for Elizabeth-Jane, the spectacle of Henchard's career culminates in a state of compassionate, detached meditation. That also is a form of resolution, but it is a form different from that of passional involvement with the protagonist. We shall first give an account of the interpretive history of the novel and then explain the alternatives suggested by our data. Our study of Mayor is part of a much larger study of characters in the Victorian novel, generally. The larger study provides the framework of norms within which we assess motives, personality, role assignments, and emotional responses in Mayor. Before going into detail about