Write your own The Mayor of Casterbridge story
Drunk at a country fair, a hay-trusser sells his wife and baby to a sailor for five guineas, then swears off liquor for twenty-one years and becomes Mayor of Casterbridge. Eighteen years later the old furmity-woman who served him the rum turns up in his own courtroom.
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Here is one it wrote earlier
Machine-written from the premise below, in this universe, using the entries on this page. Nothing here was touched by a human afterwards.
scored against 758 tells
The premise
Michael Henchard and Susan Henchard (Mrs. Newson) meet at Weydon-Priors, and one of them is not saying why.
The furmity woman's tent was the last one still lit on Weydon Fair-field. A tallow candle guttered in a bottle neck, throwing her shadow across the canvas in shapes that didn't quite match her movements. She ladled another dollop of the thick, sweet porridge into Michael Henchard's bowl. He watched the steam curl past his nose, thick enough to blur his vision for a moment.
His hand trembled as he raised the spoon. Not from cold. The rum she'd already poured into the last three helpings had set his throat on fire.
Susan stood at the edge of the awning, Elizabeth-Jane bundled in her arms. The infant's face was pressed into her mother's shoulder. The hay-trusser's basket lay on the grass beside Henchard's stool, the iron hook of the hay-knife catching the candlelight in brief, sharp flashes. Susan had not spoken since they'd climbed the down. She had not asked why he'd insisted on coming to the fair, why he'd brought the child, why he'd stopped at the furmity stall instead of going straight to the hay-market where his work waited.
Henchard swallowed. The rum burned his throat, but it did not warm the place inside him that had gone cold weeks ago. He set down the spoon. His fingers stayed curled around the bowl's rim.
He looked at Susan. At the way she held Elizabeth-Jane, her fingers wrapped tight around the child's shawl. He had not touched her in months. He had not said her name in weeks. The weight of that silence had become its own kind of presence between them.
The furmity woman leaned forward, her knuckles white on the ladle. "Another, sir? There's a drop more in the pot."
Henchard shook his head. He wanted to say something. The words were tangled in the liquor, knotted up with things he had no right to ask forgiveness for. He wanted to tell Susan that he was sorry. That he had not meant to be this kind of man. But he did not know how to begin, and the longer he sat without speaking, the more impossible it seemed.
Susan's eyes met his. She did not look away. She did not speak.
The furmity woman filled the silence. "A fine child, sir. A pity to have to sell her."
What the AI already knows about The Mayor of Casterbridge
16 entries, read out of the source text rather than a summary.
item
Furmity
A thick, warming porridge made from wheat grain, flour, milk, raisins, and currants, traditionally sold at rural fairs as wholesome fare. The furmity woman at Weydon secretly laces it with smuggled rum for customers who wink their request, and it is this adulterated bowl that intoxicates Henchard to the point of the wife-sale. Furmity functions as a recurring symbol of the fateful evening.
item
Susan's Wedding Ring
The ring Susan pulls from her finger and flings across the furmity booth at Henchard's face as she departs with the sailor, a gesture of finality and defiance that marks the formal rupture of the marriage. Henchard finds it on the ground the following morning, and its rediscovery is the moment he fully comprehends that the events of the night were real.
character
The Furmity Woman (Mrs. Goodenough)
An aged woman who presides over a furmity stall at Weydon Fair across a span of nearly four decades, secretly lacing her porridge-like furmity with smuggled rum for paying customers. She is a key witness to the wife-sale, and though once prosperous enough to own a large pavilion tent, by the time Susan returns she is a degraded, tentless crone stirring a pot over open ground. She serves as a living thread connecting past and present.
Also holds 13 more entries: Key Events Timeline · Weydon-Priors · Wife-selling at Country Fairs · Michael Henchard. See the full world bible
What you’ll actually end up with
01
An opening
Around 400 words in this world's register, on the page in seconds. No account needed.
02
Four more scenes
We suggest what happens next. You pick, or overrule us. Roughly twenty minutes.
03
A finished short story
Scored against 758 AI tells, so you know exactly where it still sounds like a machine.
04
Yours
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Nobody has written here yet
1 story was started across the library this week. This world is still empty, and the first story posted here keeps the top of the page.
If this one isn’t yours
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Same Wessex, same doom, considerably harsher on its heroine.
Jude the Obscure
Hardy without even Casterbridge's small mercies.
Ethan Frome
Swap Wessex for New England; the misery translates fine.
Far from the Madding Crowd
Same countryside, but the marriage plot actually works out.
The world entries on this page were extracted from the original text of The Mayor of Casterbridge, not from a summary of it.
Read the source on Project Gutenberg