How did chance and coincidence play role in henchard's life in mayor of casterbridge?

Susan Henchard learns her husband's whereabouts from the same furmity-woman who witnessed their shameful parting eighteen years earlier, unlikely coincidences already play an important role in the novel. Such strange occurrences accumulate rapidly: Farfarae, who has a secret for salvaging grown wheat, passes by the Three Mariners Inn just as Henchard cries out for a solution to his damaged crop; Henchard finds the letter revealing that he is not Elizabeth-Jane's father only moments after he pledges his paternal devotion to her; Elizabeth-Jane meets Lucetta Templeman because she strolls past Susan's grave when Lucetta is studying Susan's headstone. These incidents do detract from the realism of Henchard's story: no one, not even the most generous reader, could deny Hardy's reliance on outlandish coincidences to propel the narrative. Because many novels were published in serial form, Victorian novelists depended upon such effects in order to hook their readers and boost future sales. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy's plotting relates directly to the plight of his main character: the coincidences that often serve to push the mayor closer to destruction form the machinery of a world bent, as Henchard observes time and again, on human suffering.