history. Beside that, the study of myths reveals about the mind and character of a person, so myths are the symbolic projections of a person’s hope, value,
fear, and aspirations.
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B. Focus of the Research
The writer would like to focus the research on Molleen Mohr’s life journey using Jung’s mythological and archetypal approach in The Marriage
Bed by Regina McBride.
C. Research Questions
Based on the background of the study above, the writer would like to make research question as follow:
How is Molleen Mohr’s life journey viewed from Jung’s mythological and archetypal approach?
D. Significance of the Research
The writer hopes this research will help the readers to understand the novel especially Jung’s mythological and archetypal approach on Molleen
Mohr’s life journey in the novel of The Marriage Bed by Regina McBride.
3
Wilfred L. Guerin, et al., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, New York: Harper Row, 1979 p. 148
E. Research Methodology
1. Method of the Research
This research uses qualitative method. Therefore, it is necessary to know explicitly the main point of the novel “The Marriage Bed” and
Jung’s mythological and archetypal approach on Molleen Mohr’s life journey in “The Marriage Bed”.
2. Objective of the Research
The objective of this research is to know Molleen Mohr’s life journey viewed from Jung’s mythological and archetypal approach.
3. Data Analysis
The collected data are analyzed using Jung’s mythological and archetypal theory. Therefore, the study begins by analyzing the main point
of the novel “The Marriage Bed”, and then focuses on the symbols on Molleen Mohr’s life journey.
4. The Unit of Analysis
The unit of analysis is using the novel “The Marriage Bed” written by Regina McBride, published in 2005 by Piatkus Books Ltd,
London.
5. Instrument of the Research
The research uses the researcher herself as the instrument to get the data by finding the symbols in Molleen Mohr’s life journey using the
archetypes as the tool.
6. Time and Place of the research
This research takes place on September 2007 until July 2008 in State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta.
CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Literature as one of several ways to express someone’s feelings and thoughts has always been interesting to be learned. It comes not only from the conscious mind,
but it also comes from the unconscious mind of the author. Myths and fairy stories are one form of literature and in the hypothesis of the unconscious, they draw on the
collective. In Jung’s view, they express a deeper reality than can be perceived by our rational everyday existence. These stories express something about the whole human
unconscious, put in symbolic form. Both the communication in dreams and that in myths and fairy tales is symbolic.
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The reason why the writer uses Jung’s archetypal approach in analyzing the novel entitled The Marriage Bed because Molleen’s life journey contains many
symbols. And to understand more about the problem, the writer also uses other disciplines such as Anthropology and folklore.
Several writers point at to the idea that symbols can have a transcendental element. Jung wrote in his Symbols of Transformation, ‘symbols are not allegories
and not signs: they are the images of contents which for the most part transcend consciousness’. And Mircea Eliade has argued in Images and Symbols that ‘the
4
Jean Hardy, A Psychology with a Soul: Psychosynthesis in Evolutionary Context, New York: Arkana, 1990 p. 69
symbol reveals certain aspects of reality, the deepest aspects, which defy any other means of knowledge’. A symbol of course can be any object, which still stays as an
object in its own right; a rose, or a lion, seen as representing an aspect of reality for someone still exists in its own right. So a symbol is both itself and a personal or
collective representation of some other meaning on a different plane of reality. Some symbols are so universal that Jung referred to them as archetypes – the Mother, the
Cross. These carry enormous universal symbolic meanings. But they, or indeed any other object, may carry personal meaning.
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Often in working with the unconscious, myths and fairy-stories appear in the material, as these are a cultural shock to which we all have access. They are a
particularly available form of symbolism. Both myths and fairy-stories represent eternal truths in a way that is easy to understand.
The connection between myth and understanding psyche is at Jung’s concept about archetype that the writer has mentioned earlier. These symbols are a form of
psyche which is unconscious and we need these symbols to reveal the unconscious mind in a person. Myths and fairy-stories draw on unconscious material rather than
rationality to make sense out of living in the world. Some of the basic experience of mankind has been passed through the tales.
Myths also deal with human life phase. So, myths are symbolically draw man effort in knowing Self which is its original growing.
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Ibid p. 70
One thing that is important in using mythologicalarchetypal approach is that it cannot be separated from Carl Jung theories. So the writer needs to explain the
theories in a short and practical way.
A. The Structures that Form the Psyche
According to Jung, human personality in a whole is called psyche. Psyche
contains all thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, whether it is conscious or not, inside the person. Psyche also manages and adapts someone with the social surrounding and
with his physic. Different with Sigmund Freud who generally divides psyche into two parts
conscious and unconscious; both personal, Jung’s theory divides the psyche into
three parts. The first is the ego, which Jung identifies with the conscious mind. It
contains perceptions, memories, thoughts, and feelings. Closely related is the
personal unconscious , which includes anything which is not presently conscious, but
can be. The personal unconscious is like most people’s understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and
those that have been suppressed for some reason. But it does not include the instincts that Freud would have it include.
But then Jung adds the part of the psyche that makes his theory stand out from
all others: the collective unconscious. You could call it your “psychic inheritance.”
And the writer focuses the discussion on the collective unconscious because this concept link with the problem in this research.
B. The Collective Unconscious
