The Power of Genetics

How does he regard those cubs?

 The Mayor of Casterbridge reflects that his remarriage was chiefly for the sake of their daughter, Elizabeth-Jane.  When he discovered that she is not the Elizabeth-Jane he fathered, he became hard-hearted and then rejects her.

This is a terrible indictment of parental love.  I am reminded of the wild fact that dominant males in a pack of lions will find the cubs that it as not sired and execute them.  There is an evolutionary explanation as expounded by Richard Dawkin's book, 'The Selfish Gene'.  

Evolutionary forces lurk beneath human waters too.  Adoption stands against this iniquity. The love of genetics is purely selfish, but the love of people through simply choosing to love them, is a much higher thing.  Perhaps it is unnatural?   It is certainly wonderful.

After Elizabeth-Jane's mother death Henchard tells her that he is her father.  She agrees to take his surname.  

“Now,” said Henchard, with the blaze of satisfaction that he always emitted when he had carried his point—though tenderness softened it this time—“I’ll go upstairs and hunt for some documents that will prove it all to you. But I won’t trouble you with them till to-morrow. Good-night, my Elizabeth-Jane!”

Whilst searching for a birth certificate (or the suchlike), Henchard finds the letter his wife wrote revealing Elizabeth-Jane's true parentage.  Henchard is completely changed. 

Her husband regarded the paper as if it were a window-pane through which he saw for miles. His lips twitched, and he seemed to compress his frame, as if to bear better. His usual habit was not to consider whether destiny were hard upon him or not—the shape of his ideals in cases of affliction being simply a moody “I am to suffer, I perceive.” “This much scourging, then, it is for me.” But now through his passionate head there stormed this thought—that the blasting disclosure was what he had deserved.

Henchard instantly about-faces, but Elizabeth-Jane has not yet been told.  She reflects:-

“I have thought and thought all night of it,” she said frankly. “And I see that everything must be as you say. And I am going to look upon you as the father that you are, and not to call you Mr. Henchard any more. It is so plain to me now. Indeed, father, it is. For, of course, you would not have done half the things you have done for me, and let me have my own way so entirely, and bought me presents, if I had only been your stepdaughter! He—Mr. Newson—whom my poor mother married by such a strange mistake” (Henchard was glad that he had disguised matters here), “was very kind—O so kind!” (she spoke with tears in her eyes); “but that is not the same thing as being one’s real father after all. Now, father, breakfast is ready!” she said cheerfully.

Henchard bent and kissed her cheek. The moment and the act he had prefigured for weeks with a thrill of pleasure; yet it was no less than a miserable insipidity to him now that it had come. His reinstation of her mother had been chiefly for the girl’s sake, and the fruition of the whole scheme was such dust and ashes as this.

The curse is in this kiss.  There is an assumption that genetics is the dominate force of love.  But the love depicted here is week in every respect.