14 oneself as a lesbian. Gay theorists have reminded us that definitions of
heterosexuality and homosexuality can differ from culture to culture p. 173.
7. African American Theory
Tyson 2011 states that it focuses our attention on the many different ways in which race and racial issues operate in literary text. As recently as the
1950s, the only work readily available to people of color in the United States was menial labor. African Americans were hired as farms hands in rural areas, and in
the cities they worked as maids, custodians, waiters, cooks, baggage handlers, and in other ―service‖ occupations p. 208.
8. Postcolonial Theory
Tyson 2011 states that it asks us to look at the ways in which literature offers us a view of human experience as the product of a combination of cultural
factors, including race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and cultural beliefs and customs. Postcolonial theory developed the concepts we will study furthermore
because, as its name implies, this theory emerged in an attempt to understand people from different cultures in terms of an important experience they all had in
common p. 245. Each theory in the Critical theory has its own strength and weakness. The
writer cannot use all the theories in the Critical theory to analyze the character‘s
personality and the socio-economic influences on the character‘s personality. For
15 this reason from the theories provided, the writer employs only two of the
theories: the Marxist Theory and the Postcolonial Theory.
2.1.2 Poverty Effects towards Child’s Behavior
Based on certain theorists, there are specific theories about what affects someone‘s personality. Hurlock 1976 who states that there are eight factors
which influence someone‘s personality p. 137-354. In this study, the writer only employs two determinants, which are social determinants and family
determinants. Those two determinants are related to the events that happened in the novel. The social and family conditions in the novel are poor. It is because in
social conditions, the people‘s point of view toward Fantine who already had a daughter but her husband left her makes people think that she is a prostitute. In
family conditions, Cosette, the young daughter who only had a mother and an absent father that abandoned them makes Fantine struggle to earn a living. The
challenge happens because extreme poverty has come to the people in that era and that is why people must struggle to earn a living and do whatever they can to get
food or money. Those conditions affected little Cosette who has to work in a motel where she and her mother live because they cannot afford to have a house to
live.
2.1.3 Theory of Poverty
The theory of poverty is taken from a journal written by Islam 2005. Islam 2005 states that poverty is divided into four types, that is: social darwinian
