HENCHARD’S INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONFLICTS IN THOMAS HARDY’S THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
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HENCHARD’S INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONFLICTS IN
THOMAS HARDY’S THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
I Wayan Partana
Jurusan Sastra Inggris
Fakultas Sastra Universitas Udayana
Abstrak
Dalam studi ini karya penulis terkenal Inggris Thomas Hardy yang berjudul The Mayor of Casterbridge dipilih untuk dianalisis. Tokoh utama dalam cerita ini adalah Michael Henchard yang dalam keadaan mabuk telah menjual istri dan putrinya yang masih bayi kepada seorang pelaut. Konflik internal dan eksternal dari Henchard sebagai tokoh sentral dalam novel ini difokuskan dalam pembahasan dalam studi ini. Penulisan ini menggunakan metode penelitian deskriptif. Sumber data primer dalam penulisan ini adalah novel The Mayor Of Casterbridge sendiri dan data sekunder berasal dari sumber lain yang berhubungan dengan analisis data seperti buku tentang teori sastra yang dikemukakan oleh William Kenney (1966) dalam bukunya How to Analyze Fiction, dan buku Theory of Literature yang ditulis oleh Rene Welek and Austin Waren (1962), sedangkan buku Interpreting Literature oleh Knikbocker. K.L and H. W. Reninger (1993) dipakai sebagai pendukung kedua teori tersebut di atas. Hasil dari penulisan ini menyatakan bahwa ada hubungan yang erat di antara novel dan kondisi sosial yang terjadi di Inggris. Dalam novel The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy menggambarkan bagaimana dampak revolusi industri membawa keadaan yang menegangkan diantara tradisi dan perubahan pada awal abad 19 di Inggris dimana terjadi dampak yang tidak menguntungkan atas terjadinya revolusi industry. Kehidupan masyarakatnya mengakibatkan banyak manusia menjadi frustrasi dan mengakibatkan konflik dalam masyarakat baik secara internal maupun eksternal.
Key word: conflict, love, tragic
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995: 427) states literature is the writing that is valued as work of art, especially fiction, drama, and poetry. As in another kind of art, there are emotion expression’s and the medium that are used by people to express their feeling.
According to Warren and Wallek (1986:107), literature is the form of human creativity consisting idiom, idea, feeling, spirit, and experience using the language as the media and having positive impact to life. Literature work can be used as the reflection or condition when and where the literary work was made. With literature the author can entertain people and make the reader enjoy the story, beside literary work giving information, understanding about life and moral teaching.
The literary work can be divided into fiction, poetry, prose, essay, and drama. Novel is one of the most popular and most widely read form of literature in the world. A novel is a long story written in the form of prose and the story is usually about the conflict of main character with another character or against culture or society. Novel is a lengthy fictional narrative prose dealing with character, incidents and setting that imitate those found in real life.
In literature, there are many things that can be analysed both intrinsically and extrinsically, there are elements to study such as theme, setting, character, plot, point of view, style and tone, structure and technique, and so forth. Extrinsically it can be concerned with author biography; social and cultural status, personal experience with life and language, moral values, and so forth.
Novel is a story of someone’s life and generally contains forty five thousand words or more. Prose fiction from fifteen thousand to forty five thousand words are commonly called novelette (Kenney. 1966: ). Short story is a story which is supposed to be read in one sitting. It is normally applied to work to fiction ranging in length from one thousand to fifteen thousand words.
The Mayor of Casterbridge, a novel by Thomas Hardy is originally entitled The Life and Death of Mayor Caster Bridge. Thomas Hardy was an established author at that time and published nine previous novels (a first unpublished novel has been lost), but The Mayor of Casterbridge is considered his first masterpiece some regard it as his greatest tragic novel.
Michael Henchard is traveling with his wife, Susan, and their infant daughter looking for a job. When they stop to eat, Henchard gets drunk, and in an auction that begins as a joke but turns serious, he sells his wife and their infant
3 daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to Newson, a sailor, for five guineas. In the morning, Henchard regrets what he has done and searches the town for his wife and daughter. Unable to find them, he goes into a church and swears an oath that he will not drink alcohol for twenty-one years, the same number of years he has been alive.
Based on the background mentioned above, the problems that appear in this story are as follows:
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1. What kinds of conflict are faced by Henchard?
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2. What is the source of the conflicts?
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3. Aims of the Study
This study is intended to fulfil three aims: the general, specific, and academic aims.
The general aim of this writing was to apply theories related to novel in order to get better understanding of Thomas Hardy’s book entitled The Mayor of Casterbridge, meanwhile the specific aim of this writing was to find out the what message the writer wants to convey.
The last is an academic aim that is to apply the theory of literature studied in the English Department to write a scientific work which gives contribution to this department, so this writing can be used as reference to help the student who is interested in analysing literary works.
There are three points covering this section: data source, method and technique of collecting data, and method and technique of analyzing data.
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4.1. Data Source
The data of this study were taken from the novel entitled The Mayor of Casterbridge written by Thomas Hardy. This novel is best sellers and almost people all over the world know it. It was published in 1975.
The data of this study were taken from the main character in the novel entitled Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. 1975, published by Macmillan London. All the information was collected through library research and note taking, and the important step in collecting the data was reading the novel repeatedly, in order to find out the conflict and the source of conflict.
The data were analyzed according to the theory to find out the conflict and the source of conflict. The other relevant information obtained from other sources was used to support the analysis of the study.
The data were collected from the data source then analyzed using the theory of William Kenney. 1978. How to Analyze Fiction, and theory of Warren and Wellek. 1962. Theory of Literature.
Conflict is a natural part of any communication relationship. It is an evitable part of life for a variety of different reasons. A variation of the physical struggle against nature is the conflict with natural law or with fate. A character’s struggle against nature or against another character is an external conflict; the main character is in conflict with an outside force. The main character struggles against himself or herself is an internal conflict. (Morner. 1998: 43)
Internal conflict is a conflict between the main character with his own mind, usually it is connected with emotion, but internal conflict can also happen between are idea and another. The internal conflict of the main character Michael Henchard is against his guiltiness because he has sold his wife and their infant daughter.
The source of Henchard’s internal conflict is incompatible goal, he is with his wife, Susan, looking for employment as a hay-trusser. When they stop to eat, Henchard gets drunk, and in an auction that begins as a joke but turns serious, he sells his wife and their baby daughter, -Elizabeth-Jane, to Newson, a sailor, for five guineas. The source of the internal conflict is describeb clearly from the following quotation,
“Mike, Mike,” said she;”this is getting serious. O!-too serious!” Will anybody buy her? Said the man.” She shall take the girl if she wants to, and go her ways. I will take my tools, and go my ways.” tis simple as Scripture history. Now then, stand up, Susan, and show yourself.” I will sell her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat her well; and he shall have her for ever and never.”(Hardy: 1975.16-17)
It was described clearly that the type of internal conflict of Henchard is personal conflict. The conflict happens inside his own mind because of his own guiltiness. Henchard regrets means nothing, since he has sold his wife and their infant daughter, his guiltiness always follows wherever he goes. He lives as a rich and respectable man but in his heart he feels empty. Finally, after eighteen years has passed he meets Susan, and he plans to remarry her, and start the new life as a family. This is the only way to set him free from his guiltiness.
External conflict could happen between man and man, between man and society, or between man and nature. While in this story, the external conflict of Henchard covers the conflict between him with Donald Farfrae and Lucetta Templement.
The conflict between Henchard and Farfrae, and conflict between Henchard and Lucetta are categorized as interpersonal conflict because those kinds of conflict happen between people.
Farfrae is a Scotsman who arrives in Casterbridge at the same time as Susan Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane. he is renovating Henchard’s corn factory.
Henchard as the Mayor of Casterbridge is now greatly impressed by this gentleman and persuades him to stay in Casterbridge as his corn manager. But later Farfrae is dismissed because the two of them become business rivals.
Lucetta, a woman whom Henchard meets, courts, and proposes to marry, then meets Farfrae, and they fall in love and marry. Farfrae continues to prosper in business, and he leaves Henchard factory. He and Henchard now become rivals in business.
Henchard business fails due to his rash decision, and he must declare bankruptcy. All his assets are not enough to pay all his credit. After he declares his bankruptcy, there is no another option for him except working with Farfrae, it hurts for Henchard to work as a labor in his rival factory, but that the only way for him to keep survive, because he has no power to travel again.
“Here be I, his former master, working for him as man, and he the man standing as master, with my house and my furniture and my what you-may-call wife all his own.” (Hardy: 1975.341)
Henchard feels that his life was empty; he loses his love, good name and all his credibility in the town.
The Mayor of Casterbridge is a novel haunted by the past. Henchard's fateful decision to sell his wife and child at Weydon-Priors continues to shape his life eighteen years later.
Henchard's fall can be understood in terms of a movement from the public like into the private one. When Susan and Elizabeth-Jane discover Henchard at the Three Mariners Inn, he is the mayor of Casterbridge and its most successful grain merchant, two positions that place him in the center of public life and civic duty. As his good fortune shifts when his reputation and finances fail, he is forced to relinquish these posts. He becomes increasingly less involved with public life, and lives wholly with his private thoughts and obsessions. He moves from the commercial to the romantic life.
This novel focuses on how Henchard’s qualities enable him to endure. One tends to think of character, especially in terms of a “Man of Character,” as the product of such values as honor and moral righteousness. Certainly Michael Henchard does not fit neatly into such category. Throughout the novel,
7 unexpectedly, his temper forces him into ruthless competition with Farfrae that strips him of his pride and property, while his insecurities lead him to deceive the one person he learns to truly care about, Elizabeth-Jane. Having fallen out with Elizabeth-Jane, his only hope for a renewed life, Henchard slinks off to a humble country cottage to die and no one mourns or remembers him. There is no statue in the Casterbridge square, as one might imagine, to mark his life and work.
Henchard conforms to the tradition of the tragic hero, a character whose greatest qualities or actions ultimately lead to his or her downfall. Above all, the burden that Henchard bears for his guilt manifests itself in his acceptance of the forces that seem to result his destruction.
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