gürova, ercan ankara university - school of foreign languages, Ankara, turkey

Character is Fate: Henchard’s Rise and Fall in The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

22533

Thomas Hardy, regarded as the final novelist of the Victorian Era, has certain characteristics which distinguish him from his contemporaries. One of these is “the phenomenon of coincidence”. It does the fictitious characters harm rather than a favor. The density of disasters in his novels strengthens the thesis that Thomas Hardy looks at life from the perspective of a tragedy author as a representative of naturalism. Hardy’s pessimistic attitude is perhaps not so difficult to understand if we remember that he was living in an age of sudden scientific development and a rapid changes to the old, accepted values. This article examines how and to what extent Michael Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge can be considered a person who experiences misfortunes and is doomed to fail. It will also be questioned whether or not he is the victim of the flaws in his personality and therefore has a tragic end. It will be concluded that what prepares the end of Michael Henchard is not the dark games of destiny but the dark powers in the personality of Henchard that devastated him.

203

Hardy , Victorian , Coincidence , Misfortunes

Mediterranean Journal Of Humanities

212