Analysis of Theme Through The Portrayal of Protagonist in Valerie Martin's 'Mary Reilly'.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……….... TABLE OF CONTENTS ………....
ABSTRACT ………... CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study ……….………….… Statement of the Problem ………...… Purpose of the Study ……….. Methods of Research ………...….. Organization of the Thesis ………. CHAPTER TWO: ANALYSIS OF THEME THROUGH THE
PORTRAYAL OF PROTAGONIST IN VALERIE MARTIN’S MARY REILLY………... CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION... BIBLIOGRAPHY ………...……….… APPENDICES:
Synopsis of Mary Reilly ……….. Biography of Valerie Martin ………...…….
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ABSTRACT
Di dalam skripsi ini, penulis membahas tema melalui tokoh utama dalam novel berjudul Mary Reilly yang ditulis oleh Valerie Martin. Tema dalam novel ini adalah pengalaman buruk pada masa lampau dapat menyebabkan seseorang memiliki sifat-sifat negatif. Tema ini muncul setelah saya menganalisis tokoh utama yaitu Mary Reilly.
Mary Reilly adalah seorang pembantu rumah tangga yang pernah mengalami kekerasan fisik pada waktu masa kecilnya. Kekerasan fisik tersebut dilakukan oleh ayah kandungnya yang meninggalkan bekas luka pada tangan dan leher Mary. Di dalam novel, Mary digambarkan sebagai orang yang selalu khawatir, tertutup, dan kecanduan bekerja. Mary tidak pernah menceritakan tentang masa lalunya pada orang lain di tempat dia bekerja. Pengalaman traumatisnya selalu membuat Mary khawatir dan merasa tidak aman, walaupun sebenarnya tidak ada hal yang perlu dikhawatirkan karena Mary tinggal di tempat yang aman dan jauh dari ayahnya yang kejam. Mary menjadi kecanduan bekerja untuk melupakan masa lalunya. Semua hal tersebut terjadi karena pengalaman traumatis masa lalunya yang sulit dilupakan. Hal ini menyebabkan karakteristik Mary berbeda dari orang lain.
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APPENDICES
Synopsis of Mary Reilly
Mary Reilly is the story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seen through a different perspective. The story is seen from Reilly’s point of view, who is Dr. Jekyll’s intelligent and dutiful housemaid. Reilly is always with her unemployed father at home while her mother is too busy working to make a living for the family. Her father is abusive and cruel. Reilly is being tortured by her alcoholic father without any reason when she was a child. One day, her father puts her in a small closet with rats that bite her and leave scars on her hands and neck. What her father has done to her results in traumas that she always remembers.
Mary works at Dr. Jekyll’s house as one of his housemaids. Dr. Jekyll is curious about the scars on her hands and also on her neck. He finds Mary’s past life to be interesting, and then he tells her to write about it and give it to him to read.
Strange things happen in the house when her master is busy with his scientific works in the laboratory. Her master is often ill and he often locks himself in the laboratory.
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There is also a new person in the house, who is her master’s assistant, Mr. Hyde. Everything in Dr. Jekyll’s house becomes more complicated because one of her master’s friend is murdered. Reilly is curious about what happens as she suspects that the murder case is related to Dr. Jekyll. She tries to find out about the murder case. Mary is soon drawn into her master’s dark world and slowly begins to know her master terrible secret. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide are actually the same person.
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Biography of Valerie Martin
Valerie Martin, who is an American novelist and short story writer, was born in 1948, Missouri. She graduated from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she received an MFA in creative writing in 1974. Her teaching career is at various universities, Mount Holyoke College, The University of New Orleans, University of Alabama, and Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New York.
She is the author of nine novels, three collections of short stories. Her first novel, Set in Motion was published in 1978. Her other works, Alexander (1979), A Recent Martyr (1987), The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories (1988), Mary Reilly won Kafka prize (1990), The Great Divorce (1993), Italian Fever (1999), Salvation: Scenes from The Life of St. Francis (2001), Property (2003) won the Prestigious Orange Price, The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories (2006), Trepass (2007).
Her novel, Mary Reilly is an intertextual narrative that retells the story of the classic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the point of view of Dr. Jekyll’s housemaid. In 1996, with the same title Mary Reilly, this novel was made into a movie by Columbian Tristar. The film stars are Julia Robert as Mary Reilly and John Malkovich as Dr. Jekyll.
Source : “Biography of Valerie Martin”
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Valerie Martin is the author of six novels and two collection of short fictions. Her works are mostly about a love relationship between men and women, slavery, and also passionate love. I am interested with her works because the protagonist in her novels mostly have strong characteristics and the point of view in her novels is very clear.
She is known as a formidable writer in her class by herself…and she has clear and penetrating gaze, Martin looks at the world and sees its horrors and contradictions, its terrifying beauty, and renders her insights through the characters of memorable women. She is disturbing, provocative writer of risky and dangerous fiction (“Love Short Fiction by Valerie Martin”).
Some of her characters reflect the dark side of life and erotic love, as her trademarks are “a preoccupation with the dark underside of life, a taste for disturbing, even macabre imagery…excursions into an unseen realm of strange and magical events” (“Love Short Fiction by Valerie Martin”).
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From her six novels, I am interested in Mary Reilly to be analyzed for my thesis. The book itself is an intertextual narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was first published in 1886. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde describes “the disturbing tale of the dual personality of Dr. Jekyll, a physician. He develops a drug that transforms him into demonic Mr. Hyde, in whose person he exhausts all the latent evil in his nature” (“Preview of Analysis of Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin”). Martin uses the same story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for her novel, Mary Reilly, but she retells the story from a different perspective, which is from Mary Reilly as a housemaid in Dr. Jekyll’s house. I believe Martin’s Mary Reilly is an equally good piece of literature compared to Stevenson’s novel as Mary Reilly is regarded as “a tense drama, an authentically detailed historical novel, and a remarkable psychological portrait of an unusual and very sympathetic woman” (“Synopses and Review”).
My analysis focuses on the protagonist, who is Mary Reilly, because I am interested in her “remarkable psychological portrait” (“Synopses and Review”) as the protagonist of the novel. She is indeed “an unusual and very sympathetic woman” (“Synopses and Review”). Moreover “[she] is a survivor, scarred but still strong, familiar with evil, yet brimming with devotion and love” (“Synopses and Review”). This is a very unique portrayal and I believe this becomes the point of strength in Martin’s work. I also believe that the protagonist is created in order to reveal the theme of the novel. According to Kenney’s How to Analyze Fiction, “theme is the meaning of the story” (Kenney 88). Thus I will analyze the protagonist and through the analysis of the protagonist, I will reveal the theme of the novel.
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STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 1. What is the theme of the novel?
2. How does the protagonist help reveal the theme of the novel?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Based on the statement of the problem, the purposes of the study are:
1. To show the theme of the novel.
2. To show how the protagonist helps reveal the theme of the novel.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
In my analysis, I used a library research. I read a Valerie Martin’s novel, which is Mary Reilly as the primary text. I chose to analyze the protagonist because it is the most significant element in the novel. Then I searched other sources and references from books and electronic website in order to support my analysis. Finally, I drew a theme as the conclusion of what has been discussed.
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ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
This thesis will be organized into three chapters. Chapter One contains the Background of the Study, the Statement of the Problem, the Purpose of the Study, the Method of Research and the Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two contains the analysis of theme through the protagonist in Valerie Martin’s novel, Mary Reilly. Chapter Three is the conclusion of the analysis. The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices, which include the Biography of the Valerie Martin and the Synopsis of Mary Reilly.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Text:
Martin, V. Mary Reilly. Great Britain: Black Swan, 1991.
References:
Hornby, A S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford University Press, 1974.
Kenney, W. How to Analyze Fiction. New York: Monarch Press, 1996.
Internet/Websites:
“Abuse” Teens Health. 2010. 9 April 2010.
<http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/families/family_abuse. html#>
“Biography of Valerie Martin.” Valerie Martin Online. 2009. 21 March 2010. <http://www.valeriemartinonline.com/martin-bio.htm>
“Love Short Fiction by Valerie Martin”. Lost Horse Press. 2005. 28 Feb 2009. <http://www.losthorsepress.org/love.html>
“Preview of Analysis of Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin”.Azete. 2006. 29 May 2009.
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Maranatha Christian University “Synopses and Reviews.” Powell’s Books. 2009. 28 Feb 2009.
<http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?isbn=9780375725999& atch=h&ymall=pp>
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CHAPTER THREE
CONCLUSION
After analyzing Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly, I would like to draw some conclusion. Mary Reilly is a story about Dr. Jekyll’s housemaid, who has bad experiences in the past. She has a problem with the development of her characteristic as an adult because of her bitter past. Her cruel father abuses her when she is a child and later her characteristics become different from normal people. As an adult, Mary is portrayed as an insecure person, an introvert, and a workaholic.
Mary is portrayed as an insecure person because she always feels threatened every time. Her traumatic experience has a lasting effect so that she suffers from a trauma which causes her to become an insecure person. Even in a good situation, she always feels threatened as if her cruel father will come back and torture her again, though her father is not physically there to hurt her.
She is also portrayed as an introvert because she knows that her traumatic experience is not a story to share to others. She prefers being silent and not gossiping with the other maids in the house. The only way she can express her
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mind is by writing a journal about everything in the house including how she deals with her past.
She becomes a workaholic because of the way she deals with her past. She
wants to keep her mind occupied every time she is in the house. She keeps herself busy with the works in the house; she manages to prevent herself to reflect about her past. Her being workaholic is a compensation for distracting herself from thinking too much about her bitter past.
Those three characteristics are the effect of her traumatic childhood and this helps reveal the theme of the novel: “bad experiences in the past may cause one to have negative traits”. Mary becomes insecure, introvert, and a workaholic mainly because her bad experiences in the past cause her to have these negative characteristics.
The issue of abuse is very common nowadays. It can happen to anyone and the victims are mostly children and women. Shown in an article, the abused victims are usually like being described in the quotation below:
Many people who are abused distrust others. They may feel a lot of anger toward other people and themselves, and it can be hard to make friends. They often have trouble sleeping, eating, and concentrating. They may not do well because they are angry or frightened or because they can't
concentrate (“Abuse”).
I find that the description of abused victims above is similar with Mary’s characteristic. The main cause of those characteristics is the abuses that people
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receive and the memory of their traumatic experience. I believe that a person like Mary is physically and mentally hurt and also has trouble to deal with her life.
In my opinion, Mary as the abused victim is a very unique character. Even though the traumatic experiences in her past has a lasting effect on her life and influences the development of her characteristic as an adult, she still struggles to survive. The bitter past does not make her give up her life. She moves on.
Finally, I conclude that Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly is a good novel to read because the author’s way of portraying the character is very clear. However, when I read this novel, I feel as if I read a diary of an abused victim, who tries to survive from her past memory. It has opened my mind about how hard it is to struggle in life with traumatic experiences from the past. This novel is also good to read which is equal to Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because the readers will know more of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through Mary Reilly’s point a view as a housemaid in Dr. Jekyll’s house.
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ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
This thesis will be organized into three chapters. Chapter One contains the Background of the Study, the Statement of the Problem, the Purpose of the Study, the Method of Research and the Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two contains the analysis of theme through the protagonist in Valerie Martin’s novel, Mary Reilly. Chapter Three is the conclusion of the analysis. The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices, which include the Biography of the Valerie Martin and the Synopsis of Mary Reilly.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Text:
Martin, V. Mary Reilly. Great Britain: Black Swan, 1991. References:
Hornby, A S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford University Press, 1974.
Kenney, W. How to Analyze Fiction. New York: Monarch Press, 1996.
Internet/Websites:
“Abuse” Teens Health. 2010. 9 April 2010.
<http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/families/family_abuse. html#>
“Biography of Valerie Martin.” Valerie Martin Online. 2009. 21 March 2010. <http://www.valeriemartinonline.com/martin-bio.htm>
“Love Short Fiction by Valerie Martin”. Lost Horse Press. 2005. 28 Feb 2009. <http://www.losthorsepress.org/love.html>
“Preview of Analysis of Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin”.Azete. 2006. 29 May 2009.
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“Synopses and Reviews.” Powell’s Books. 2009. 28 Feb 2009.
<http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?isbn=9780375725999& atch=h&ymall=pp>
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CHAPTER THREE
CONCLUSION
After analyzing Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly, I would like to draw some conclusion. Mary Reilly is a story about Dr. Jekyll’s housemaid, who has bad experiences in the past. She has a problem with the development of her characteristic as an adult because of her bitter past. Her cruel father abuses her when she is a child and later her characteristics become different from normal people. As an adult, Mary is portrayed as an insecure person, an introvert, and a workaholic.
Mary is portrayed as an insecure person because she always feels threatened every time. Her traumatic experience has a lasting effect so that she suffers from a trauma which causes her to become an insecure person. Even in a good situation, she always feels threatened as if her cruel father will come back and torture her again, though her father is not physically there to hurt her.
She is also portrayed as an introvert because she knows that her traumatic experience is not a story to share to others. She prefers being silent and not gossiping with the other maids in the house. The only way she can express her
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16
Maranatha Christian University
mind is by writing a journal about everything in the house including how she deals with her past.
She becomes a workaholic because of the way she deals with her past. She
wants to keep her mind occupied every time she is in the house. She keeps herself busy with the works in the house; she manages to prevent herself to reflect about her past. Her being workaholic is a compensation for distracting herself from thinking too much about her bitter past.
Those three characteristics are the effect of her traumatic childhood and this helps reveal the theme of the novel: “bad experiences in the past may cause one to have negative traits”. Mary becomes insecure, introvert, and a workaholic mainly because her bad experiences in the past cause her to have these negative characteristics.
The issue of abuse is very common nowadays. It can happen to anyone and the victims are mostly children and women. Shown in an article, the abused victims are usually like being described in the quotation below:
Many people who are abused distrust others. They may feel a lot of anger toward other people and themselves, and it can be hard to make friends. They often have trouble sleeping, eating, and concentrating. They may not do well because they are angry or frightened or because they can't
concentrate (“Abuse”).
I find that the description of abused victims above is similar with Mary’s characteristic. The main cause of those characteristics is the abuses that people
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17
Maranatha Christian University
receive and the memory of their traumatic experience. I believe that a person like Mary is physically and mentally hurt and also has trouble to deal with her life.
In my opinion, Mary as the abused victim is a very unique character. Even though the traumatic experiences in her past has a lasting effect on her life and influences the development of her characteristic as an adult, she still struggles to survive. The bitter past does not make her give up her life. She moves on.
Finally, I conclude that Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly is a good novel to read because the author’s way of portraying the character is very clear. However, when I read this novel, I feel as if I read a diary of an abused victim, who tries to survive from her past memory. It has opened my mind about how hard it is to struggle in life with traumatic experiences from the past. This novel is also good to read which is equal to Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because the readers will know more of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through Mary Reilly’s point a view as a housemaid in Dr. Jekyll’s house.