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nature. Her life at Shrove with lack of facilities also teaches her to be able to make use of the nature wisely. Hence, Liza is able to survive even in the worst condition
of environment.
7. Liza’s View about a Woman
Liza grows with her mother who becomes her mother as well as her father. Eve is a strong woman who is able to live alone without the help of a man. This is
what Liza learns from. Since Liza does not have other people to be compared with, she only knows that every woman shall be strong just like her mother and
her. She does not have any understanding about the social myths about a man who should be strong and a woman who should act gently. Liza has the positive view
about a woman that women and men are equal. That is why she finds it odd when Sean forbids her to swear since he does it too.
‘I’m hungry’, she said. ‘I’m so bloody hungry.’
‘Don’t swear Liza.’ ‘You do. Who d’you think I got it from?’
‘It’s different for me. You’re a woman. I don’t like to hear a woman swear.’
p.25
She also gets confused when Sean judges negatively to her mother after Liza tell him that Eve does know who Liza’s father is. She gets irritated because
Sean judges Eve’s deed negatively, especially because she is a woman. It was as if Sean hadn’t heard a word since she said that, about not
knowing who her father was. ‘She must have had one bloke after another,’ he said, ‘one one night and another the next or even the same day. That’s
really disgusting. That’s terrible what d’you-call-it to bring a child up in, especially a girl?’
‘Environment,’ she said. ‘Why especially a girl?’ ‘Oh, come on, Liza, it’s obvious.’
‘Not to me,’ she said p.138
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Liza’s view about a man and a woman develops as she has been raped by her own boyfriend, Sean. She understand that women are not like men. Physically,
women are weaker than men, But she was afraid just the same, of his strength and her own
weakness, knowing
now something
she’d never
realized and
would once have
refused to
believe: that
a woman,
however young
and vigorous, is
powerless against
a determined man.
p.347 From the description we can see that Liza has a positive view about
women that women and men are equal, because she is not influenced by what society thinks. Petri 1981:6 writes that social interaction influences our life.
Since Liza does not live in a society, she is not influenced by what society thinks about men and women. However, her bad experience of being raped changes her
view a bit about women. She realizes that physically women are weaker than men.
8. Liza’s View about Her Life
Liza’s solitary life makes a dreary feeling to her. When she has built her own thought she begins to think about her own life. It comes to the moment when
she realizes the fact about her own life. … Now, although Liza still knew very few people, she knew more
than she ever had before. She could make comparisons. She could begin to question their way of
life at
the gate-house, particularly her own. Why did Eve never want to know anyone or go anywhere? Did
other people have such a passionate attachment to a place as she had at Shrove? What
was the purpose of doing such a lot of lessons, doing them all the time, on Saturdays and Sundays as well,
Eve teaching and she learning for hours on end day in and day out? Why? p. 259
As Liza grows older, she imagines what is going to become of her. She often imagines her future in the blackest way. She imagines when she is thirty or
more and Eve is a really old woman, the two of them are going on just the same. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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She keeps on asking herself, “Would she become the Shrove gardener when Eve was too old to do the work? Or the successor to Mrs Cooper? She would be sent
to town with the shopping baskets and the list, to cross the bridge and wait for the bus” p.284.
She questions and questions herself about her future. Maslow 2002:14 calls this process as the esteem and identity seeking. It also can be the self
actualisation of her own being. Therefore, it is described in the novel, She was fourteen before she began asking herself, what will become
of me when I grow up? Shall I live here with Eve for ever? When she has taught me all the English there is to learn and all the
history and French and Latin, what will we do then? What shall I do with all of it?
‘Be me,’ Eve had said, ‘me as I might have been if I had stayed here, happy and innocent and good.’
Did she want to be Eve? Did she want to be those things? pp. 260- 261
Based on the description, we can see that Liza experieces a process of an identity seeking in her life. Through her own perspective she questions about what
she is going to be. Her reflections about her life lead her to think more about how she should live her life. Liza is a girl who has a high imagination. However,
before she leaves Shrove, she does not have any dreams since she does not have any models except her mother. After she is out of Shrove and sees what outworld
is, she builds many dreams. Her first dream is becoming a doctor since she is not afraid of dead bodies.
However, after she knows that her the process to free her mother is very complex, she wishes to learn law and wishes to be a lawyer, “I’d like to be a lawyer. One
day I’ll be a lawyer” p.279. Liza has a high optimism that she can be a lawyer one day. That is why
