No wonder that Henchard has the stubborn, hardy, rude and instinctive sprit of the old-time country. With this kind of impression in our mind, we even can foresee the struggles between Henchard and Farfrae. With different living backgrounds, or to be more specific, the different living settings, when they clash, it is not only a disagreement between two men, but a conflict between age and youth, tradition and innovation, and emotion and reason. Henchard, for example, is the mayor of the Casterbridge that has remained untouched by modernism. He runs the town by traditional customs. He manages his books in his head, conducts his business by word of mouth, and employs the aid of weather prophet---already obsolete in many parts of the country at that time, in order to determine the success of a harvest. But when Farfrae arrives, he brings with him a new system of organization that changes Casterbridge's grain business, making it more efficient and more depending on the technology.
Besides this, Hardy uses the setting to present the mood of his story. For instance, in Chapter,Henchard and Susan meet in a gloomy, ancient ruin. By choosing the Ring as the setting, Hardy intends to tell us that their marriage will not be successful. For Henchard thought his wife was a burden to him even eighteen years ago, only because the feeling of guilty, he determines to make demands for the past by remarrying her. So Henchard chooses the Ring as their meeting place, for he does not want others to know his past. Susan, too, seems to feel that everything is not as simple as Henchard would like to have it. Even Hardy himself makes a point of telling us that the true lovers do not go to the Ring.
Another point I want to emphases is the fact that Hardy is a poet as well as a novelist (John, Holloway, 197). Hardy himself preferred poetry to fiction. This has important results for his novels, as he tended to think in poetic term.