The quotation below emphasizes on Tess‟ mother past experience on the
cruelty of her parents in the perspective of Tess. According to the quotation below, Tess sees the sadness in mother since mother grew up in a violent family
where her parents neglect her need for love and care. Instead of loving their own daughter, mother‟s parents abuse her and mistrust her. According to Tess‟
perspectives, although mother was being abused and being mistrusted in her family by her parents, she still loves them. Tess also interprets
that mother‟s parents are terrible since they trashed their children although they were innocence.
For the next few days I felt I was walking on air. I looked at Mother with
new eyes, knowing what she‟d been through. Growing up in that family, with so many kids crammed into a small house and her mother and
father so violent. I knew she loved them, but they seemed terrible to
me. They thrashed their kids even if they‟d done nothing wrong. Stevens, 2008: 107
The abuses which Tess‟ mother suffered in her teen age could create a sense of frustration as she grew up. When she was abused in her family, she
cannot express her anger into other people. But, when mother parted from her parents she receives the freedom of life and has no one to forbid her to express her
freedom. Mother, as the victim of abuse, expresses her freedom by showing her anger and her emptiness by abusing her own children, especially Tess.
4. Parent‟s Divorce
T he fourth cause of the abuses which is suffered by Tess is parent‟s
divorce. The reasons parent‟s divorce is the cause of abuse because those who live alone with children or being single-parent could get higher stress level and could
be exhausted of nurturing children. A parent who nurtures alone hisher children
may be exhausted because heshe has to take care of hisher children‟s needs by working in order to earn money, and also heshe has to provide the emotional
needs such as love and attention, and other physical needs of the children. In the autobiography entitled Sold
, Tess‟ parents part from each-other because Tess‟ father had to go back to his homeland in Ireland and return to his family.
„After the war ended, there wasn‟t much use for an old soldier, was there? He had his marching orders, and he had to go home, back to Ireland.
And to his wife and kids. I went to the barracks one last time, the day
before he left. I walked all the way as usual, pushing the pram with Kath and Jess in it. You walked beside me, holding on to the handle. You were a
good little walker, didn‟t complain.‟
Mother sighed heavily. „We had one last talk. He kissed each one of you girls, and said goodbye.” Stevens, 2008: 102
From the text above, it is explained that factually Tess had a biological-
father. Her father is explained here as a former soldier who fought during the world war. Tess‟ father was already married before marrying her mother, it is
explained in the text that after the war ended, he has to go back to Ireland, the place where he and his family lives. From this text, we could get the information
that this is the last time Tess and her family met the father of the family and this is the time they parted.
C. The Effects of the Abuses Experienced by Tess
Since th e rediscovery of child sexual abuse in the 1980‟s, there has been
great interest in the study on the effects of the abuses Corby, 2006: 182. There are two reasons of the importance of studying and knowing about abuse Corby,
2006: 183. First, there are the treatment needs of the people who have been abused. Second, there is a preventive aspect for dealing with the effects of the
abuses. Studying and knowing about abuse could prevent the abuses to be repeated in the next generation.
There are several effects of the abuses experienced by Tess in general; Genophobia, Juvenile delinquency and adult criminality, physical wound in
certain area of the body, and difficulties in socializing.
1. Genophobia
The first effect of abuse experienced by Tess is genophobia. Genophobia is a trauma of sex. Those who suffer from genophobia may be people who suffer
from sexual abuse in hisher past. Those who suffer from genophobia might feel traumatic, panic, and disgust when they are open to sexual activities. The victims
who are suffering from genophobia might have the possibility to be lacking of relationship with their partners. This lack of relationship is due to hisher mistrust
towards the partner, since heshe is traumatic in sexual activities involving partners or other people. In the case of Tess, she suffers from genophobia due to
the abuses she received from the punters in her childhood. He was the first man I went all the way with, in his flat one evening. And
to be honest, I could have done without it. I was still a virgin, and being entered sexually was awful. Not that it hurt, particularly, but I hated
feeling exposed, vulnerable. My m ind flashed back to the time I‟d
been naked with that man in London, and I felt sick. I insisted the light
was out. I‟d enjoyed snogging in the past, but now the whole thing struck me as a nasty, dirty business, with no pleasure. Stevens, 2008: 262
From the quotation above it could be interpreted that Tess is trauma of sex
when she is about to have sex with her partner. She says that being entered sexually is awful, not because of the pain, but due to the feeling of being exposed.
She hates if her body is seen by others. In here, Tess is traumatic of the sexual
