An Analysis on the effect of Pride on Michael Henchrd personality in novel “The Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy

Abstract

This study is concerned with the effect of pride on human personality. How addiction to bad habits can destroy someone's normal life. Henchard is addicted to the bad habit of drinking. every time when he was drinking he made wrong decisions and the very first morning when he realized his mistake then there is nothing behind left. Although he is the tragic hero of this novel but he did such a big mistake which can't be ignored. Henchard spent a luxurious life. He has a beautiful family such a loving wife and caring daughter. Henchard suffers his whole life due to his qualities like pride, jealousy, and over-possessive nature. Pride becomes the real cause of his downfall. He lost his family his friends, his honor, and his reputation in society. He has nothing at the end. Henchard always looks the people with the eye of discrimination. He always measured class differences among the people. there is a class conflict in his mind that destroy his life completely. But the good aspect of his life is that he realizes his mistakes and completely removes the boundary of class conflict from his life. By using qualitative approaches and the perfect family system theory we easily measure how the character of a tragic hero in this novel sketches a map of a good person and man of pride and reasons for his downfalls. His character depicts two aspects of a person’s life the first one is that when he has everything and left nothing and the other one is that when he has nothing after losing everything. Removing class boundaries and bad qualities he started to feel like a human. Henchard overcomes his potential for bad things and becomes a good person finally.