Review of Related Studies

27

B. Review of Related Studies

Many researchers have criticized Saadawi’s work especially her famous novel, Woman at Point Zero. Most of the styles are used by Saadawi is critical writing style. This critical writing style has brought Saadawi into both a researcher and an author of literary work. Her controversial writing in Woman at Point Zero is merely about the condition in Egypt where she finds child abuse still becomes a serious problem. Many critics have come to Saadawi. One of them is a critic comes from Hannah Todd from Publisher Weekly, Egypt’s foremost feminist writer again confronts the role of women in Muslim society….Saadawi writes beautifully and in abundant and evocative physical detail of an Egypt that remains closely tied to the land and to a way of life that in many aspects has not changed for centuries www.webster.edusaadawi.html . Nawal El Saadawi, a writer who writes many stories about women and children, has proved as the leading of spokeswomen in the world. She writes many good novels that have been published in many countries. In her novel, Woman at Point Zero , she tries to figure out the real condition of children in Egypt. In Egypt, there are many people live under the insufficient economy. Many children can not go to school and have to work outside or help household job. This kind of condition has brought Nawal El Saadawi to write a novel based on the true story that she had interviewed with a prisoner named Firdaus. In this novel, Nawal provides a story with a flashback plot about child, love, and abuse which are closely related into reality that happen in our lives. By reading every PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 28 page of this novel, the reader will be able to feel each moment of this story which will help them also to understand the character of Firdaus and all her actions. In Sanata Dharma University, there are some undergraduate theses which discuss some certain topics using novel Woman at Point Zero. In 2004, Rigen Pratitisari, a student in English Education Study Program had written her thesis entitled “Firdaus` motivation in becoming a prostitute as revealed in Nawal El Saadawi`s Woman at Point Zero” . In the same year also, Yoelia Ong wrote her thesis which focused on motivation entitled “Feminism as reflected in Nawal El Saadawi`s novel Woman at Point Zero” . Two years later, Dewi Maharani Purba wrote her thesis about motivation in which the title is “A study of the main character`s motivations for accepting the death sentence in Nawal El Saadawi`s Woman at Point Zero” . The latest study was about motivation using comparative study entitled “Motivation of the main character in becoming a prostitute : a comparative study of Paulo Coelho`s eleven minutes and Nawal El Saadawi`s Woman at Point Zero” which was written by Risa Pareka in 2008. Seeing the topics that had been discussed previously, the writer would like to discuss other important points from the novel which has not been discussed yet. This study focuses on the influence of child abuse towards Firdaus’ personality development by relating this study with psychological approach. The use of psychological approach will give clearer description about Firdaus’ personality development. This approach helps the writer to know Firdaus from her psychological aspects and her personality development after experiencing child abuse. This will answer the first and third problem formulation. Firdaus’ personality development is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 29 influenced by many aspects. These aspects can be found out using theory of personality development by Hurlock.

C. Theoretical Framework