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Learning is the motive that is learned through observation Petri, 1981:5. In Eve’s case, she learns a lot through her experiences. Her bad incidents in her
past teach her a great life lesson. From her parents’ life she learns about the difficulties of being poor. Then, she finds ways to get out from poverty. From her
experience of being a single parent in big city, she learns that modernity is not everything that a child needs, and from her raping exeperience she learns not to
trust strangers and these what lead her to her solitary life. Petri 1981:6 explains that our behaviour is motivated by our interaction
to other people surround us. We are motivated by the presence of other alters. Family, friends, acquintances, and even strangers influence our behaviour. In this
case, the way Eve chooses her lifestyle is obviously influenced by many persons, especially those who appear in her past.
The three strangers who rape her apparently influence Eve’s life. If she never meets them, her life would not be the same. The next person who influences
her choice most is Jonathan Tobias, the man to whom she is in love with. The other person who influences Eve significantly is Liza. Her appearance to the
world changes everything in her life. Trevor Hughes, the man who tries to rape her, is also one of the persons who make her choose her lifestyles. Bruno, her
boyfriend, and people in the town whom she does not know well also have roles in her life.
Safety needs correspond to a need for safety or security. Higher needs become unimportant when one’s life is endangered Maslow in Franken, 2002:
14. Thus, in the novel, the basic motive of her choosing this kind of lifestyle can be rooted from her sociogenic motive; that is the competence. Her wish to fulfill
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her safety need that leads her to feel secure makes her select this alternative. The learning factor also plays a role here. Since Eve has experienced some horrible
events in her past that cause a trauma in her, she does not want to interact intensely with other people.
Also, the ways Eve chooses to live isolated from others, to bring up Liza sheltered from the world, not to allow Liza to go school, not to allow Liza to visit
the town, not to allow any meeting other people or keep down meeting others to the minimum, and to bring Liza up in a totally protected childhood and youth
become her revenge to all what has happened to her. She feels that the world has treated her so badly. Eve’s decision obviously brings some consequences for
herself since she has a daughter who needs to socialize and get knowledge. Because she does not want other people to come to her and her daughter’s life, she
chooses to teach her daughter at home and avoid others to get involve in their life. The bad incidents in her life also make Eve not to be tied in a certain
religion. Eve’s parents are devoted Christians when they are still alive. They use to take Eve to the church. However, the raping incident that happens in her past,
makes her think that God never helps her when she is down. She clings to the fact that God does not help her family when they are poor, when she is raped, and
when she has to survive in the city. Her hard life makes her never trust anyone, including God. She only trusts herself.
From the description in the novel we can conclude that among other things that motivate Eve in choosing her lifestyles are her experiences in her past: her
bad experience in interacting with many people and how people bring her down. However, Eve is certainly a bright woman who has the capability to use her
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cognitive abilities. She learns a lot from her life and tries to make her life change.
b. Eve’s Love to Shrove
Eve loves Shrove very much. She grows up there and spends her life from childhood until teenage at Shrove. She feels that there is a tight feeling between
her and Shrove. Eve wants to live at Shrove only with her daughter. Her dream is to live a peaceful life with her daughter forever. She manages to live a hard life at
Shrove and be responsible for her only daughter. Because she only wants the life for her and her daughter, Eve tries hard to make herself and her daughter’s life
separated from other people. Eventhough the owner of the house, Jonathan Tobias, is willing to pay
some money for another person to clean the house, Eve rather chooses to clear up Shrove by herself. She even makes an imaginary person to deceive Jonathan
Tobias so that he thinks there is a woman who cleans the house there p.121. She makes her life difficult by acting as two persons in a same time.
The same way happens when Mr Frost, the gardener of Shrove, dies because of old age. Eve does not want to find a successor of him. She
would rather do all the garden-work by herself: mowing the grass, planting the seeds, or cutting the flowers p.269. When Liza finnaly succeess in
persuading her to get a successor of Mr Frost, still, Eve chooses a very old and unintelligent person to be the gardener. She chooses the same type of person
because she thinks he will not disturb her with the questions about the way she chooses her lifestyle.
The way Eve teaches herself and her daughter a hard life, of course, brings something in the future: for her and her daughter. Life has never been easy for
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them. They learn to make their own pleasures without toys, television, videos, CD players, or other external amusements p. 336. Eve’s
choice automatically
becomes Liza’s single option, since Liza knows her mother as her only family. Liza never knows that their life is so hard until she finds out how other people
live their life after she sees it on television. “…Now that Liza was older she was beginning to see that Eve had made her life
hard of her volition, had made all kinds of difficulties for herself where there might have been ease and pleasantness” p. 272.
As she is growing up, Liza realizes that her mother loves Shrove more than anything in the world. At first she is dissapointed with the fact. However,
later on, she learns to accept it. When Sean, her boyfriend, tells her that the reason behind Eve’s grief is because she is in love with Jonathan Tobias, and Jonathan
Tobias chooses another woman, Liza is not sure about that. ‘I don’t know about being in love,’ Liza said.
‘Maybe a bit. She wanted Shrove House, that was what all that was about. She wanted Shrove House for herself, to make sure she’d never been
parted from it. That was the only way. If she married Mr Tobias it’d have been hers.’
He was shocked. ‘That’s not right.’ ‘I can’t help it. It’s the way it was. It was always like that. She wanted that
place, to be there all the time and sure she could be, more than anything in the world. It was all she wanted.’ p.105
Liza is sure that her mother loves Shrove much. It comes from the fact that she always leaves her at Shrove alone and does not feel worried about it. Sean
tells Liza that what her mother does is wrong: to leave her only child at home alone.
‘That was wrong.’ Sean was in censorious mood. ‘Suppose something had happened to you.’
‘It didn’t.’ PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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‘Maybe not. Just as well for her. You might have hurt yourself or the place caught fire.’
She thought but didn’t say, the place burning down would have been a bigger tragedy for Eve. Shrove on fire would be worse than Liza dying in
it. p.106
Sean never really believes that Eve only thinks about Shrove and nothing else. So he tries to find information to make sure that what Liza is thinking is wrong. He
asks Liza whether Eve tries to contact Tobias or not. This is to see whether Eve is actually loves Tobias or Shrove.
‘Well, she never did, no. At least, so far as I know she didn’t. she didn’t get a chance, did she, with him so far away and we weren’t on the phone,
we hadn’t a car, we were trapped down there in a way.’ ‘But wasn’t that was what she wanted?’
‘Oh, yes, it was what she wanted. She wanted to be at Shrove and be undisturbed and isolated but what she’d wanted most was to own Shrove. I
think she gave up that idea when he got married. I mean, she gave it up for a while. It was very hard for her, she’d counted on it for so long, but she
had to give it up. Of course I don’t know what went on in her mind, I was only a child, but I think she regretted a lot of things, she had bitter
recriminations.’ p.130
Maslow 2002:14 writes that one of the needs that motivates someone to do something is his or her love and belongingness, that is a feeling that one
belongs. Based on the descriptions we can see that one of the reasons behind choosing her lifestyles is Eve’s love of Shrove. Eve feels that she belongs to
Shrove and Shrove belongs to her. She isolates herself and her daughter at Shrove because she loves Shrove much. It is the only place she considers as the best place
to live because of the beauty of the nature and the location which is far from anywhere. She also considers Shrove as her sanctuary since it is the place where
she grows.
c. Eve’s Love to Liza
It is true that every mother should love their children because it is the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
