Characters

Jopp is a dark character who possesses no wit, business sense, or honor. What is clearest about his character is his ability to harbor a grudge and to take joy in seeing an enemy suffer. His function in the novel is at once to serve as a villain and a catalyst for villainous behavior. a man Henchard promised to hire as his manager, before offering the position to Farfrae instead. Jopp continues to live in Casterbridge, struggling and poor. Henchard hires Jopp after Farfrae leaves his employment. Despite Henchard’s past wrong, Jopp welcomes the man into his home when Henchard loses everything to his creditors. Jopp dislikes Lucetta, as she slighted him when he asked a favor of her. Therefore, when Henchard asks him to deliver Lucetta’s love letters back into her possession, Jopp willingly reveals their contents, prompting the skimmington that shames and sickens Lucetta before her eventual death, but saves Henchard’s life after he sees his own effigy.

The furmity-woman

once a prosperous sales woman, the furmity seller witnesses Henchard’s cruel choice to sell his wife and daughter for five guineas in her tent at the Weydon-Priors fair. The woman grows poorer as her business declines. Eighteen years later, at the Weydon-Priors fair, she directs Susan toward Casterbridge, as the place she knows Michael Henchard is currently living. Eventually, she travels to Casterbridge and is arrested there. During her trial, she reveals Henchard’s secret past.

The furmity woman runs the shop in which Michael, at the beginning of the novel, gets drunk and sells Susan. She appears again eighteen years later, when Susan and Elizabeth-Jane return to the village where the sale occurred to try to find Henchard.

 

Abel Whittle

One of the workers in Henchard’s hay-yard. Whittle is also the source of the first disagreement between Henchard and Farfrae, as Farfrae thinks that Henchard is too rough with Whittle when he is constantly late for work. This young man struggles to wake up on time and arrive at work on time. Henchard clashes with his then manager Farfrae over how to punish Abel’s tardiness. Abel Whittle finds Henchard wandering alone directly before his death. He takes pity on the older man and cares for him in the days before his death.