Object of the Study

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The work to be analyzed in the study is a novel from a feminist writer named Anita Shreve. She has written many feminist novels and this study analyses one of her work whose title is The Pilot’s Wife. The novel was written in 1998 and has been filmed in 2002. This novel is a love and a tragedy novel, telling love and life story of a woman named Kathryn who is a wife of a pilot. Through this novel, the readers may get depiction of how women position in society and their second or other position in a family. Kathryn is a wife of a pilot who has set route and it forces her to be an independent wife and mother for her fifteen-years-old daughter. Nothing surprised her more than a news from Robert Hart telling her husband has died in a crash. The crash is assumed as her husband committing suicide as what it is heard from the CRV before the explosion. Interviewed as the pilot’s wife, Kathryn does not feel there is something wrong in her husband as the reason behind his committing suicide. For this reason, Kathryn wants to find out who her husband really is. This novel tells Kathryn’s journey to find out the answer of all the questions she asks about her husband after his death. She goes to Ireland to find out all the secrets her husband has kept. One by one, the truths about the man she loves start to reveal to the surface and give her painful wound that she has never imagined before. She finds out that her husband lies about his relatives, his saving on separated account and his having other family in Ireland. She finds out that she is betrayed eventhough she has done the roles society gives for women as wife. In the story, Kathryn finds out that Jack has another wife whose name is Muire. Kathryn and Muire have the same status as Jack’s wife. As Jack’s wife, Muire also lives under Jack’s authority eventhough she knows everything about him compared to Kathryn. Facing the painful betrayal, Kathryn realizes that she has no power to defend herself or change everything that society has constructed. She ends up in an action that shows she wants to end her pain and to forget Jack by forgiving him. Her forgiveness is externally taken as her lack of power as she does not have other option. The lack of power is the idea of social castration. The wives do not have power, that is symbolized by penis, that Jack has. The wives’ lack of power is the idea of social castration.

B. Approach of the Study