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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Literature is a human’s work in the form of text that cannot be separated from
human value, experience, and culture as its representation. A literary work is the reflection of a human being as there are important life values in discovering the
work. According to Welek and Warren in Theory of Literature, literature can take place of human’s life.
In practice, literature can obviously take the place of many things – of travel
or sojourn in foreign lands, of direct experience, vicarious life; and it can be used by the historian as a social document Wellek and Warren, 1956:31.
One of the types in literature is novel which has its attribute in representing
the story through characters. A character in the novel is treated as life since in the work it passes the cycle of life. A character cannot be separated from conflicts
which every human has in their life. As the character brings conflicts, it brings human’s value, experience, and culture. Tatang Iskarna, S.S., M.Hum says in his
lecture that literature has important points, there are human’s experience and value. Therefore, it is worth to state that identifying a character from a novel is
important for people to realize more about the life by reflecting the life from the character.
The character which is observed in this paper is a main character from The Old Wives’ Tale, Sophia. In the story, Sophia is described as a rebellious girl. Her
characteristic of being rebellious brings her to face many conflicts in her life. The
character has contradictive desire with her surroundings. First, she has will to be a teacher that
opposes her mother’s will. The story also brings her to the extent of her decision leaving her family behind.
Understanding the character in literature is not only by reading its text, but also observing the unseen part inside the work, especially the character
’s mind and behavior, which are worth to observe. In this case, literature and psychology
can be one good example of a synergy. As psycholog y is used to observe human’s
mind and her behavior, a character as the reflection of human life can be an appropiate object to explore. Michael Ryan argues in An Introduction to
Criticism: Literature, Film, Culture about the importance of revealing the life of
the mind and behavior hidden inside a text. One must also look behind what is said in a text and analyze what the psychic
sources might be of the fantasies and emotions one encounters there. Texts are often themselves “symptoms,” indicators of illness or of troubled personal
history. But writers are also astute observers, and sometimes they describe psychological aspects of human life with great insight. They depict for us
troubled emotions or upset relationships that resonate with our own lives or that allow access to general aspects of human emotional and psychic life
Ryan, 2012: 43.
Related to the psychological approach of this undergraduate thesis, therefore, the anxiety theory is applied to the main character of the novel
The Old Wives’ Tale
as a relevant character to discuss as a portrait of how far the conflicts and anxiety give impact to a person. This thesis will discover the systematic
mechanism on how a person gets the impact in facing her anxiety. Anxiety is a painful feeling that a person suffer. There are concepts of reality
anxiety, neurotic anxiety, and moral anxiety provided to classify a person’s
anxiety. The anxiety which occurs will trigger a person to react in treating her
anxiety. Each person has different ways to suppress the anxiety. This person can use its defense mechanism to cover it, or expresses the anxiety by getting the
neurosis’ symptoms.
B. Problem Formulation