8. Thoughts
The author can give the reader direct knowledge about a person’s thoughts. This is what an author cannot do in real life. The author can
provide the reader with special device which plugged into the deepest thought of a person in the story, so that the reader knows what the particular
person is thinking about, and what his or her opinion on certain things. 9.
Mannerism The author sometimes describes a person’s mannerism, habits or
idiosyncrasies. This description will provide the reader with clues about the person’s character. The author usually reveals both the positive and negative
habits of the person to enable the reader to know more about the person’s character.
Character is one of internal aspects in a novel. The term character is used in two ways: 1 it designs the individual who appears in the story and
2 it refers to the mixture of interests, desires, emotions, and principles that make up each of these individuals. Through some of these ways, the author
makes the reader aware of the personalities and the characters of certain person he wrote in his books.
2.1.3 The Theory of Critical Approaches
In this study, I need to employ one of the theories of critical approaches to enable me to have reasonable judgments. Reasonable
judgements will make it easier for me to analyze the novel better and even to PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
explore more. By using an appropriate critical approach, I can understand more about what value is revealed in the novels and how literature is shaped.
Rohrberger and Woods in Reading and Writing about Literature 1971: 3 distinguish five critical approaches. Those approaches are the formalist
approach, biographical approach, sociocultural - historical approach, mythopeic approach, and psychological approach.
In this thesis, I employ the sociocultural- historical approach. According to Rohrberger and Woods 1971: 9-10, sociocultural- historical
approach insists that the only way to locate the real work is be in the reference to the civilization that produces it. It is needed to investigate the
place or society, which reflects a created work. The historical critic examines either the work itself or the work in relation to other works by the same
author or works of similar kind of subject matter by different authors in the same or in the different periods.
This approach brings us to analyze the two novels from the sociocultural- historical point of view. It enables us to investigate and
examine the society or the place deeply. Society creates culture which becomes one of guidance, beside religion, on their life. Culture really affects
the society, but it is not the only thing that affects them. What happens on that time also brings big influence to the society. Because the settings of time
of these two novels are around 1800, we can call it history. Society, culture and history have certain relation, and using the sociocultural- historical
approach, we can analyze the two novels deeper and keen. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
2.1.4 Feminist Literary Criticism
In the novel November of the Heart and The Girl from the Coast, the influence of culture toward the main characters’ inferiority is very interesting
to be analyzed because the influence reflects the power of society in controlling as well as destroying their own life. Culture is made by the
society, to control themselves and their own life. Since this study is closely related to culture and women inferiority, it is necessary for me to use the
feminist literary criticism. Feminist Literary Criticism is a theory that explains how women are placed in the novel. Humm states 1994: ix that
gender is the focus and the fundamental category of this criticism analysis. Feminist literary criticism gives a big contribution toward my study. It helps
me in understanding how woman is characterized in the two novels. It also makes me understand the cultural background that influences the main
characters’ inferiority better. Culture deals with society, because it is the society who creates
culture. Culture represents society’s thought, idea, and also civilization level. There are many other aspects that represent the society, such as ideologies,
religion and traditions. Those aspects influence women as a part of the society. In here, the feminist literary criticism brings a great contribution in
understanding the influences. According to Humm 1994: ix, feminist literary criticism attends to how those ideologies in society and its practices
shape literary texts. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Literary texts may tell a life phenomenon. The life phenomenon represents social ideologies, culture, traditions, and many other aspects
through the story. In this study, the two novels, November of the Heart and The Girl from the Coast
, represent the culture of the societies throughout the story. The feminist literary criticism helps me in understanding the cultural
implications behind the story by showing how women behave, how they are treated, the social attitude and society tradition, patriarchal practices, and the
mind concepts of the society. Humm 1994: 2-3 explains that feminist literary criticism has
developed in tandem with the women’s movement. It emerges from the situation of women who encounter injustice in the society. Humm 1994: 2
also underlines that Virginia Woolf’ A Room of One’s Own can be said as the first modern work of feminist criticism. The work is liberating and fluid
autobiographical in its form, and a serious address to the social, literary and cultural aspects of female difference in its content. She explains that
literature which is read with feminist eye has double instead of single perspective. Further, Humm explains that Woolf is succeed in providing the
two perspectives. Woolf Humm, 1994:2 shows that since women’s social reality, like men’s social reality, is shaped by gender, the representation of
female experience in literary form is gendered. She also shows that the representation of women in literature, while not depicting innate
characteristics of actual women, might disrupt the traditional symbolic order or language system of patriarchy. Feminist Literary Criticism Humm, 1994:
3 enables the readers to understand the ways in which we acquire a gender through language, and to perceive the role played by language in creating our
subjectivities and our oppressions. In her further explanations, Humm 1994: 4 tries to explain what
feminist criticism is by mentioning three basic assumptions which are shared by feminist criticism based on the writing of many critics. The first
assumption is that gender is constructed through language, and is visible to writing style; and style, therefore must represent the articulation of
ideologies of gender. The second assumption is that there are sex related strategies. It underlies the fact that some writing is written by women, and
how women wrote is how they were allowed to write. Therefore, the language may appear as not the real expression. It also underlies that men
and women have different vocabularies and use their vocabularies in different kind of sentences. The third assumption is that the tradition of
literary criticism uses masculine norms to exclude or undervalue women’s writing and scholarship.
According to Humm 1994: 7, Feminst Literary Criticism or, which is also called as feminist criticism, addresses four issues in literary texts. The
first Humm, 1994: 7 is the issue of a masculine literary history is addressed by re-examining male texts, noting their patriarchal assumptions and showing
the way women in these texts are often represented according to prevailing social, cultural and ideological forms. In here, the criticism focuses on
women’s oppression as a literature theme, and assumes that a woman reader PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
is a consumer of male- produced works. The second Humm, 1994: 7 is the issue of the invisibility of women writers has been addressed. It underlies the
consideration on the texts of neglected women, and women’s oral culture. The third Humm, 1994: 8, the feminist criticism confronts the problem of
the feminist reader by offering readers new methods and a fresh critical practice. Humm adds that the practice focuses on those techniques of
signification which are undervalued in traditional criticism. The fourth, Humm explains 1994: 8 that feminist criticism aims to make us act as
feminist readers by creating new writing and reading collectives. Using this criticism, I am able to analyze the two novels deeper. The
criticism enables us to find values under the issue of gender, and also to find the role played by women in the society during the period of time which also
shows us the civilization and tradition of society.
2.2 Review on American and Javanese Culture
