The Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge. A Man of Character

Arriving in Weydon Priors and heading
for the Furmity Tent.

Michael Henchard was a fool of a man from the start.  He sold his wife for a bowl of Furmity.

Although he attempted to improve himself in the sight of God, he did not succeed.  But how could he have thought that Elizabeth-Jane was his daughter?  He may have been a very neglectful father and not paid attending to her date of birth.  She apparently did not look like him.  He had such a blinding belief, but her age would betray that she could not be his daughter. 

When did JK Rowling read the Mayor of Casterbridge?  In Chapter XX we read...

The sharp reprimand was not lost upon her, and in time it came to pass that for “fay” she said “succeed”; that she no longer spoke of “dumbledores” but of “humble bees”; no longer said of young men and women that they “walked together,” but that they were “engaged”; that she grew to talk of “greggles” as “wild hyacinths”; that when she had not slept she did not quaintly tell the servants next morning that she had been “hag-rid,” but that she had “suffered from indigestion.”

"Like Prester John's, his table had been spread, and infernal harpies had snatched up the food."

Henchard is powerless to prevent his attempted at joy dissolve away in front of him.

Infernal Harpies

Elizabeth-Jane enters a room in Mr Henchard's house and looks round.  I notice the three books left out on the table.  These are highly symbolic.

It was furnished to profusion with heavy mahogany furniture of the deepest red-Spanish hues. Pembroke tables, with leaves hanging so low that they well-nigh touched the floor, stood against the walls on legs and feet shaped like those of an elephant, and on one lay three huge folio volumes—a Family Bible, a “Josephus,” and a “Whole Duty of Man.” 

Josephus was a Victorian fascination, providing evidence for the voracity of the gospel stories.  The bible, a vital book in a middle class home. And Whole Duty of Man, which symbolises the conservative establishment.

The passage continues

In the chimney corner was a fire-grate with a fluted semi-circular back, having urns and festoons cast in relief thereon, and the chairs were of the kind which, since that day, has cast lustre upon the names of Chippendale and Sheraton, though, in point of fact, their patterns may have been such as those illustrious carpenters never saw or heard of.

This picture speaks of an attempt at aspiring respectability-