and anecdotes about the funny things she had done; why no one ever remarked on her food preferences” 110.
After Pauline gets married to Cholly, she feels happy because her husband treats her tenderly. However, life becomes more difficult. Pauline feels lonely and
isolated because her husband goes to work until lately and she is left home by herself. All she does is taking care of the house. When she goes outside the house to find any
friends, she is surprised by how unfriendly the other women are. Pauline is laughed by the few black women in town just because she does not straighten her hair and does
the make up like they do. She begins to spend money on clothes that will make the women look at her differently. All that she wants is to make friends with others. She
wants to the other women accept her for who she is. She does all that because she feels lonely without anyone she could be able to talk to.
In her loneliness, she turned to her husband for reassurance, entertainment, for things to fill the vacant places. Housework was not enough; there were only
two rooms, and no yards to keep or move about in. The women in the town wore high-heeled shoes, and when Pauline tried to wear them, they aggravated
her shuffle into a pronounced limp 117-118. One day, Pauline decides to get a job as a housekeeper in a white woman’s
house. She feels lonely, and she wants to do something to fill her loneliness. She spends so much money on clothes and that makes her relationship between her
husband worst. They quarrel a lot about money, and Pauline feels lonelier because she does not get attention from her husband anymore. “Cholly commenced to getting
meaner and meaner and wanted to fight me all the time. …Look like working for that woman and fighting Cholly was all I did. Tiresome.” 118-119
From her speech, Pauline admits that she is lonely. She always fights with her husband, spends a lot of money on clothes, and works as a housekeeper to fill her day
so that she is not so bored because she has no friends at all. All the women in her PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
town makes her as the object of their laughing just because she does not have any make up and straighten her hair.
4.1.1.3 Unconfident
Besides feeling ugly because of her leg, Pauline is an unconfident woman. She learns in the movies about how to dress and do make up. And she develops
destructive ideas about physical beauty and romantic love from the movies she watches. She tries to make herself look like a movie star; she makes her hair like Jean
Harlow that she sees on a magazine. She does all that because she is not confident with her own appearance. She thinks by learning how to dress like a movie star, she
will be more beautiful and more confident. I ’member onetime I went to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. I fixed my hair
up like I’d seen hers on a magazine. A part on the side, with one little curl on my forehead. It looked just like her. Well, almost just like. Anyway, I sat in
that show with my hair done up that way and had a good time 123. She feels a little bit confident by doing her hair like a movie star. Tragically,
when she is chewing candy while watching a movie, she loses one of her front teeth. That incident makes he lose her self-confidence so badly. Once again she thinks that
she is cursed. Pauline and Cholly begin to fight again. Her first baby fails to fill the hole in her life. Pauline becomes a person who is lack of self-confidence, crippled,
and toothless. He began to drink less and come home more often. They eased back into a
relationship more like the early days of their marriage, when he asked if she were tired or wanted him to bring her something from the store 121.
{…} “I was sitting back in my seat, and I taken a big bite of that candy, and it
pulled a tooth right out of my mouth. I could of cried. I had good teeth, not a rotten one in my head. I don’t believe I ever did get over that. There I was, five
months pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. Everything went then. Look like I just didn’t care no more after that. I let my
hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly” 123. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
The fact that she has a crippled leg also has a big contribution to her identity crisis. She always blames her leg for her bad luck and condition. From her reaction of
losing her front teeth, she looses her self-confidence. By losing her front tooth, she learns that she is ugly whatever she does. And, when she tries to turn her ugliness into
beauty, she feels cursed. In her mind, whatever she does to turn into beauty, she will always looks ugly. It does not make things better, but makes things worst.
4.1.1.4 Irresponsible
According to Pikunas, if a young mother has a happy background of her childhood and she feels good at her relationship with her parents and siblings, she will
look for the way to recreate that experience and tries to make her family happy like she did. She will model her mothering from her mother’s example 61.
Pauline Breedlove does not have good experiences of her childhood. Her childhood leaves bad memories in her. She never remembers that her mother ever
plays with her and her siblings. Pauline does not feel the love from her mother because there are not enough attentions from her mother. This makes Pauline not
know how to take care of her children well. During her childhood, Pauline is isolated from other family members, and
therefore, she cultivates her own pleasures. Her family later migrates to Kentucky, where they move into a larger house with a garden. Pauline is also put in charge of
caring for the house and her two younger twin brothers, Chicken and Pie. Near the beginning of World War I, the Williamses discovered, from returning
neighbors and kin, the possibility of living better in another place. In shifts, lots, batches, mixed in with other families, they migrated, in six months and
four journeys, to Kentucky, where there were mines and mill-work. In Kentucky they lived in a real town, ten to fifteen houses on a single street,
with water piped right into the kitchen. Ada and Fowler Williams found a five- room frame house for their family. The yard was bounded by a once-white
fence against which Pauline’s mother planted flowers and within which they PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
