MBTI Type: ESFP

Sergeant Troy tends to take things at face value rather than question them; when he is “stood up” at a church, he simply turns his back on Fanny, out of an assumption she does not value or want him, rather than find her and ask what happened (she went to the wrong church!). Since he is opportunistic, and seizes chances to act, he forms an immediate attachment to Bathsheba, due to her pretty face, comely property, and the greater potential and excitement of being a “master of the household,” but soon becomes bored and frustrated with farm work, and complains that he left his exciting position in the army behind for a dull lifestyle. His inferior Ni shows in his inability to read between the lines with Fanny, and his impulsive decisions (his quick marriage) making it impossible for him to get what he most wants – Fanny herself. He fails to foresee the consequences of any of his actions, instead acting totally in the moment. Once “jilted” (or so he thinks), Troy seems to enter a Se/Te loop, where he pursues profit, ambition, and power in the moment, rather than follows his heart – with the result that he leads on, seduces, and marries Bathsheba, so that he can own her farm and maintain a sense of “respect” in the community; but he finds it impossible to maintain this, since his strong need to be honest about his true feelings keeps bubbling to the surface. He never promises Bathsheba that he loves her, and is brutal in his honesty to her that “Fanny means more to me than you ever could.” Rather than talk about his feelings, he buries them in behaviors (drinking, riding, bossing people around, and gambling), and he can be quite curt to Gabriel, dismissing him due to his “lower position” and asserting himself as “the master of the farm.”

Enneagram: 3w4 sx/so

Troy is something of an egotist, who does not like to let on how bruised he is after being ‘left standing at the altar’ – it is a simple mistake, but he rushes to ‘replace’ Fanny with another woman (Bathsheba) so that no one will know how much it hurt him. He is arrogant and competitive, winning over Bathsheba by selling himself to her as a wonderful, charming, hard-working, thrilling soldier whose steady hand and total confidence in himself would never let her ‘be hurt’ by his skilled swordsmanship. But when he learns the truth about Fanny (she did not leave him, she went to the wrong church, and is carrying his child… thus he missed out on the life he wanted)… Troy falls into 4 wing moodiness, misery, and melodrama. He becomes unhappy in his new marriage, which he rushed into out of a sense of egocentric ‘need’ to prove to the woman he believe jilted him at the altar that he does not care, and has quickly moved on. He hasn’t. Bathsheba finds him unwilling to work in his misery, and drowning his sorrows in alcohol. He even considers trying to kill himself, and disappears for a time—only to reappear once he ran out of money (and heard his wife might be moving on, herself).