Abstract
The Mayor of Casterbridge, belonging to the selection of the Environment and Character novels, is a masterpiece of Thomas Hardy. In Victorian Era, especially the mid-Victorian times, the economy of Britain reached its peak. Before the Industrial Revolution, Britain had been implementing the policy of Mercantilism. This thesis focuses on the reification of female characters in The Mayor of Casterbridge, which means that women were regarded as commodities and were even regarded as properties of men in Victorian times. This thesis adopts the method of textual-analysis, that is to say, analyzing the novel on the basis of comprehensive reading and understanding of its content. The aim of this thesis is to help people in today’s world to get a relatively correct understanding of the nature of human beings, as well as a healthy understanding of the roles and relationships between men and women.
keywords   mercantilism   commercial spirit   reification 

《卡斯特桥市长》是托马斯﹒哈代著名的代表作品之一，属于环境与性格小说系列。在维多利亚时代，尤其是维多利亚中期，英国经济达到了强盛的顶峰。工业革命前，英国长期奉行重商主义。本文研究的是《卡斯特桥市长》中女性的“物化”问题，即女性在商品经济高度发达的维多利亚时期是如何沦为类似于商品，沦为男性的私有物、私有财产的。本文采用的是文本分析的方法，即在对原著进行解读并充分理解的基础上展开对文本的研究。本文旨在借此次的研究能够或多或少对我们现代的人有所帮助,希望我们对人类自身以及对男女两性的地位及其所发挥的角色有更加健康和深刻的认识。
关键词  重商主义   商业精神   物化

The Mayor of Casterbridge, written by Thomas Hardy in 1884 and 1885, and published in 1896, is the first of the most famous four novels of Thomas Hardy, the others being The Woodlanders, Tess of the d’ Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure, which cap Hardy’s career in fiction. The Mayor of Casterbridge depicts Henchard, an ordinary worker, sells his wife Susan to Newson, a stranger who is thoroughly strange to Henchard. After having come to himself, Henchard regrets his behavior deeply and tries his best to find his wife and daughter, but totally in vain. Without any means to try on this hard journey, he gives up seeking and makes a vow for not drinking for the coming 21 years. After doing these, he goes on in order to find a shelter for him to settle down.