for her work although it is only in a small amount of money. Mabel is a person who always needs someone to support her life, especially after she loses her
father. For months, Mabel had been servant-less in the big house, keeping the
home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers. She had kept house for ten years. But previously it was with unstinted means. Then, however
brutal and coarse everything was, the sense of money had kept her proud, confident. The men might be foul-mouthed, the women in the kitchen
might have bad reputations, and her brothers might have illegitimate children. But so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established,
and brutally proud, reserved p.471.
Mabel’s dependence towards money replaces the emptiness in her heart because the absence of love which she experiences. After leaving by her parents
and sister, she uses money as her orientation in life. Here, she shows displacement as one way to defend herself, and substitution to adjust herself from the fact of the
absence of love of her parents and sister. It can be seen when she uses money to replace her suffering from a loss. This condition is appropriate with the statement
Morris quoted, that displacement is the redirection of represses motives and emotion from the original object to substitute object 506.
Mabel’s behavior shows substitution because her orientation to money is a way to forget the sadness she feels. And by doing all of the house works and
becomes the servant in her own house, Mabel can shift her thought about her parents’ death. It is appropriate with Carroll’s statement that substitution is
adjustment mechanism in which frequently an individual who has become convinced of his inferiority in one kind of activity will give up trying to succeed
along that line and concentrate on another activity 216.
e. Mabel’s Stubbornness
The absence of love that Mabel experiences also makes her become a person who does not want to hear others’ ideas or opinion. She does not believe
others; she just believes her own feeling and thought. She becomes a person who is stubborn. She will follow her own way just the same. She will always hold the
keys of her own situation. Mabel becomes mindless and persistent. She endures from day to day p.471. Mabel does not want to hear others’ opinion. She just
does what she wants to do. According to Carroll, a person who is egocentric dwells on himself and
interprets every situation from a personal angle and usually egocentricity is necessary for survival 221. Mabel’s egocentricity arises after the death of her
parents to adjust herself from the absence of love she experiences. She becomes egocentric because she tries to lose the sadness she feels because of the absence of
love, so she can be survived for her life.
f. Mabel’s Aggressiveness
The death of her parents and the marriage of her sister make Mabel lose people who she needs in her life. She needs a person who cares about her and
makes her secure in life. When Jack Fergusson saves her when Mabel tries to commit suicide in the pond, she thinks that Jack saves her because he loves her.
Aggressively, she tries to make sure that Jack loves her. “You love me,” she murmured, in strange transport, yearning and
triumphant and confidently. “You love me. I know you love me, I know.”
And she was passionately and indiscriminately kissing his knees, through the wet clothing, passionately and indiscriminately kissing his knees, his
legs, as if unaware of everything p.475. Mabel’s behavior which shows her confidence to persuade Jack to love her shows
that she is aggressive. Her aggressiveness arises because she does not have a person who gives care and attention for her after the death of her parents and the
marriage of her sister. Her brothers also do not care about her. Because of that, Mabel assumes that Jack Fergusson can be a person she can depend on because he
has helped her when she tries to commit suicide. Mabel’s aggressiveness appears because the need of someone to rely on.
Through the main characters from the three different short stories, we learn that the absence of love can affect someone’s psychological condition. There
are many influences happened in human being after experiencing the absence of love in human life. The influences of the absence of love on each person are
different, depending on the characterization that human have.
