is own worst accusers”(Hardy 405). Henchard tries to be a better person towards Elizabeth-Jane when she is engaged with Farfrae. Knowing that Newson had come back to Casterbridge, Henchard tells Elizabeth-Jane that she should meet whomever it was that wished to see her. In letting go of his stepdaughter he feels he has reconciled himself. After some time away from Casterbridge, Henchard decides to overcome his pride and return “[t]o make one more attempt to be near her: to go back; to see her, to plead his cause before her, to ask forgiveness for his fraud, to endeavour strenuously to hold his own in her love; it was worth the risk of repulse, ay, of life itself”(397). His trip was unsuccessful, however, because Elizabeth-Jane rejects him. Later, however, when Elizabeth-Jane discovers Henchard’s intended wedding gift, she realizes that Henchard had meant to resolve things when he came to her. “[T]he caged bird had been brought by Henchard for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance”(405). Elizabeth-Jane is characteristic of accepting rejection and moving on. She is rejected by Henchard so she makes a better life for herself by becoming Lucetta’s companion. When she realizes that Farfrae wants Lucetta “she viewed with an approach to equanimity the now cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for thing Heaven might send her in place of him”(251). Her outlook is positive and not self-defeated like Henchard's. Seymour-Smith sums up the author’s intentions with how the character of Elizabeth-Jane deals with rejection. “Hardy in this novel is much obsessed by ‘afflictions’: one of his purposes is to demonstrate through Elizabeth-Jane the manner of temperament which seeks not to avoid but to mitigate afflictions, and yet without sacrifice of integrity or destruction of character”(36). When Henchard...
