My Journey
Because each step of life is always worthwhile…A man is not a man until you look through his eyes, deeper than his skin and deep into his heart. And we’re not humane enough if we fail to do so.
UK, The Land of Inspiration
It might sound weird, but I guess it all started with the death of Princess Diana in 1997. She was a figure of inspiration, not only for the people of England I guess, but also for many people in all over the world. Her death was such a great loss that made almost everyone at that time set his or her eyes on England, a big nation that has such a long history. It was a nation that ruled the world, and now its English rules the world. The great exposure to the Royal Family of England at that time really caught my interest and invited me not just to know some facts about UK, but beyond that to learn more about it, and to experience living in UK myself.
Living a half world away from UK doesn’t separate me from its pop culture. In fact, I grew up listening to Spice Girls, reading Harry Potter, and even having a crush on Prince William XD Lol… Those British pop cultures have been coloring my life and even become a part of me. Spice Girls’ songs for example, have spiced me up with the ‘girl power’ insight that makes me become a not-so-easily-giving-up girl who believe that girls can reach whatever dreams they may have. Thus, for me the British pop culture is much more than just an entertainment. It is also something that teaches me with some of the greatest values in life.
When I was 14, I started to read the Harry Potter series and I also grew up with the characters in the story. Through it, I learned about bravery, to stand up for my friends, and stand up for what’s right. I was very impressed with the imaginative world created by J.K. Rowling in the story, but as I’ve grown older, the real world in which the author lives catches my interest much more than the imaginative world she created. I start to gain more interest on the British pubs, the places that have given inspirations to so many great British authors including J.K. Rowling herself.
I have never been to the Great Britain but from the history lesson I got, I can tell that pubs are an inseperable part of the British life. Since I can’t tell when xD, public houses have become the common places for the British people to eat, drink, meet friends and share ideas, or just to relax. For many great authors, pubs are also a source of inspiration. Many British great authors got their inspirations while they were in pubs. J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in a pub called “The Elephant House” in Edinburgh. Even the Father of English novel, Daniel Defoe, also got his inspiration for the story of Robinson Crusoe while he was in a pub! That of course makes me get more curious on UK as the Land of Inspirations. How I’d love to step my feet on the land and feel the magical experience myself…
So far is UK from my land, yet so great is its influence on me. Hitting on college, I choose English Literature as my major of study and get fascinated even more by the Englishmen’s high culture; their best thoughts and works such as Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park” or Dickens’ “Great Expectation”. My interest to all of those fine things from UK really makes me want to become a part of them even for just a few years of my life. O…how I’d love to walk in their shoes; to enter their pubs, to enjoy their meals, and watch their football. How I’d love to study in UK!!
Mad Woman In The Attic (An Interview with Intan Paramaditha)
Trivia question: Name a female graduate stud
ent of English Department-University of Indonesia ’97 who has made it to become an emerging gothic story author. Stumped? What if we tell you that she used to teach at our department and and currently studies at the University of New York on cinema studies? What if we add that she has also wrote several gothic stories and some of them have been published in her book titled “Sihir Perempuan”?
If you still haven’t guessed, it’s Intan Paramaditha, who choses to represent herself as “Mad Woman in the Attic” in her blog to strive against women’s inferior place in the society. The famous phrase “mad woman in the attic” is drawn from Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre, in which Rochester’s mad wife Bertha stays locked in the attic, which represents woman’s inferiority. Many insightful views are shared here by Ma’am Intan who has kindly spared her time from her tight schedule in NYC.
We cannot choose a person of which sex we are to be born. Are you proud for being born as a woman? Why?
I’ve been asked this question so many times and honestly I get bored. Yes I’m proud being a woman, but if I were born as a man I would also be proud – insofar that I could be certain a type of man, that is, an intelligent, witty, edgy man who’s not obsessed with masculinity. A man who’s not threatened by a woman’s intelligence, who doesn’t mind being called a geek, who’d be glad doing drag show and that sort of thing.
What matters is what you become, not what sex you are born into. And so far I’m happy being the woman that I’ve become.
In your view, is being a woman a strength or a weakness?
Well, being a woman is certainly an advantage if you apply for a scholarship, especially if you’re poor and marginal – just kidding. I think it’s not enough to just be a woman. Let’s stop romanticizing the word “be” (being a woman, being born as a woman) and think of specific verbs. For me, a woman’s strength derives from “doing.” She should not be someone to fight for, or to speak for. She speaks, thinks, reads, writes, fights, steals, dances, builds, destroys.
You often write and speak out for women empowerment. What drives you to it?
Part of it can be traced back to my own experience growing up in the 1990s as an urban middle-class girl ‘who did not fit in.’ Some people think that women’s problems are located ‘somewhere out there’ (i.e., problems happen to poor women outside the urban space). Some others pose a question, “Why so much fuss? Men and women are already ‘equal.’” In various circumstances women are in fact still forced to fit themselves into the glass slippers (in simple terms, these are standards set by the society to define how a good, desirable woman should act). Those glass slippers are amorphous, sometimes unseen. Sometimes you don’t realize that you are wearing them until you see your own blood.
By the way, I think we need to be critical of the word “empowerment” as it’s often detached from specific political and historical contexts. Empowerment for what? Who defines the state of being “disempowered”?
So much compliments addressed to you regarding to your skill as a speaker for public seminars which are related to the issue of women. Could you tell us what seminars you have spoken for so far?
I think other people have been more actively engaged with women’s issues than me. The seminars that I attend are mostly academic, so I’m not sure how much they affected the public. I had a memorable experience, though, when the British Council asked me to talk about gender in cinema in front of high school students in different cities in Indonesia. I was surprised to discover how — in year 2005, mind you — these teenagers were really curious, and to some extent anxious, about ‘taboo’ subjects such as homosexuality. Another exciting experience was when Jurnal Perempuan invited me last year to give a talk in their event, ‘Celebrating Women’s Diversity.’ It was really nice to really engage with the public since I left Indonesia four years ago.
Among all the writings you have made, which one do you think shows woman’s power best? Why?
The way I think about gender and how they intersect with other issues (nationalism, capitalism, Islamism, and other isms) is reflected in both my essays and fictions. They involve different creative processes, geared towards different kinds of audience, but the concerns are similar. My fiction gives me satisfaction in a different way as it reaches people I’ve never thought of. I didn’t expect that high school students would read Sihir Perempuan, let alone to know that they could relate to the characters while engaging with the book critically.
How is your view toward women’s position in our country?
Which women, specifically? Indonesia is huge and women deal with different issues. In one place, what people deem as ‘religious practices’ might be a big issue. In another place, women still have to deal with the capitalism – patriarchy duet (the two-headed beast, to evoke the old-school Marxist feminists’ term). A woman’s body has always been subjected to the state’s disciplinary regime, and I think what’s really pressing for me right now is the intensifying desire to control bodies and sexuality. Our new pornography law is an example of how bodies (especially women’s) are turned into a public arena, deployed by different national actors to assert power. And when our policy makers talk about women’s bodies, women’s subjectivity is the last thing in their minds.
What Indonesian women of this era should learn at the first place?
We’ve been silenced for more than 30 years, and today it’s completely the opposite. Everybody talks – screams even – to be heard. The challenge for women is to invent a language so that they can be heard. Ayu Utami’s Saman is an influential feminist text because of the context in which it emerged – it broke the silence. But now with so many voices coming from different directions, including so many texts being produced on behalf of “women” and “feminism,” people start to become hearing-impaired. Many people are reluctant to understand the complexities of women’s issues, viewing them as either exclusively women’s concerns or simply banal. Issues such as rape, domestic violence, and polygamy are concrete – they don’t go away. But if we were to speak about them, a new language – a language that creates intervention on the noise rather than silence — must be invented. While some people (mostly men) are allergic to the word ‘feminism,’ people who are ‘pro-women’ tend to be too celebratory when they seek refuge under its umbrella. So another dimension to look at is feminism as a framework. In Indonesia, it has a problematic status as it is rejected on the one hand and romanticized on the other. When speaking about women, those who claim themselves as feminists need to be critical of themselves, of their speaking positions, and of feminism itself.
Get Your Kick-Off!
Like a football match that requires a player to make a kick-off to start the game, life often invites people to make a new start. It could be the start of anything, such as the start of living in a new environment or the start of a new semester in a college-life. Sometimes the starting line is something one has been waiting for, but at other times it might be just something inevitable. No matter what lies behind the starting line, everyone has a road to travel ahead, and the preparation one makes for it can determine his failure or success on traveling life’s road.
On traveling life’s road, one may choose to be an awake or a sleepwalker. A writer, Tom Morris, notes that there are too many people wander through life like a sleepwalker and following routines each day without knowing where they are going. People need to be careful if they do not know where they are going because they might unconsciously get themselves into dangers. To avoid that, a clear goal needs to be set in the very first place. One might need some time to contemplate and figure out his goal before start walking. Such a time wouldn’t be a time wasted since it will help to make sure that each step of one is a step closer to the finish line instead of just a step of vain that will get him nowhere.
The next thing to do once one has set out a goal is to figure out a strategy for it. In order to win a football match, each player has to work on a strategy made by an expert, the coach. The same rule also applies outside of the field. To get to the destination one wishes to reach, one could ask for a map from somebody who has already traveled the same road. A college freshman may ask some necessay informations from his academic advisor, seniors, or any other sources as long as they are reliable. With the map on one’s hand, he could reach the destination faster than anyone else. Those who don’t bother to follow the map might have to get lost for some time before reaching the finish line, but the guy with the map on his hand would have better chance to make it smoothly.
The journey would not end by the time you’ve got the map. In fact, it’s not even begun until you step your feet on the road. Along the way, you would need more than just focusing on the goal and the map on your hand, but you would also need a companion by your side. People might not know when they will need the help of others, like you never know when you would want to skip a class and need somebody to sign the absent-sheet for you. Lol…I would not recommend you to do that, but surely there will be a lot of moments you would need the help of a friend. Thus, you better make sure you’re not traveling the road on your own.
Once you have reached the finish line, you can stop-by for a while and celebrate. You can have some foods and music to celebrate with your friends or family, anything fun and positive to mark the moment you’ve got your vision comes true. It is a moment you might not get unless you do the kick-off carefully. So set your goal, follow the strategy, work it out with your teammates, and get your kick-off!
The Medieval Romance and Modern Novel: How Power Dominance in the Society Shapes Literature
Background
The history of English literature has noted so many great works of different types and genres. Among them are the heroic epic, chronicles, poetry, romance, drama, and novel. However, not all of those works still survive in the heart of nowadays common readers. Among those few survivors, romance and novel stand as two prominent genres of English literature which still remain powerful until nowadays.
Romance and novel are two different genres of prose, which are often mistakenly generalized as of the same type. Instead of grouping them in prose, many common readers call famous romance work such as King Arthur as a novel. Therefore, this paper is going to illuminate the differences between romance and novel and the power dominance in the society that has worked behind them and played a great role in shaping these two giants in literature genres.
In order to sharpen the analysis, two most prominent works of romance and early modern novel, which are Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Robinson Crusoe are taken as the sample analysis in this paper. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been well-known as the most popular work from the Medieval Romance despite of its anonymous writer, while Robinson Crusoe is known as one of the earliest major novels in English literature that its author Daniel Defoe is even called as the Father of English Novel. Considering those backgrounds, each of those works can be ensured as the most representative work of either romance or novel.
1. Introduction
Romance and novel were born in different periods in the English literature history. Charles Sear Baldwin notes in An Introduction to English Medieval Literature that the term ‘romance’ can be dated back to the ‘Medieval Era’ of literature in England, which covers the period during the twentieth to the fifteenth century of England[1]. He also writes if at that period, England was still organized according to the ‘feudal system’, in which only a small part of the society could enjoy the bliss of wealth. Among that small group of people from high class are the ‘king and his knights’, ‘gentry’, and ‘landlords’. Most of the citizens could not have much chance to improve their poor standard of living, but only depend on their landlords. That situation is somehow in contrast with the period that marks the beginning of novel, which is around the early eighteenth century in England. Jeremy Hawthorne in Studying the Novel argued that the birth of the novel in England is supported by ‘the rise of the middle-class’ and ‘capitalism’ in England (Hawthorne 2005, 25) The eighteenth century of England was the era when the middle-class people ruled and the power of the nobles was declining. In contrast to the nobles’ inherited wealth that kept declining for continuously being shared to their heirs, the middle-class people gained even more wealth from the rapid growth of industry and ‘capitalism’. With the wealth and education they got, the middle-class started to be the new dominant power in the society. Those two different dominant powers in the society of England have shaped two of the biggest literature genres, the romance and novel.
The different power dominance in the society also affects the works of literature. Ad W. Putter in An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet noted that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was ‘the most popular literature of entertainment for the higher strata of society’ in Medieval Age (Putter 1996, 38). Therefore, its characteristics were designed to entertain the people of the upper-class society of that period. Charles Sears Baldwin in An Introduction to English Medieval Literature identifies ‘three ideal motives of romance’ which includes ‘love’, ‘adventure’, and ‘chivalry’ (Baldwin 1922, 59). The term ‘love’ in Medieval Romance according to Baldwin has closer meaning to the attitude of ‘worshipping’. The central character in romance does not take ‘love’ as a trivial thing, but he takes it seriously by showing his loyalty to his lady. Besides of ‘love’, ‘adventure’ also becomes an important element in romance. The character in romance often has to go on an ‘adventure’ as a proof of his bravery. Another element of romance which is often called as the most significant one is the ‘chivalric values’. There is rule in romance that the central character in the story has to be a knight, and yet he cannot be just any knight. A knight in romance has to hold the ‘chivalric values’, which includes his ‘devotion to God, King, and his lady’ (ibid). Other than those qualities, Hawthorne also adds in Studying the Novel that romance often involves ‘supernatural elements’ (Hawthorne 2005, 15). The setting in romance is often imaginary and it often includes some imaginary characters such as giants or people with supernatural powers.
In opposition to such aristocratic values, the novel which is backed-up by the middle-class society celebrates its own values of individualism and ‘realism’. Ralph Fox in The Novel and the People notes how ‘capitalism’ has developed the value of ‘individualism’ among the modern society which is reflected in the novel (Fox 1979, 44). Robert Bocock in his text, Consumption, also argues how the capitalistic system, which has replaced the feudal system of earlier period, has forced the society to develop their sense of ‘individualism’ since they have to compete against another in whatever ways in order to win ‘profit’ (Bockock 1993, 11). Besides of ‘individualism’, Doreen Roberts writes in The Introduction and Notes of Robinson Crusoe that the new dominating middle-class society also supported the development of ‘realism’ in literature (Roberts 2000, XVII). The middle-class people do not have the same taste of literature with the aristocratic society. Instead of reading stories about chivalry, the middle-class people prefer to reading stories of their everyday lives, the stories of ordinary people which are reflected in the novel.
2. Content
2.1. The Characteristics of Medieval Romance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Among the famous stories of Arthurian romance in Britain is the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The story starts with an annual Christmas celebration held in King Arthur’s palace at Camelot. Along with King Arthur are his Knights of the Round Table, which include Sir Gawain. In the middle of the feast, they were stunned by the appearance of a knight with giant-like size and entirely green color. He comes to challenge the supposed valiant knights in Arthur’s court for a battle-axe game. He would give his axe to any knight who dares to take his challenge to strike him with it. Conversely, one year after that, the knight should come to see him to be stroked back with his axe. King Arthur never starts his feast before he sees a knightly deed in that annual celebration and yet none of his knights seems to dare to take that challenge. Arthur is about to take that challenge himself, but then Sir Gawain asks in high manner to replace him. So it happens that Sir Gawain throws the axe to the Green Knight and it cuts his head off. Strangely, the Green Knight is still alive and his body even takes his head back from floor.
One year after the challenge, Sir Gawain still keeps his promise to find the Green Knight and receive his fling of axe. In the middle of his journey, Gawain finds a beautiful castle and decides to stop by there. He is very welcomed by the lord and lady of the castle that he even stays there for four days. On his second day in the castle, the lord of the castle would like to for hunting and makes an agreement with Gawain that anything he gets in the forest would be given to Gawain and he expects Gawain to give him whatever he gets in the castle. On the third day, when the lord of the castle goes for hunting, Sir Gawain is approached by the beautiful lady of the castle who asks him for a kiss. Gawain, who holds the chivalric value, gives the lady’s favor for a kiss. In the evening, Sir Gawain and the lord of the castle fulfill their promise. The lord of the castle gives the deer he gets from hunting and Gawain gives him a kiss for exchange, although he does not mention from whom he got the kiss from. On the second day of the hunting, Gawain gives two kisses he got from the lady of the castle in exchange for a boar the lord of the castle gets from hunting. On the third day, the lady of the castle offers Gawain a gold ring and a girdle. Gawain refuses the gold ring politely, but he accepts the girdle since it might save him from the Green Knight’s axe, then he gives the lady three kisses. Sir Gawain gives the lord of the castle three kisses in exchange for a fox, but he does not give the girdle to the lord. Sir Gawain soon leaves the castle for the Green Chapel. At the Green Chapel, the Green Knight is ready to strike him with his axe. The first and second strikes do not touch Gawain, but the third strike hurts Gawain’s skin at the neck. The Green Knight then reveals that he is actually the lord of the castle he visited and that he has asked his wife to test him during his stay at the castle. The failed two strikes of axe were to honor Gawain’s honesty when he fulfilled the agreement they made at the castle. However, the third strike leaves a scar on Gawain’s neck as a mark of his dishonesty in not telling him about the girdle. Sir Gawain returns to King Arthur’s palace. Gawain sees the girdle as a mark of shame, but the king takes it to honor Gawain.
The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is dominated by the ‘aristocratic value’ which can be seen from its choice of character and the strong ‘chivalric values’. The story is circulated around the life of the noble people, the King and the noble people surround him. Sir Gawain himself is known as one of the Knights of the Round Table who serve the legendary King Arthur. Therefore, the conflicts presented in the story also goes not far from the issue of nobility. The major conflict fought by the major character here is about the contradicting ‘chivalric values’.
Sir Gawain’s ‘chivalric values’ is shown through his loyalty to his king, his faith in God, and his courteous behavior. Sir Gawain proves his ‘chivalric values’ at the first place by showing loyalty to his king. His loyalty to King Arthur is shown when he bravely takes the Green Knight’s challenge, although it might put his own life at cost. Not only being brave, Sir Gawain also shows his integrity as a knight by keeping his promise to see the Green Knight a year after. Besides of loyalty to the king, Gawain also shows his faith in God which is also shown through this verse:
…and all his trust upon earth was in the five wounds that Christ bare on the cross, as the Creed tells. And wherever this knight found himself in stress of battle he deemed well that he drew his strength from the five joys which the Queen of Heaven had of her Child.(……., 120)
The verse shows Sir Gawain’s devotion to God, which becomes one of the qualities, should be possessed by a knight according to the ‘chivalric values’. His quality as a good knight is once again proven through his faith when he prays to God for guidance before he finds the castle in the middle of the forest. Another chivalric quality is shown by Sir Gawain through his courteous manner. Gawain always speaks to his king with such a high manner that shows his honor to the king:
I beseech ye, my lord, let this venture be mine. Would ye but bid me rise from this seat, and stand by your side, so that my liege lady thought it not ill, then would I come to your counsel before this goodly court. (……, 118)
Gawain utters such long sentences just to tell the king that he would like to take the challenge for him. It shows that Gawain communicates his intention to his king with a very careful manner. He does not only use words which are necessary to convey the meaning, but he also minds to use some additional words to show politeness and honor to the king.
The major conflict of the story occurs when he meets the seduction from lady of the castle. The seduction from her makes Sir Gawain’s ‘chivalric values’ contradict toward each other. On one side, Gawain has to remain loyal to his king by showing his integrity as his knight, but on the other side, he also has an obligation to treat a lady nicely as in the chivalric value. Gawain then manages to keep up with both values, but finally fails when he priors his own safety above the chivalric values. Despite of keeping his honesty as a knight, Gawain chooses his own way for safety by accepting the girdle offered by the lady of the castle. He is proven to take the wrong choice at the end, because he would have to get a scar on his neck if only he still holds on to the chivalric codes.
The ideology in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows the strong value of the aristocratic society. The ‘chivalric values’ that involves one’s loyalty to the king is more prior than one’s individual choice. Such value also reflects the society among whom this genre emerges, who were dominated by the royalties.
2.2. The Characteristics of Novel in Robinson Crusoe
The novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe tells about the life of a middle-class young man from England named Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe has a deep passion to go on a voyage, but his intention is opposed by his father. His father believes that to stay in England as the middle-class people is the best way to live, that he insists Crusoe to stay. However, young Crusoe does not bother with his father’s advice. He decides to go on a voyage, which unexpectedly gives him several unfortunate experiences along the way. His ship is caught in bad weather and even pirated by the Turkish pirates who later take him as a slave. He manages to runaway and meets a kind Portuguese captain who takes him to Brazil with his ship. In Brazil, Crusoe takes part in the plantation business which earns him a lot of profit. However, he decides to leave it for another voyage. His voyage from Brazil leads him to a terrible shipwreck. He gets stranded in an isolated island and finds himself as the only person who survives from the tragedy. As he does not find anybody else in that island to help him, Crusoe has to rely on himself and Providence to keep survives. He manages to built his own shelter, cultivate crops, and develop a livestock to survive in the island. Crusoe has been living for about twenty years when he sees another set of footprint in the island. Later he finds that the footprint comes from the savage from another island. The island close to his is inhabited by the cannibals and savages. They would come once in a year to his island with a prisoner to be sacrificed in their ritual. Crusoe decides to save the savage prisoner he finds and named him Friday. He teaches Friday to speak English and about Christianity, and also asks Friday to call him Master. Crusoe and Friday have developed a good master and servant relation for about two years in the island, when they find three other prisoners brought by their neighboring cannibals to the island. Crusoe and Friday save those three prisoners that includes Friday’s father. Not long after, a European ship lands on their island. Crusoe outsmarts the captain so that he agrees to take Crusoe and Friday on a voyage with him back to England. In Europe, Crusoe finds himself gets wealthy from the land he bought in Brazil for plantation. As he goes back to England, he marries a woman and settles down.
Through his narrative in Robinson Crusoe, Defoe clearly illustrates novel as a genre which emerges from the new dominating middle-class society. Robinson Crusoe can even be seen as a text which celebrates the middle-class station of life. Such ideology is stated in the text especially in the opinion of Crusoe’s father:
He told me…that mine was the middle state, or what be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings, of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. (Defoe 2000, 2)
At the beginning of the novel, Defoe spares two long paragraphs only to describe the advantages of being a middle-class. It says that the hardships of life are mostly shared by the lower and upper class people that people should celebrate to become a part of the middle-class. Not only, being grateful for the middle-class position, but the text even ridicules the royalties by stating that, “…kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes (ibid).” Such opinion indicates the declining of the royalties’ position in the society in contrast to the uprising middle-class.
As novel emerges as the genre of the middle-class, ‘realism’ becomes an important element of it. Robinson Crusoe is also famous for the use of the so called ‘formal realism’. In the Introduction and Notes of Robinson Crusoe, Doreen Roberts quotes from Ian Watt to define the term ‘formal realism’ which he believes to begin in the early eighteenth century. He defines the term as a technique of using ‘smaller time-scale’ to give the detail descriptions of everyday life, with more ‘individualized character’ instead of the typical one, the ‘development of consciousness through memory and experience’, and the ‘concern with times, dates, and location’ (Roberts 2000, XVII).
From all of the ‘formal realism’ elements mentioned by Watt, Robinson Crusoe has the ‘smaller time-scale’ element, ‘individualized character’, ‘development of consciousness’, and precise ‘dates and location’. In short, Robinson Crusoe has all of the elements in ‘formal realism’. Robinson Crusoe is a highly individualized character. The character in Robinson Crusoe is no longer a noble knight with unclear identity, but an ordinary man from the middle-class with a specific birthplace and family history. Crusoe is told to be born in York, in the year 1632. His father is a foreign merchant from Bremen, who marries a York woman whose families are named Robinson (Defoe 2000, 1). Locations in the novel also are far from imaginary since they refer to real places such as St Martha, Alicant, and Brazil. The place ‘Santa Marta can be found on the Columbian Coast’, while ‘Alicante is located on the south-east coast of Spain’ (ibid, 241). Not only that, but the ‘smaller time-scale’ in the novel also allows the ordinary everyday details of living. One example of it is when Crusoe’s father calls him to his father’s room, Crusoe as the narrator in the story also mentions that his father suffers from ‘gout’, although such detail does not really contribute to the plot (ibid, 1). However, what might seem as an unimportant detail in the story can contribute to the effect of ‘realism’. The mentioning of ‘gout’ can make the readers from the eighteenth century of Britain identify the story with the reality of their everyday lives. Gout, in fact, is noted as a common disease in that era[2].
Another strong element of ‘formal realism’ in Robinson Crusoe is the ‘development of consciousness’. An interesting example of it, is found in Crusoe’s philosophical contemplation of human’s and God’s existence:
And what am I, and all the other creatures, wild and tame, human and brutal, whence are we? Sure we are all made by some secret Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky. And who is that? It is God that has made it all…And if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all this to befall me…Why has God done this to me? (Defoe 2000, 70)
The narration describes Crusoe’s flows of thoughts as he tries to find the reason of why he should undergo such a terrible situation of being stranded alone in a distant island. Such stream of consciousness can add the ‘realism’ effect because it makes the character as if he really is an autonomous individual just like in real, life where people have the capability to think and act according to his will, rather than just as a “puppet” moved by the author of the story.
Not only the character is individualized, the conflicts in the novel also often deal with individualism as it is reflected in Robinson Crusoe. The conflicts faced by Robinson Crusoe are mostly dealing with individualism. The first conflict in the novel happens between Crusoe and his father. He neglects his father advice that he has to be stranded in an island as the consequence. The major conflict opposes man with the nature, of how Crusoe should be able to become self-sufficient in such a harsh environment. Along the story, the narration puts more emphasize on Robinson Crusoe as an individual rather than his existence as a part of a social community. Even the closest human relation in this story, which is between Crusoe and Friday, is very dominated by Crusoe’s sense of individualism. It can be seen from the way he treats Friday as a servant rather than as equal humankind to be regarded as a friend. The name he gives to Friday is not even a proper name for human, but just a name of a day in a week. In short, this novel can be seen as the celebration of the individualism value.
The highly individualized character and individualism value can also be connected back to the society among whom the novel emerges. Jeremy Hawthorne in Studying the Novel writes how ‘capitalism’ has helped the development of ‘printing’ and ‘literacy’ among the eighteenth century middle-class people in Britain, but at the same time it has also developed ‘confrontations and rivalries among individuals’ (Hawthone 2005, 25). Not only that, but he also finds that ‘individualism’ is also supported by what he calls as the ‘urban experience’. The urbanization in the eighteenth century has created a new environment in which people no longer know the people surround them. Such environment creates a private life as a new lifestyle. It makes it even clearer that novel is shaped by the new dominating power in the society, the middle-class.
3. Conclusion
The dominant power in the society of each period has influenced romance and novel that they promote different characteristics and values. The genre of romance, which emerges under the domination of aristocratic authority, celebrates the ‘chivalric values’ and noble knights as heroes. As opposed to that, the novel appears as the genre of the new dominating middle-class people which celebrates the triumph of ordinary people as the ‘winner’ by holding on to ‘individualism’ as their value. The hero in novel is no longer a figure who strongly defends his commitment to other people, but one who manages to find his own way among the rigid social construction.
[1] Book Title: An Introduction to English Medieval Literature. Contributors: Charles Sears Baldwin – author. Publisher: Longmans Green. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1922. Page Number: 70.
[2] The reigning queen of the early eighteenth century, Queen Anne, also died because of suppressed gout.
My First Spanish Poetry
Mi Destino Final – My Final Harbor
Es maravilloso – it is wonderful
Ver tu sonrisa – to see your smile
En los dias grises – in many gray days
Es maravilloso – it is wonderful
Tener quien te escuche – to have someone who listens
Cuando los demas no lo hacen – when others shut their ears
Es maravilloso encontrar – it is wonderful to have someone who grabs my hand
Cuando los demas te dejan – when others leave
Es maravilloso – it is wonderful
Amar en este mundo infeliz – to be loved in this unfriendly world
Tu eres mi felicidad – you are my joy
Tu eres mi amor – you are my love
Tu eres mi destino final – you are my final harbor
Uniquely Grandma^^
Since the death of my grandfather from my mother’s side, my grandmother stays in our home. My grandmother has the beautiful face, which even the lines on her face cannot erase. She has the smiling eyes, which makes her looks lovely even when she gets sad. Her fairly-white-hair makes her looks even more graceful as she gets older. She might not have a pointed nose like any grandmother in fairytales, but her flat nose makes her looks beautiful in her own unique way.
My grandmother is a traditionalist. Her hair is relatively short and slight. It seems that her age has stopped her hair from growing any longer. However, she always makes her best effort to tie it up traditionally into a bun. One day, she lost her hair pinch. She asked me and my brother whether we saw it or not. None of us knew where her hair pinch was, so I offered her to use my hair rubber and tie up her hair into a pony tail like mine. Although it was more practical, she refused it. She said it was awkward. Therefore, she had to work hard to make a hair bun by using a twig.
Down from her hair, my grandmother’s every day dresses is also pretty unusual for most women of these days. She usually dresses in kebaya, the Javanese traditional outfit. It is much more complicated compared to women’s regular blouse. Its maker has made it by paying so much attention to details. It is designed in a way that could emphasize woman’s body shape. It is tight around the belly part but broader around the hip. It is such a graceful outfit with its long-sleeves and a sharp-front-end. Not to mention the lace made at its every single fringe. Not only it has the unusual design, it also makes dressing becomes such a hard work. My grandmother has to wrap a special cloth around her belly several times before she put on her kebaya. I guess it is a traditional way to deal with the flabby belly since fitness centre has not become so popular back there in the past. If I had to wear it, I guess it would have made me running out of breath as if I had asthma. Matched with the kebaya, my grandmother wears a long-tight-dress with traditional batik pattern. It is definitely not a suitable dress for a marathon because it really restricts the movement of the feet. It is pretty amazing to find that my grandmother has never complained about it. She still walks gracefully and comfortably with it. It seems that she really enjoys wearing her kebaya as much as I enjoy wearing my jeans and T-shirt. Despite of its unusual design and impracticality, it makes my grandmother looks graceful even in her old age.
My grandmother is also such a good cook. She can turn simple and regular ingredients into a special cuisine. Anything she cooks would always taste good. I guess the key of her secret recipe is in the food seasoning. The flavor of her cooking is always good for the tongue. It is never bland. She can make all ingredients she uses in the right composition that they can blend perfectly and create such a delicious taste. However, when I tried to ask her how her cooking could always taste good, she said that she does not know it either. I guess being a good cook is already in her blood. If it is true then it would definitely become such great tidings for me, who would probably inherit her talent since grandmother and granddaughter are still much related in blood.
My grandmother’s traditional value is not only reflected by the way she looks or by her astonishing talent at cooking. It can also be seen from her every day attitudes. When she was still staying with my grandfather at their house, my grandmother had always made a glass of dark coffee to be put in the dining table everyday. Once when I was very little, I innocently asked her why there had not been anybody who took it for drink after such a long time. She told me that it was because the coffee was not made for somebody. It was made for the ancestors who might want to visit their house. She believed that it was a sort of way to welcome the ancestors. She does not do that ritual any longer in our home. However, on some special days she would put some foods on our dining table, which I and my brothers would not dare to touch.
People might see my grandmother as an eccentric by the way she looks or behave. I, myself, still get surprised sometimes by what she does. However, eccentricity would not make her become less in my eyes. She would always be my beloved grandmother and the only one of her kind.
HOW TO COPE WITH CANCER PATIENTS
When my mother began to vomit over and over, kept losing her appetite, and even when I realized that she had a dramatic weight loss, I never expected her to suffer from cancer. As far as I and my family knew, she had never had any serious illness before. Unfortunately, this time has to be an exception. Despite of her unblemished medical record, it did happen to her for real that she was suffered from a heart cancer. Nobody would expect that to happen to anyone, but as a matter of fact it could happen unexpectedly to anybody. Many times the people around the victim are as shocked and unprepared to deal with it, that they cannot give their best support when their beloved one needed them the most. When cancer attacks the people we know, we should be ready to help them to fight and to give out all of our amulets to win the battle against it.
Just like in any other battle, if we want to win the battle against cancer, we need to win the psychological combat at first, before we move into the physical combat. As no one would ever hope anything bad to be happened to himself, knowing the fact of having cancer for the first time would mostly become a hard time. I remember how my mother used to have nightmares of meeting family relatives who had already passed away, early after she knew that she had cancer. It seemed that she always carried her fear, worry, and hopelessness for the cancer risk even to her sleep. In that such an emotionally draining time, moral support is needed the most. We should help them to develop positive thinking, which can be done through many kinds of way. We can use religious approach to build up their confidence or encourage them to take medication and tell them how medical treatment has much developed so that to recover from cancer is no more impossible.
After dealing with the psychological problem, we should help them to be physically prepared before sending them right into the battlefield. In this case, we should help them to maintain their physical endurance by making sure that they get enough nutrition for their body. We should serve them with foods which contain many kinds of nutrition needed by their body, from carbohydrate, protein, to many kinds of vitamin. However, the problem often occurs here is that cancer victims often have problem with vomiting. Therefore, besides of giving the regular foods, we can also add healthy juices of fruits or green bean on their menu. When their digestion refuses to accept the hard foods, they would at least have these healthy liquids to keep their body strong.
With enough mental and physical provisions, one last thing they need before winning the battle is the medication support. This is the stage where they have to meet the medical treatment. On this final stage, radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy is needed to beat the cancer. Therefore, we need to support them to take the best medication possible. It would mostly take a high cost of money, so that we need to be financially prepared for it. However, no matter how much money it takes, it would always be worth-taking, since a life worth much more than materials. During this most determining stage, our assistance would also become very important. While their hands are not free from infusions, they need us to be their hands, to take care of their needs until they have recovered.
Cancer is not an easy disease to cope with. Therefore, when there is somebody around us suffers from it, the battle against the disease would not only be his, but ours. We should show our love by giving mental, physical, and medication supports they need to defeat the cancer disease.
UI’s Inside-Out Changes
Looking back to few years ago, our campus was probably the most wonderful campus our country had ever had. It had buildings with unique architectures, surrounded by some green woods that kept the air fresh at anytime, and it even had some lakes! What else could you expect from a campus? Yet, if we take a look at our campus today, it has turned into something even much more than that. If you happen to walk on the small path that connects UI Station to The Faculty of Humanities and lay your eyes to the right side of the way, you can see a pretty large stable that keeps some beautiful deer inside. Not only that, we can even bike our way around campus now, since there is already the bicycle route that connects all the halting places in UI.
These past few years have brought so many changes to our university from the inside out, from its deepest level of administration to its outermost physical appearance. It is important for us to know that those inside-out changes are interrelated. Have you ever noticed the new yellow busses that circulate around our campus lately? I believe everyone has! Those new yellow busses are equipped with the most sophisticated facilities have ever been applied to any school-bus. From the outermost part, those new busses have used the sophisticated-automatic doors that would amaze anyone who are going to get into the bus. The comfortable seats plus the fresh air that flows from the air conditioner make our few minutes of travel with the yellow bus as it were a first-class travel. Not to mention the very entertaining plasma TV that turns the new yellow bus into our second home. Those are some fascinating changes anyone could not possibly miss. However, did you ever notice that some of the busses have the label of some institutions from out of our university? If you do, then it might leave you in wonder of what is actually going on inside of our campus.
At the beginning of this year, our university has officially detached its status as BHMN (Badan Hukum Milik Negara) and put on a new status as BHP (Badan Hukum Pendidikan). That can be a very influential change for our university. With its previous status as BHMN, UI was limited by some pretty strict regulations made by the government. It had restricted the university’s income to its internal income, the government’s grant, and some other grants from foreign countries. This change is a relief to both the university and the government side. For UI, this new status would allow it to cooperate with many other institutions for its benefits, and for the government it’s a release of burden since they won’t have more responsibility to the university.
A change is always followed by two kinds of consequences. At the bright side, the change that is undergone by UI might bring some benefits to us. It can help UI to enhance many of its facilities to support the development of its students. On the other side, it might also bring some negative consequences. The investment from many other institutions from outside of UI might also lead to commercialization for the benefit of the investor. When we are not careful with the treaty, the commercialization can lead us to a loss. Therefore, it is important for us to keep our eyes open to many things that happen around us.
It would not be possible for the outer changes to take over without any changes from the inside. As a change always comes with many consequences either good or bad, the changing status of our university from BHMN to BHP could be something for us to celebrate and at the same time also to be critical of.
On Consumerism
The article entitled “The Emergence of Modern Consumerism” talks about the development of consumerism, which covers the early patterns of consumption, industrial capitalism and consumption, the later developments, and the new consumers. The modern consumerism in the twentieth century is affected by the previous cultural values, primarily those of the bourgeois capitalists from Britain and Holland. According to Marx Webber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, their movement to the United States and their social pattern there later become the foundation of modern consumerism.
The early patterns of consumption in a capitalist society firstly appeared in the seventeenth century in England. At that time, Puritanism influenced the emergence of a new production system which legalized free-wage labors and profit gain from commodities sale at a ‘free market’. In the eighteenth century, there was a Restoration of the monarchy in England, which also replaced some Puritanical values and supported the development of British capitalism. Clothing became an important subject that the consumption of related goods such as clothes and jewels increased. People became more aware of the ‘latest style’ as they began to know advertisements. The number of consumers increased since the urban middle classes stated to join the aristocracy and country gentlefolk consuming more and more products. It then triggered the development of larger scale industrial production in the nineteenth century. Changes in production and consumption created a new mode of production called industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century.
In the nineteenth century, consumers started to purchase products to shape their social identity. It became a way for them to show which social group they belonged to. Such social group appeared in the United States and Western Europe. An American sociologist Thorstein Veblen made the new wealthy middle class in America as his focus of study and he found out that they became a new leisure class who tried to imitate the lifestyles of the upper classes in Europe. Similar research was also done by Georg Simmel, who observed a group people who lived in Berlin, German, the early modern metropolis. Veblen and Simmel found out that the western societies had a new way of life with the emergence of new department stores in the centers of big cities. Many kinds of shops and facilities appeared to fulfill the social and psychological needs of those new wealthy societies. The metropolitan individuals who were anxious of facing the great social pressure featured the modern patterns of consumption in the society. They no longer consumed unimportant items, but they consumed in order to express their social identity.
Later, in the twentieth century, the metropolitan patterns of living also spread among the less wealthy groups. The consumption of items such as clothes, personal adornments, and expensive pleasurable pursuits became important for almost everyone. Such new way of life was followed by the mass productions pioneered by Henry Ford. Ford paid high salary to workers so that the working-class would afford buying his cars. Thus, he had created the idea of standardized product being produced for mass consumption, which became of central importance for modern capitalism started from the mid-twentieth century.
During the ‘Fordist’ mass production and mass consumption period, the new groups of consumers became more selective in purchasing products. Type of consumers became even more various. Therefore, sociologists and the people who worked for mass media and advertising classified consumers based on occupational class. The occupational class, which covers the income and social status, was believed to affect the pattern of consumption. Consumers were being divided into several categories based on the combination of income level, occupation, and related patterns of spending and consumption.
Since the 1950s, new kinds of consumers appeared with less external characteristics than the group of consumers from previous era. This new group is more affected by the internal dynamics which affected the social construction of a sense of identity for group members. It was a process of using items of consumption such as clothing, footwear, and music to define who was inside or outside of the group.
