Definition of Terms INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Review of Related Studies

The Best Little Girl in the World is a novel by Steven Levenkron which tells about a horrific story of a girl named Francesca Dietrich. The related studies on this study are hard to find. However, there are some studies and criticism which are related to this study. There are some comments related to this book which mostly focus on criticizing the story. The study from Stella Cecilia on The Effect of Rebecca Bloomwood’s Compulsive Shopping Disorder in the series of novels written by Sophie Kinsella, the writer uses the same approach as this study. The objective of this related study is to find out the factors which influence of the main character’s illness named Compulsive Shopping Disorder CSD. There are three problems in this related study. The first problem is the depiction of Rebecca Bloomwood in order to show her CSD. In the analysis, Rebecca is depicted as someone who shows more than four symptoms of CSD which means she suffers from CSD. The second problem is to discover the causal factor of Rebecca Bloomwood’s CSD. There are some factors which influence Rebecca B loomwood’s CSD. Those factors are family, society, and media. The third problem is the effect of Rebecca Bloomwood’s CSD towards her relationship with other people. These people are Luke Brandon, Suze Cleath-Stuart, Jess Bertram, and Elinor Sherman. From the depiction of Rebecca the writer of this study finds that she suffered from a psychological illness called Compulsive Shopping Disorder CSD. The writer finds that there are some reasons why Becky suffers from CSD. The first factor that most definitely causes Becky’s CSD is caused by her family and friends. The other factors are caused by society and media such as advertisements, TV programs and ‘sale’ promotions. The writer concludes that because of the main character’s obsession of shopping, she starts to have troubles with people around her. Her relationship with some people close to her is harmed because of her disorder. The study conducted by Cecilia uses the same approach as this thesis, which is the psychoanalytic approach. Another similarity is about the way of the two researches are conducted. This thesis is conducted by analysing the intrinsic elements of the story and then moves on to the extrinsic elements. Both Cecilia’s research and this thesis also analyse about person’s disorder. The difference between the study conducted by Cecilia and this thesis lies on the way Cecilia tries to find the effect of character’s disorder towards her relationship with other people. Another difference lies on the theory that is being used. Cecilia uses the theory about consumerism and materialism. This thesis, however, uses the Freudian theory of defence mechanism to reveal character development. The review of the book by Julius Fast says that one type of conflict in this particular book is manwoman versus manwoman. This is shown when Francesca is forced to eat by her parents. Another type of conflict is manwoman versus self.