Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Literature has become a way to express someone’s thoughts and feelings since centuries ago. Even though in the beginning, literature literally acquaintance with letters from Latin littera letter as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary, or works of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry. 1 One form of literature is novel. Today, the definition of novel is a long prose narrative set out in writing from, Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for new, news, or short story of something new. 2 Novel and the other form of literature has always been interesting, not only to read but also interesting in exploring the meaning and the message behind it. In this thesis the writer is motivated to research one novel entitled The Marriage Bed by Regina McBride, an Irish American author. The novel was published in 2005 by Piatkus London. She is also the author of The Nature of Water and Air and The Land of Women and is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for 1 http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiliterature 2 http:en.wikipedia.orgwikinovel the Arts. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and magazines, and her book of poetry, Yarrow Field, won an American Book Series Award. Regina McBride always frames myth in her books. In the first book, The Nature of Water and Air 2001, there is a myth of the elemental mother who, once she finds her seal skin, leaves her human child and goes back to the sea, choosing a darker place and more original call over a human life with her child, and it was called the selkie myth. What she found in writing The Land of Women and The Marriage Bed is not so much that a particular myth “framed” those stories, but that mythic episodes organically broke out here and there as she worked. There is a “land of women” in Celtic lore. Her version of it is nothing like the place described in St. Brendan’s journey which is the Celtic version of The Odyssey. And of course there is a ghost that lives off the dresses in that book and they have a strong mythic energy. In The Marriage Bed there is a kind of primitive, magical energy that occurred in the early story on The Great Blasket Island. Regina McBride absorbs folklore and mythology. She also read many books by Jung and his followers in which myths and fairy tales are interpreted to show patterns of “individuation” or the evaluation of an individual human psyche. This is one reason why she wrote The Marriage Bed. The Marriage Bed is a profound work: an inquiry into the extremes of erotic love and a testament to the power of longing and the hold of unresolved grief. It is an exquisitely lush and lyrical story about marriage and motherhood, attachment and let go, set in early twentieth century Dublin. In this novel, there are some main characters such as Deirdre, Manus, Mrs. O’Breen, Bairbre, and Deirdre’s mother, Molleen Mohr. Deirdre is the main character and also the narrator of this novel but the writer chooses Molleen Mohr as an object of research because of the simplicity of her life story but ended in a mysterious way. It is interesting but in the same time it makes us wondering why she ended her life in a pathetic way by jumping to the sea like her beloved horse died. Her life story begun when she was still a child but she had to lose her father in the sea. Then she had to suffer of losing a person she loved again when she was a teenager. His name was Macdarragh, and he also died in the sea. When she had a husband, she forbad him to go to the sea because she was afraid that he was going to die like them. Then when she had a horse that had a name after Macdarragh that also died in the sea, she committed suicide in the way like it did. If we have a look for a glimpse, the story is about a girl who has a sad life like every other has. And it is normal to have a life like that. But there is something interesting that why she had to end her life by jumping to the sea after her horse named Macdarragh died in the same place. It is a bit strange and irrational. When she was left by her father and her boyfriend, she extremely felt sad but she kept going on with her life but why when she was left by her horse, she committed suicide. This makes the writer chooses The Marriage Bed as the object of her research. Literally the story is about a life journey of a person, but it can also be defined as a symbolic journey. In his essay “Psychology and Literature”, Jung said that in literary work which he called visionary, there are strange parts that make us surprised and hard to be understood if we only see from our daily life. Jung theories make the writer more interested in doing further analysis on The Marriage Bed strangeness. After reading the story for several times, the writer found similarity between the story of The Marriage Bed with rites, myths, and folklores. Since the background of the writing was framed by myth, it also contained symbols or archetypes. In his essay, Jung also said that visionary work reflected motifs that usually exist in myths. By considering Jung’s explanation, the writer uses archetypal approach to analyze the novel The Marriage Bed, because it underlines the relationship between the literary works with the human myth. There is an obviously close connection between mythological criticism and the psychological approach, both are concerned with the motives that underlie human behavior. Between the two approaches are differences of degree and of affinities. Psychology tends to be experimental and diagnostic; it is closely related to biological science. Mythology tends to be speculative and philosophic; its affinities are with religion, anthropology, and cultural 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. 3

B. Focus of the Research