A Portrayal Of The Protagonist In Elizabeth Bowen's 'The Death Of The Heart'.
ABSTRACT
Dalam skripsi ini, topik yang dibahas berkenaan dengan perubahan dan
perkembangan sifat seseorang yang sedikit banyak dipengaruhi oleh lingkungan dan
orang-orang di sekitarnya. Dalam proses adaptasi dan pendewasaan, seseorang mau
tidak mau harus mampu mengkondisikan dirinya agar dapat diterima oleh lingkungan
sekitarnya, dan juga agar dapat bertahan dalam menghadapi lingkungan sekitarnya.
Dalam proses pendewasaan, seorang remaja sedang ada dalam fase
pembentukan karakteristik yang sangat
penting. Mereka akan terpengaruh oleh
keadaan lingkungan di sekitarnya. Oleh karena itu sebaiknya seorang remaja
mendapatkan perhatian dan bimbingan dari orang dewasa secara benar, sehingga
mereka dapat memilih yang mana yang baik dan buruk.
Di dalam novel The Death of the Heart yang ditulis oleh Elizabet Bowen,
dibahas secara rinci tentang seorang gadis remaja miskin yang polos bernama Portia.
Portia harus melewati masa pendewasaan tanpa bimbingan orang tuanya, karena
mereka sudah meninggal. Ia berusaha mencari jati dirinya seorang diri. Namun
ironisnya, lingkungan dimana Ia harus menjalani proses pendewasaan adalah
lingkungan orang-orang yang penuh dengan kemunafikan dan kebohongan.
Meskipun Ia berusaha sedemikian rupa untuk menyesuaikan diri dengan
lingkungan tersebut, tidak ada kebahagiaan yang Ia dapatkan. Ia hanya mendapatkan
i
Maranatha Christian University
kekecewaan demi kekecewaan. Semua itu mengubah sifatnya yang polos, ramah, dan
baik hati menjadi orang yang sinis, dan dingin.
Dari novel tersebut dapat ditarik kesimpulan bahwa karakter seseorang bisa
berubah tergantung oleh keadaan lingkungan dimana Ia tinggal. Begitu pula dalam
proses pendewasaan, karakter seseorang terbentuk sesuai keadaan dan perlakuan
orang-orang di sekelilingnya.
ii
Maranatha Christian University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ………………………………………………………i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
………………………………………………………ii
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………iii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
………………………………………………1
Statement of the Problem
………………………………………………3
Purpose of the Study ……………………………………………………....3
Method of Research ……………………………………………………....4
Organization of the Thesis
……………………………………………....4
CHAPTER TWO: THE PORTRAYAL OF THE
PROTAGONIST IN ELIZABETH BOWEN’S
THE DEATH OF THE HEART…………………………………………..5
CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
……………………………………….17
……………………………………………………………….20
APPENDICES
Synopsis of The Death of the Heart ……………………………………….21
Biography of Elizabeth Bowen
……………………………………….22
iii
Maranatha Christian University
APPENDICES
SYNOPSIS OF THE DEATH OF THE HEART
The Death of the Heart is a story about an orphaned sixteen-year-old girl
named Portia. She is a very naïve and innocent girl. After the death of her parents,
she must live with her half-brother, Thomas Quayne, and his wife, Anna.
Portia hopes that she will get a new better life and happiness in Quayne’s
house. She hopes that Thomas and Anna can be her kind parents. As time goes by,
she realizes that Anna seems to hate her, and Thomas seems not to care about her.
When she feels lonely, she meets a man named Eddie. Eddie is very kind
to her. Because of that she falls in love with him. Machet, her kind maid, tells her
that Eddie is a bad guy, but Portia does not believe her. Even she thinks that Eddie
is the one who makes her to keep alive.
When Thomas and Anna are going to spend their holiday in Capri, they
send Portia to Mrs.Hecomb’s house in Seale, about 70 miles outside of London.
When she is there, she meets some new friends named Daphne and Dickie.
Eddie comes to Seale to meet Portia. Portia feels very happy, until she
catches that Eddie is flirting with Daphne. And when Portia confronts Eddie about
that, he just says that he likes Portia but he want to make any relationship with
her. He says that he love her anymore, and he leaves her. Portia feels very sad and
21
Maranatha Christian University
disappointed. Her heart is hurt very much.
At the end of the story she runs away from Quayne’s house and asks
Major Brutt, a man who is thirty years older than her to marry her although she
love him. She does not care about her love feeling anymore. She knows just that
Major Brutt is the only person who is truly kind toward her beside Matchett.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short
story writer. Bowen was born on June 7, 1899, in Dublin, Ireland, into a wealthy
and socially prominent family who has ties in England. She was the only child of
her parents. When Bowen was seven, her father was hospitalized for a mental
condition. She and her mother moved to England and spent the next five years
moving from villa to villa. Bowen began to express her imaginative gifts, creating
stories about make-believe families.
Later, a tragedy struck her when Bowen's mother was diagnosed with
cancer and died. After her mother died, she stayed with her aunts who are her
mother’s sisters.
In 1923, she published her first collection of short stories, Encounters. Later, she
was married to Alan Cameron. In 1925, they moved to Oxford, where Bowen met
a number of novelists such as Rose Macaulay, who took her to the editors,
publishers, and literary agents. In 1926, Bowen published a second volume of
short stories, and by 1929 Bowen had published her first two novels.
By the early 1930s, Bowen was well on her way to a hugely successful
literary career. She became friends with great writers such as Virginia Woolf. In
22
Maranatha Christian University
1938 she published the novel entitled The Death of the Heart and this book was
cited as a book among the one hundred best English language books of the
twentieth century by the editorial board of the Modern Library. Not only that, the
Irish Academy of Letters had elected her a member, and critics were comparing
her to celebrated writers such as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Henry James, and
Jane Austen.
After her husband's death, Bowen spent much time in the United States,
teaching at universities and lecturing. During the last years of her life, she
suffered from various respiratory illnesses, and on February 22, 1973, she died in
London of lung cancer.
23
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Someone’s characteristics can change and develop if he lives in a new
environment which is different from the one he has before. For example, a person who is
genial can change into a bitter person because he lives in a new environment in which the
people are bitter. Maybe the change will not happen automatically. At first the person is
still a genial person but, sooner or later if the other people in the new environment are
still bitter to him, he will end up being bitter to other people as well.
There are two factors that change someone’s characteristics. The first is internal
factor, and the second is external factor. The internal factor is the biological factor that is
brought since the person was born but this is very possible to change and develop.
The combination of biology and society is what makes us what we are and do
what we do. Biology guides our responses to stimuli, based on thousands of
generations of ancestors surviving because of their responses. Our social
1
Maranatha Christian University
structures dictate restrictions and alliterations in how we carry out our biological
responses. (Taflinger)
The external factor is a factor that comes from the environment where he lives,
such as the treatments from other people to him, or from the bad or good experiences that
he gets.
All people have completely unique behavioral traits, likes and dislikes, and
habits that make them who they are. This uniqueness comes not only from
biological factors, such as temperament, but is also developed from experiences,
such as a person's sense of individuality, or a combination of both environmental
and biological factors, such as personality. (Mental Health)
The changes of one's characteristics may also deal with the process of maturity
and adolescence. Adolescence is an experience all adults have gone through, and
involved many changes. In the process of growing up one experiences and tries to
understand the world around him/her, although sometimes the process ends up with the
lost of one's innocence. “Adolescence is a transitional period of development between
youth and maturity. It represents a complex and sometimes disturbing psychological
transition, accompanying the requirement for the accepted social behavior of the
particular adult culture”. (Stuart)
Elizabeth Bowen has written many books. Bowen’s novels deal with the process
of the changes of someone’s characteristics that is caused by the environment and the
process of growing up. The Death of the Heart is the most interesting of Elizabeth
Bowen’s novels because the story is much or less connected with her own life and she
2
Maranatha Christian University
also writes this book in such an interesting way which makes us as the readers feel
involved in the story. “Her novel The Death of the Heart is cited as a book among the one
hundred best language books of the twentieth century by the editorial board of the
Modern Library”. (Gale)
I would like to focus on the protagonist and her actions. A protagonist is the
leading character around whom conflicts and events revolve in a literary work, “A
protagonist is a principal character in a literary work, a leading actor, character, or
participant in a literary work”. (Webster)
Since character is the most prominent aspect of the novel, I decided to focus on
that very aspect in my thesis. Through the analysis of the protagonist, I can unfold the
reason behind her changes, which is mainly caused by the other characters around her.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
In order to analyze this novel, I state the problem as follows:
1. What are the characteristics of the protagonist?
2. What changes of characteristic are experienced by the character?
3. What is the cause of the changes?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The study is carried out in order:
1. To show the characteristics of the protagonist.
2. To show the changes experienced by the character.
3. To show the cause of the changes
3
Maranatha Christian University
METHOD OF RESEARCH
I use library research in writing the thesis. Firstly, I read the novel. Secondly, I
choose the prominent literary aspect of the novel to be analyzed. Thirdly, I search for the
references from the internet, which can support the analysis and furthermore can help me
on writing my thesis. Finally, I draw some conclusion about what I have analyzed.
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
I divide my thesis into three chapters. In the first chapter, I present the
Introduction, which 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. In
the second chapter I analyze the Portrayal of the Protagonist in Elizabeth Bowen’s The
Death of the Heart. Later in the third chapter, I draw my Conclusion of my analysis.
The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices, which contains the
Synopsis of the Novel and the Biography of the Author.
4
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER THREE
CONCLUSION
Having analyzed the portrayal of the protagonist in Elizabeth Bowen's The Death
of the Heart I would like to draw my conclusion that one’s characteristics are greatly
influenced by the environment where she lives. The personal characteristic that she has
had before maybe still there, but if the environment influence her, then her characteristics
will change even very different from which she has before. The change of the
characteristics happens in order to struggle for themselves in a certain environment.
The maturity process also deals with the changing of characteristics which is
influenced by the environment. In the maturity process, a teenager will try to find about
how to live in the adult world. A teenager will be confused to face the adult world which
is very different from their childhood. In the process of maturity, a teenager should be
guided by the adult. Their parents or their family must help their child in order not to
make them confused in facing adult world.
Portia, an innocent-sixteen-years-old adolescent experiences many changes of her
17
Maranatha Christian University
characteristic. She is a girl who is full of spirit, happiness, and love. In the process of
maturity, she must face a lot of difficulties. As an innocent girl, she is shocked by the
reality that the adult world is full of hypocrisy. She is required to make adjustment
because she lives in a small town but later she has to live in a big city like London where
most of the people are arrogant with a high-class life and full of hypocrisy. As an
innocent and inexperienced girl, she is unprepared to face the real world with the people
who full of deception.
Portia tries hard to fit in and to be accepted by the adult, in this case from the only
family that she has after her parents die. She hopes that she will be accepted by her halfbrother and his wife. But, her efforts are useless because she is still being rejected and
abandoned by them.
Portia is confused about the condition of life in an adult world. The adults often
betray each other. She is also confused because the adults always criticize and blame her.
She wants someone give her guidance, save and accompany her to face the harshness of
the adult world.
As an innocent she is too easy to trust people. She has no suspicions toward other
people, although they are new for her. She does not know that the people use her
innocence as to play her.
Her innocence brings her into trouble. Preserving her innocence in the adult world
is an impossible thing. The adults will do anything including lie, and betray the others in
order to gain what they want. If she still keeps her innocence, she will be beaten and
18
Maranatha Christian University
pushed by the adults. Realizing that, she conforms to be a person like the adults around
her. She feels that there is no use to be an innocent. She starts being the adult who is full
of phoniness, cold, and cynic in order not to hurt by anyone anymore.
In the maturity process Portia gets a lot of harshness. She tries to be accepted in
an adult world. She gets through the maturity process without guidance. She struggles
herself. She finds a lot of hypocrisy of the adults. She feels that the adult is cruel and
betrays each other. Her dreams to get a warm family, love, and be accepted as an adult
are not come true.
The adult world brings her the disappointments. That makes Portia change from
the teenage girl who is full of dreams, desire, cheerfulness; and naïve innocent girl into a
cold and cynical woman. The environment when she is in the maturity process makes her
characteristics change very different from the characteristics which she has before.
19
Maranatha Christian University
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY TEXT
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Death of the Heart. New York: Vintage Books, 1938
ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS
Gale. “The Death of the Heart”. BookRags Literature Study Guide. 2002. August 2007
Polaschek, Dave. “Maturity – Coming of Age”. 31 Dec 2003
http://www.faqs.org/health/Healthy-Living-V3/Mental Health.html
Weissbard, David.R. “The Challenge of Maturity”. The Unitarian Universalists Church
Rockford II. 8 June. 1997).
Taflinger, Richard F. “The Biological Basis of Human Behavior”. March 2008
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/protagonist
20
Maranatha Christian University
Dalam skripsi ini, topik yang dibahas berkenaan dengan perubahan dan
perkembangan sifat seseorang yang sedikit banyak dipengaruhi oleh lingkungan dan
orang-orang di sekitarnya. Dalam proses adaptasi dan pendewasaan, seseorang mau
tidak mau harus mampu mengkondisikan dirinya agar dapat diterima oleh lingkungan
sekitarnya, dan juga agar dapat bertahan dalam menghadapi lingkungan sekitarnya.
Dalam proses pendewasaan, seorang remaja sedang ada dalam fase
pembentukan karakteristik yang sangat
penting. Mereka akan terpengaruh oleh
keadaan lingkungan di sekitarnya. Oleh karena itu sebaiknya seorang remaja
mendapatkan perhatian dan bimbingan dari orang dewasa secara benar, sehingga
mereka dapat memilih yang mana yang baik dan buruk.
Di dalam novel The Death of the Heart yang ditulis oleh Elizabet Bowen,
dibahas secara rinci tentang seorang gadis remaja miskin yang polos bernama Portia.
Portia harus melewati masa pendewasaan tanpa bimbingan orang tuanya, karena
mereka sudah meninggal. Ia berusaha mencari jati dirinya seorang diri. Namun
ironisnya, lingkungan dimana Ia harus menjalani proses pendewasaan adalah
lingkungan orang-orang yang penuh dengan kemunafikan dan kebohongan.
Meskipun Ia berusaha sedemikian rupa untuk menyesuaikan diri dengan
lingkungan tersebut, tidak ada kebahagiaan yang Ia dapatkan. Ia hanya mendapatkan
i
Maranatha Christian University
kekecewaan demi kekecewaan. Semua itu mengubah sifatnya yang polos, ramah, dan
baik hati menjadi orang yang sinis, dan dingin.
Dari novel tersebut dapat ditarik kesimpulan bahwa karakter seseorang bisa
berubah tergantung oleh keadaan lingkungan dimana Ia tinggal. Begitu pula dalam
proses pendewasaan, karakter seseorang terbentuk sesuai keadaan dan perlakuan
orang-orang di sekelilingnya.
ii
Maranatha Christian University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ………………………………………………………i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
………………………………………………………ii
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………iii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
………………………………………………1
Statement of the Problem
………………………………………………3
Purpose of the Study ……………………………………………………....3
Method of Research ……………………………………………………....4
Organization of the Thesis
……………………………………………....4
CHAPTER TWO: THE PORTRAYAL OF THE
PROTAGONIST IN ELIZABETH BOWEN’S
THE DEATH OF THE HEART…………………………………………..5
CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
……………………………………….17
……………………………………………………………….20
APPENDICES
Synopsis of The Death of the Heart ……………………………………….21
Biography of Elizabeth Bowen
……………………………………….22
iii
Maranatha Christian University
APPENDICES
SYNOPSIS OF THE DEATH OF THE HEART
The Death of the Heart is a story about an orphaned sixteen-year-old girl
named Portia. She is a very naïve and innocent girl. After the death of her parents,
she must live with her half-brother, Thomas Quayne, and his wife, Anna.
Portia hopes that she will get a new better life and happiness in Quayne’s
house. She hopes that Thomas and Anna can be her kind parents. As time goes by,
she realizes that Anna seems to hate her, and Thomas seems not to care about her.
When she feels lonely, she meets a man named Eddie. Eddie is very kind
to her. Because of that she falls in love with him. Machet, her kind maid, tells her
that Eddie is a bad guy, but Portia does not believe her. Even she thinks that Eddie
is the one who makes her to keep alive.
When Thomas and Anna are going to spend their holiday in Capri, they
send Portia to Mrs.Hecomb’s house in Seale, about 70 miles outside of London.
When she is there, she meets some new friends named Daphne and Dickie.
Eddie comes to Seale to meet Portia. Portia feels very happy, until she
catches that Eddie is flirting with Daphne. And when Portia confronts Eddie about
that, he just says that he likes Portia but he want to make any relationship with
her. He says that he love her anymore, and he leaves her. Portia feels very sad and
21
Maranatha Christian University
disappointed. Her heart is hurt very much.
At the end of the story she runs away from Quayne’s house and asks
Major Brutt, a man who is thirty years older than her to marry her although she
love him. She does not care about her love feeling anymore. She knows just that
Major Brutt is the only person who is truly kind toward her beside Matchett.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short
story writer. Bowen was born on June 7, 1899, in Dublin, Ireland, into a wealthy
and socially prominent family who has ties in England. She was the only child of
her parents. When Bowen was seven, her father was hospitalized for a mental
condition. She and her mother moved to England and spent the next five years
moving from villa to villa. Bowen began to express her imaginative gifts, creating
stories about make-believe families.
Later, a tragedy struck her when Bowen's mother was diagnosed with
cancer and died. After her mother died, she stayed with her aunts who are her
mother’s sisters.
In 1923, she published her first collection of short stories, Encounters. Later, she
was married to Alan Cameron. In 1925, they moved to Oxford, where Bowen met
a number of novelists such as Rose Macaulay, who took her to the editors,
publishers, and literary agents. In 1926, Bowen published a second volume of
short stories, and by 1929 Bowen had published her first two novels.
By the early 1930s, Bowen was well on her way to a hugely successful
literary career. She became friends with great writers such as Virginia Woolf. In
22
Maranatha Christian University
1938 she published the novel entitled The Death of the Heart and this book was
cited as a book among the one hundred best English language books of the
twentieth century by the editorial board of the Modern Library. Not only that, the
Irish Academy of Letters had elected her a member, and critics were comparing
her to celebrated writers such as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Henry James, and
Jane Austen.
After her husband's death, Bowen spent much time in the United States,
teaching at universities and lecturing. During the last years of her life, she
suffered from various respiratory illnesses, and on February 22, 1973, she died in
London of lung cancer.
23
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Someone’s characteristics can change and develop if he lives in a new
environment which is different from the one he has before. For example, a person who is
genial can change into a bitter person because he lives in a new environment in which the
people are bitter. Maybe the change will not happen automatically. At first the person is
still a genial person but, sooner or later if the other people in the new environment are
still bitter to him, he will end up being bitter to other people as well.
There are two factors that change someone’s characteristics. The first is internal
factor, and the second is external factor. The internal factor is the biological factor that is
brought since the person was born but this is very possible to change and develop.
The combination of biology and society is what makes us what we are and do
what we do. Biology guides our responses to stimuli, based on thousands of
generations of ancestors surviving because of their responses. Our social
1
Maranatha Christian University
structures dictate restrictions and alliterations in how we carry out our biological
responses. (Taflinger)
The external factor is a factor that comes from the environment where he lives,
such as the treatments from other people to him, or from the bad or good experiences that
he gets.
All people have completely unique behavioral traits, likes and dislikes, and
habits that make them who they are. This uniqueness comes not only from
biological factors, such as temperament, but is also developed from experiences,
such as a person's sense of individuality, or a combination of both environmental
and biological factors, such as personality. (Mental Health)
The changes of one's characteristics may also deal with the process of maturity
and adolescence. Adolescence is an experience all adults have gone through, and
involved many changes. In the process of growing up one experiences and tries to
understand the world around him/her, although sometimes the process ends up with the
lost of one's innocence. “Adolescence is a transitional period of development between
youth and maturity. It represents a complex and sometimes disturbing psychological
transition, accompanying the requirement for the accepted social behavior of the
particular adult culture”. (Stuart)
Elizabeth Bowen has written many books. Bowen’s novels deal with the process
of the changes of someone’s characteristics that is caused by the environment and the
process of growing up. The Death of the Heart is the most interesting of Elizabeth
Bowen’s novels because the story is much or less connected with her own life and she
2
Maranatha Christian University
also writes this book in such an interesting way which makes us as the readers feel
involved in the story. “Her novel The Death of the Heart is cited as a book among the one
hundred best language books of the twentieth century by the editorial board of the
Modern Library”. (Gale)
I would like to focus on the protagonist and her actions. A protagonist is the
leading character around whom conflicts and events revolve in a literary work, “A
protagonist is a principal character in a literary work, a leading actor, character, or
participant in a literary work”. (Webster)
Since character is the most prominent aspect of the novel, I decided to focus on
that very aspect in my thesis. Through the analysis of the protagonist, I can unfold the
reason behind her changes, which is mainly caused by the other characters around her.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
In order to analyze this novel, I state the problem as follows:
1. What are the characteristics of the protagonist?
2. What changes of characteristic are experienced by the character?
3. What is the cause of the changes?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The study is carried out in order:
1. To show the characteristics of the protagonist.
2. To show the changes experienced by the character.
3. To show the cause of the changes
3
Maranatha Christian University
METHOD OF RESEARCH
I use library research in writing the thesis. Firstly, I read the novel. Secondly, I
choose the prominent literary aspect of the novel to be analyzed. Thirdly, I search for the
references from the internet, which can support the analysis and furthermore can help me
on writing my thesis. Finally, I draw some conclusion about what I have analyzed.
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
I divide my thesis into three chapters. In the first chapter, I present the
Introduction, which 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. In
the second chapter I analyze the Portrayal of the Protagonist in Elizabeth Bowen’s The
Death of the Heart. Later in the third chapter, I draw my Conclusion of my analysis.
The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices, which contains the
Synopsis of the Novel and the Biography of the Author.
4
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER THREE
CONCLUSION
Having analyzed the portrayal of the protagonist in Elizabeth Bowen's The Death
of the Heart I would like to draw my conclusion that one’s characteristics are greatly
influenced by the environment where she lives. The personal characteristic that she has
had before maybe still there, but if the environment influence her, then her characteristics
will change even very different from which she has before. The change of the
characteristics happens in order to struggle for themselves in a certain environment.
The maturity process also deals with the changing of characteristics which is
influenced by the environment. In the maturity process, a teenager will try to find about
how to live in the adult world. A teenager will be confused to face the adult world which
is very different from their childhood. In the process of maturity, a teenager should be
guided by the adult. Their parents or their family must help their child in order not to
make them confused in facing adult world.
Portia, an innocent-sixteen-years-old adolescent experiences many changes of her
17
Maranatha Christian University
characteristic. She is a girl who is full of spirit, happiness, and love. In the process of
maturity, she must face a lot of difficulties. As an innocent girl, she is shocked by the
reality that the adult world is full of hypocrisy. She is required to make adjustment
because she lives in a small town but later she has to live in a big city like London where
most of the people are arrogant with a high-class life and full of hypocrisy. As an
innocent and inexperienced girl, she is unprepared to face the real world with the people
who full of deception.
Portia tries hard to fit in and to be accepted by the adult, in this case from the only
family that she has after her parents die. She hopes that she will be accepted by her halfbrother and his wife. But, her efforts are useless because she is still being rejected and
abandoned by them.
Portia is confused about the condition of life in an adult world. The adults often
betray each other. She is also confused because the adults always criticize and blame her.
She wants someone give her guidance, save and accompany her to face the harshness of
the adult world.
As an innocent she is too easy to trust people. She has no suspicions toward other
people, although they are new for her. She does not know that the people use her
innocence as to play her.
Her innocence brings her into trouble. Preserving her innocence in the adult world
is an impossible thing. The adults will do anything including lie, and betray the others in
order to gain what they want. If she still keeps her innocence, she will be beaten and
18
Maranatha Christian University
pushed by the adults. Realizing that, she conforms to be a person like the adults around
her. She feels that there is no use to be an innocent. She starts being the adult who is full
of phoniness, cold, and cynic in order not to hurt by anyone anymore.
In the maturity process Portia gets a lot of harshness. She tries to be accepted in
an adult world. She gets through the maturity process without guidance. She struggles
herself. She finds a lot of hypocrisy of the adults. She feels that the adult is cruel and
betrays each other. Her dreams to get a warm family, love, and be accepted as an adult
are not come true.
The adult world brings her the disappointments. That makes Portia change from
the teenage girl who is full of dreams, desire, cheerfulness; and naïve innocent girl into a
cold and cynical woman. The environment when she is in the maturity process makes her
characteristics change very different from the characteristics which she has before.
19
Maranatha Christian University
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY TEXT
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Death of the Heart. New York: Vintage Books, 1938
ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS
Gale. “The Death of the Heart”. BookRags Literature Study Guide. 2002. August 2007
Polaschek, Dave. “Maturity – Coming of Age”. 31 Dec 2003
http://www.faqs.org/health/Healthy-Living-V3/Mental Health.html
Weissbard, David.R. “The Challenge of Maturity”. The Unitarian Universalists Church
Rockford II. 8 June. 1997).
Taflinger, Richard F. “The Biological Basis of Human Behavior”. March 2008
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/protagonist
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Maranatha Christian University