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with her ex boyfriend whom she still loves. But then her feeling turns into happiness after Sophie gets the news that she has been accepted to work in television. Her
happiness to work in television leads her to find what actually she wants to be and experience.
“I can’t believe it,” Sophie was sniveling down her borrowed Pacha T-shirt. “My best friend and my boyfriend. Together. They betrayed me, Lainey.
Betrayed me.” 471
She was so overwhelmed with excitement, it was another hour before she got back on to the subject of Natasha and Andy. And when she finally did, she
realized to her great surprise that the hurt, which had been so raw last night, was already fading like a nettle sting, leaving nothing more than a faint rash.
And even that would probably be gone by evening. 475
Subsequently Sophie turns into a more mature person that she apologizes Natasha and her ex boyfriend. And like what Natasha does, Sophie also tries to reshape her life
into the new one.
2. External Factors that Influence Sophie and Natasha’s Searching for Their Self-Identity
Living within others in an environment or society, one needs to actualize himself or herself. The way the environment perceives a person may influence the
way a person perceives himself and the world around him. As generated by psychologists in the phenomenological theory, one’s personality depends on the
phenomena happen around him or her. Here one’s experiences and interactions with society, family and friends’ roles, and life conflicts may bring influences in one’s
actualization in order to find his or her self-identity.
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a. The Environment around Sophie and Natasha
Actualizing tendency comes from the experiences that someone perceived from the world around them, in this case is the environment or the society Rogers,
1959: 196. Actualizing tendency of a person are wanting to achieve good status, obtain a good job, enrich and satisfy himself as the ways the person tries to adapt
himself into the condition of the society around him. As formulated in Phenomenology theory, environment or the society where a person lives and grows
up regularly shapes his or her self-identity, and so does with Sophie and Natasha’s environment. They generally follow the phenomena occurred at their ages. For
example, Sophie and Natasha mean to follow the trend at their puberty as mentioned in the novel:
But then, Sophie and Natasha entered the world of puberty. They pored over the instructions on the Tampax pack. They studied the Just 17 diagrams on
how to apply eyeshadow. They giggled about Iush George Michael and gorgeous Rupert Everett, oblivious to their idols’ sexuality. 1
Knowing that being an artist and a popular person in the television is the dream of many people and that they will get success and will be adored by others
attracted Sophie’s willingness. Sophie then tried to attend auditions to be a model or a drama player. But when she wasn’t accepted by the agent and even by her school, she
dismissed her dream. Her environment successfully assured her that she had no talent at all.
But when she was fifteen, she went to a agency, who told that lovely as she was, at five foot six she simply wasn’t tall enough. The dream shattered, she
vaguely dabbled in the idea of acting, but when she auditioned for drama school they told her she had no talent at all. 40
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It is described that the settings used in the novel are London and other small cities around England in the modern era where a person will be more respected if he
or she is included in upper – middle social class. So those who are popular because of rich and get a great job will live wealthily and have higher lifestyle since living in
London costs much money. And it is common for having drinks or hanging out after work with friends in a restaurant or café and even in a pub. It is described from the
quotations as follow: Finding somewhere that was actually in Greater London and cost less then a
hundred pounds a week was a bit like looking for a morris-dancing Greenlander. Places that fell into the category tended to be accompanied by
ominous warnings like ‘Christians preferred’ or ‘Strict vegans only’. 194- 195
“Well, we did have four glasses of champagne,” Sophie reasoned. “And” – she leaned over to see the evidence – “you had two lagers before I got here.
And this is London.” ….
Sounded OK to her, after all it was practically impossible to dine out in London without spending at least thirty pounds a head. 225
Unlike Natasha who is used to getting along with many famous and important people in her work, Sophie is used to hanging out with her friends who are only her
partners in her office. She rarely gets along with people from the upper class such as from the governance or well known university who are Olly’s friends. And being a
friend of them makes Sophie feel proud of herself. Sophie realized she was having a really nice time. Alice and Sean weren’t the
kind of people she’d normally hang out with: both way too square with all their talk about choir practice and book groups, but they were very nice and
they obviously adored Olly. Maybe if Sophie had gone to university she could have had a gang of friends like this, she thought wistfully. 279
Different from Eastern culture in which women seldom and shouldn’t smoke,
