behavior. Wilfred L. Guerin defines in his book A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature
: A brilliant creative genius, Freud provided convincing evidence, through his
many carefully recorded case studies, that most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over which we have very limited control. He
demonstrated that, like the icerberg, the human mind is structured so that its great weight and density lie beneath the surface below the level of
consciousness 2005: 154.
The approach is expected to reveal the ch aracter’s mind and behavior from a
novel. Analyzing the caharacter’s behavior is important because the character
from literary work is the reflection of human’s life. Learning human’s behavior is equal to understanding the human deeper.
The psychology has a branch field which is abnormal psychology. The abnormal psychology is used to examine people with abnormal personality. There
are many kinds of abnormal personality. An individual can suffer from psychosis, neurosis, psychomatic disorders, sociopathic reactions, psychopathic personality,
and also mental deficiency. A psychological approach is used in this paper to analyze how far a person
might respond in encountering anxiety triggered by the conflicts. Each person has their own anxiety for sure. The way a person faces the anxiety is also different
from one to another.
C. Method of the Study
The study in this paper was a library research. The references used in this study were taken from books. The relevant data was used to analyze the main
problems in the study. There were two types of data which are primary sources
and secondary sources. The primary source in this study was the literary work entitled
The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett. The novel became a primary source because this study was intended for literary study. The secondary sources
were from Stone’s book The Abnormal Personality Through Literature and Hall’s
book A Primer of Freudian Psychology. The secondary sources were used to support the literary study in solving the analysis.
There were some methods for the analysis in this study. The first method was understanding approaches to treat a literary work. There were some approaches
observed such as an approach of Feminism, Psychology, and Post Colonialism. Then, the literary work as the primary source was decided. The literary work used
as the main focus was a novel entitled The Old Wives’ Tale. While observing the
novel, there were many psychic problems found inside. Moreover, a specific character in the novel tended to have symptoms of certain disorder. By seeing this,
the second method was directly used to treat the case in the novel. Thus, a relevant approach was applied to solve the case. Among the approaches, a psychological
approach is the most relevant tool to treat this novel. After that a problem formulation was organized to lead the analysis in this study. The problem
formulation was set with the first question about the element of literary work. The rest questions were linked to each other. This problem formulation would be the
foundation of this paper leading the analysis. Lastly, as the problems were answered in the analysis, a conclusion for the study would be drawn.
20
CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
