Background of the study

                                                           

            Literature is the product of human thought. Since several years ago, it had been put as the symbol of intellect. Barnet (1993: 1) says that literature can be used to refer to anything written. Through literary works people may acquire amusements that will lead them to a keen perception of beauty and increase their sensitivity upon artistic works in general.

            Literary works can communicate thought, feeling, and attitude towards life. “A literary work can be used like anything else from ink blots to feelings, simply as a device for imaginative stimulation, a way to find out what we are thinking or feeling or who we are” (Clummings and Simmons, 1986: 1).

            Literature is closely related to life because it is the work created and enjoyed by human being. According to Wellek and Warren (1965: 15), literary work is a result of literature, a creature activity, and a work of art.

The term literature according to Wellek and Warren, seems best if we limit to art of literature that is to imaginative literature as a work of art that use a language in its medial expressive. It has stood in such important position in life whether it is the western of eastern culture. Studying literature is one of exciting activities because it gives us many experiences that related to human feeling, love, and human life. However, literary work is a human reflection in art.

            Hudson (1985:10) states that literature is the expression of what people view, face, think, and feel about life. By reading literary works, we are getting not only pleasure but also certain massage presented by the author to the readers through the character or some other elements of fiction. The result is that we are able to use them for improving our life with the environment which the writer faces. As a human being, we have different attitude and behavior. We can say that literature makes our life colorful. Literature has a function that is to entertain the reader in which the story told about reality or imagination. Besides, it is written to give the reader insight of life that function to broaden, deepen, and share opinion.

            Furthermore, W.J Long (1945: 8) states that literature is the experience of life in the world of truth and beauty. It is the written record of man’s spirit of emotion, thought, and inspiration, it is the history of human soul. Literature can help us to understand human sentiment,feeling, human interest, and problem.

            Also, literature can be defined as the way of reacting and expressing life experience by mean of language as its media. Jones (1968: 1) states that literature is a work of art that uses language as its media as simply another way, we can experience the world around them through imagination. Literary works are created by author in order the reader can get deeply enjoyable comprehension, and some picture of society or human life. It is supported by Darmono (1979: 7) that literature reflects life and the life itself is social reality, it means that literature is an expression of the author that uses language as its media to express her idea that can be a tragedy and event happened in or outside the author.

            As a media to express the author’s idea, literary work can be divided into three kinds in form; those are drama, prose, and poetry. Each kind of them has different characteristics, such a novel. Novel is one of literary genres that present complicated problems in detail. Peck and Coyle (1984: 103) have argued that novels are long work with great amount of detail on very page. It needs to be taken into account before people can reach any sort of judgment. The effect of this detail is that people come to recognize the complex reality of a character of an event in the story.

            Novel can also contribute to a deeper understanding of the central themes, complicated characters, and its readers’ view of the world. So, a novelist’s can create a certain character trait and personality as a part of human psychology. It aims at making a certain image that will be related to the whole works. The highlight or characters in a novel is really important to be understood to reach a comprehensive understanding, because, “Learning literature is the same way as to overcome our problems” (Wellek and Warren, 1989: 23). A fictional work, literature is considered having its internal characters apart from the author, audience, and the real world. Literature is drawn from the imagination rather than history or fact. Related to the consideration that literature is an imaginative world, Abrams (1981: 61) says that literature is as a work of fiction that is absence from historical truth. Literature has its own imaginary world rather than the ‘true historic’ one.                 

. The thesis uses “psychological literary approach” . According to Crow and Alice (193:3) that the term “psychology” is divided from two Greek words: psyche, which mean soul, and logy, which men study of. If the soul is interpreted as self, then psychology connotes the study of the self. The self is a dynamic (active) organism or living being that constantly affects and is being affected by other selves. Therefore, the term, psychology can be defined better as the scientific  study of human behavior and of human relations. It is also in accordance with what Davis and Paladino say about psychology in Siswantoro’s book that “psychology” is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes (Siswantoro, 2005:26).

Psychology has been a greet concern of many literary critics since the twentieth century. Since then, literary criticism has expanded its wing to at least five types of approaches that are moral, formal (previously existing types), psychological, sociological, and also mythical and archetypal approaches (Wellek and Warren, 1993:59). This particular of approach, psychological one, has become the center of interest since people has been more familiar with Freudian theory of the unconscious in which Freud has given a little touch to literature. As explained by Endraswara (2003:101) that Freud has argued that while composing the work of literature, an artist is at the state of unconsciousness. Thus, it deals with the psychology of the creative process.

            In this study, the writer would like to present the prose The Awakening written by Kate Chopin that the novel was begun in 1897 and completed on January 21, 1898. Kate Chopin's original title was A Solitary Soul. It was published as The Awakening by Herbert S. Stone & Company in Chicago on April 22, 1899. In this novel, the writer wants to analyze about the main character that is Mrs.Pontellier. Mrs. Pontellier of major character. 

This study is chosen because the writer is interested in studying literature. By reading literature work automatically we can develop our knowlede and science. And we can arrange the works that are chosen  by the author . Beside that, the writer can also get the author;s feeling  or experiences  from the object of the study in “The awakening” by Kate Chopin’s especially the main character of Mrs.pontellier’s personality by using a psychological approach. After reading and studying this novel, the writer can give some information concerning with the novel through the way  of play based on  the characterization of the story. Because the reader  of this research  can get an understanding of more general aspect  through it such as human character, love, relationship, behaviour, mistery .

                                                                                                                                                                                    According to Albert Bandura in Alwisol’s book Psikologi Kepribadian (2004: 356), personality is the result of human interaction with other people. Thus, when we interact with other people or when we face some event in our life, whether it is good event or bad event, surely there are a lot of experiences we got and we will remind all of experiences as a memory. Experience, whether it is good experience or bad experience will always repeat in our mind so that it can make some effects on human itself like anxiety, deny everything in their life, depression, phobia, and aggression.

            As a biological creature, every human has ability to determine his own fate. According to Alwisol (2004: 356) human is a rational creature so that human needs for free. Also human is usually easy to change and human is sometimes hard to be understood by others. Otherwise, every human has various behaviors. We can understand human’s behavior from how they view subjective experience of reality in their life. From behavior, we can see human’s personality. Behavior is one of factors that can influence human’s personality development or human’s personality changes, the other factors such as environment, social, culture, family, can be the important factors too in human’s personality development or human’s personality changes (Alwisol, 2004: 357).

            From the explanation above, it can be stated that experience can influence human’s personality development or even human’s personality changes. That is why the writer chooses the topic as an analysis of the main character’s Mrs.pontellier’s personality in kate chopin’s the awakening by using psychological approach, this approach is one of the approaches that can be used in analyzing literary work, she analysis the main’s character personality.