33
2. Suwen’s Personal Development
A past experience in childhood will influence an individual’s emotion and motivation in his behaviour unconsciously Freud, 1969.
The individual’s emotion, instinct, motivation, and desire are formed during their childhood and
also influenced by people around them, especially family. Due to that fact, an individual can find others’ motivation in doing something by analysing their
childhood. In order to find out Suwen’s motivation in keeping her virginity, the
researcher tries to analyse Suwen’s life during her childhood by using Erikson’s
theory of human development. The reason is that there is a relationship between her childhood and her motivation in the adulthood. Furthermore, this study only
uses two theories of human development because there are only two stages which are found in Suwen’s personal development.
a. Basic Trust vs. Basic Mistrust
In the early stage of childhood, the role of a mother is really important to build a basic trust between a child and a mother, and also between a mother and a
child Erikson, 1963. A basic trust among an individual with others is built in this early stage and a mother has an important role in building the basic trust. When a
mother fails to fill her role, the individual will fail to trust himself and others. Suwen never meets her mother until she is seven years old. Her mother
never takes care of little Suwen and her mother also puts Suwen in a small village with her grandparents. Since her mother plays very little role in her childhood, she
does not trust herself and others. This action influences her characters so that become an introvert person who never trusts others in social interaction.
34 Due to the fact that the role of her mother is very little during her
childhood, she also tends to hate her mother very much. She often argues with her mother when she meets her mother or she sometimes annoys her mother. In one
occasion, she annoys her mother by singing a song in front of her friends when they visit her
house. “My home’s my garage, my garage is my home,” Suwen used to sing to annoy her mother p. 32.
She shows her dislike towards her mother by her action and decision to remain single. Her mother tries to introduce some men to her even though she
refuses all of those men. Thus, her mother thinks that what Suwen does for her own life is a punishment for her mother because she is not able to become a good
mother for Suwen when she is child. In a part of novel, it tells about “Mrs. Ong
was beginning to think that her elder daughter had adamantly refused all offers of marriage just to spite and punish her
” p. 166-167. In this case, Suwen fails to trust her mother as an individual who bears her
because her mother does not take care of her in her childhood. She fails to trust a figure of a mother who should become a trusted person in her life. In addition,
Suwen does not also trust others and herself because of a lack of social interaction between her and her mother during her childhood.
Her mistrust towards men also appears because of her mother’s bad
experience. Her mother bears her without marrying a man and it becomes a big trouble for her family. Due to the fact that her mother has born her without a
husband, her grandfather often tells her not to do what her mother has done. He said to her,
“Never be like your mother. She is stupid,” p. 20. She becomes a
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