THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Julia Wahyu Utami 112009104
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY SALATIGA
2013
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person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2013. Julia Wahyu Utami and Suzana Maria L.A.F., M.Hum.
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the
permission of at least on of the copyright owners of the English Department, Faculty of
Language and Literature, Satya Wacana University, Salatiga.
Julia Wahyu Utami:
Using Imagination as Defense Mechanism in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
Julia Wahyu Utami
Abstract
Imagination is one aspect of people’s creativity. Anne of Green Gables, a novel written by L. M. Montgomery, proves that imagination also works as a tool of people’s defense mechanism. Anne of Green Gables is narrated by a young little orphan girl, named Anne Shirley, who is dealing with her tragic past experiences that influence her present condition. This study is aimed at analyzing how the novel portrays the function of imagination and how it works to protect Anne, especially in overcoming past trauma of her past experiences. Psychoanalytic criticism by Sigmund Freud is used to conduct this research and this novel is analyzed by using character analysis. The findings are that imagination is able to protect Anne Shirley’s self to deal with her unconscious condition. From eight defense mechanisms proposed by Freud, I have chosen defense mechanisms which are dominant in Anne Shirley’s behavior: repression, denial and displacement.
Keywords: psychoanalytic criticism, unconscious and defense mechanism
Introduction
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
(Albert Einstein)
Anne of Green Gables is a novel by L.M Montgomery that is narrated by an orphan girl,
named Anne Shirley, who lives with unmarried siblings, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. At first,
Marilla Cuthbert doesn’t want to keep Anne Shirley because she is not a boy and there is a
much-discussed event at that time about an orphan girl who killed her adoptive family by
burning the house. Finally, Matthew Cuthbert who falls in love with Anne’s imagination, tries to
Anne is very happy to live in Green Gables with her new family, Marilla and Matthew
Cuthbert. She plays with her imagination and finds a real “bosom friend”, Diana Barry.
Although she has a lot of things that she never had before, Anne still struggles to face-up to the
society’s prejudice. Her past experience of being an orphan often comes up and makes her sad.
In this case, Anne uses her imagination as a defense mechanism to protect herself.
No one in this world wants to be an orphan. In this case, Anne Shirley (the protagonist
main character in Anne of Green Gables) and I are examples of the lonely orphan girls in this
world. We have experienced that being an orphan is very hard because we live without our “real
parents” and grow up without siblings or as the only child. The condition is very hard, especially
when we unconsciously compare our condition to the condition of others (people in our
environment). Anne and I feel like we do not have what others have.
The similar experiences between Anne and I of being lonely orphan girls make it easier to
analyze L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables because I can feel the emotion of the story.
Even though my life experience is not as dramatic and tragic as what Anne experienced (for
example: she worked as a babysitter for three-sets of twin babies and lived in an asylum), at least
I can understand the struggle of being a lonely orphan.
In my opinion, the most interesting part on this novel is about how Anne uses her
imagination as a tool of her defense mechanism, because imagination is the only thing that she is
able to use to protect herself from loneliness and society’s judgment. How Anne plays with and
uses her imagination is one of my reasons why I am eager to analyze this amazing novel.
As human beings, imagination has an important role in life. As seen in the opening quote,
Albert Einstein’s recognized that humans live more freely in their imagination. Humans have no
the real world, society’s judgment plays a big role in social interaction. It causes humans to live
under limitations. Based on Albert Einstein’s statement, I believe that through imagination, the
protagonist character, Anne Shirley is able to protect herself.
In analyzing imagination as a tool of the defense mechanism of Anne Shirley, I attempt to
determine when and in what cases she uses imagination as a defense mechanism. My research
questions are: why does Anne Shirley uses imagination to protect herself, and what are the
functions of imagination as a defense mechanism? The objective of this study is to determine
some of the functions of imagination, especially for an orphan girl.
To do this study, I have used psychoanalysis to analyze the character of Anne Shirley.
Psychoanalysis is useful in analyzing the behavior of Anne Shirley to determine how she uses
her imagination as part of her unconscious mind as a defense mechanism. This study uses close
reading in gathering data, grouping the data taken from the novel, analyzing the data, and
interpreting the data by employing various relevant theories.
This study is written for everyone who is interested in how imagination could be employed
by people so as to not feel lonely or by those who have experienced society’s judgment,
childhood trauma and loneliness. What makes this research different from the others researches
is I am using psychoanalysis criticism as the theory of this research. As stated in an L. M.
Montgomery Research Group (lmmresearch.org), around fifty items of dissertation and theses
about Anne of Green Gables were written between of 1961 - 2010. Most of them are using
feminism as the theory of their research. So, I decided to try something new in doing this work
by using psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis criticism, while a complex theory, is broadly used, especially in analysis
Tyson’s statement that psychoanalysis can help us better understand human behavior, thus it
certainly is able to help us understand literary texts, which are about human behavior (11).
I also hope that this study will help the students in English Department of Satya Wacana
Literature Review
Most of the theories that I use in this research are based on Sigmund Freud’s theories.
Freud, a medical doctor who specialized in nervous conditions, was born in Vienna, Austria, in
1856. Halonen and Santrock stated that as an eldest child in his family, Freud was regarded as a
genius by his brothers and sisters and doted on by his mother. He spent most of his life in Vienna
as neurologist. Before he died, he escaped Nazi anti – Semitism to London. He died at the age of
83 in 1939 after multiple surgeries for cancer. People assume that his cancer was caused by his
habit of intense cigar smoking (379).
Freud developed psychoanalysis in the early twentieth century. In his book, The
Interpretation of Dreams (1900), it was explained that psychoanalysis is the belief that the
human mind contains a dimension that is only partially accessible to consciousness and then only
through indirect means such as dreams or neurotic symptoms (Rivkin and Ryan, 389). Barry
explained that psychoanalysis is a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorders by
investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind as stated in the
Oxford dictionary (69-70).
In analyzing the character of Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables, I use psychoanalysis
because psychoanalysis helps me to understand more about human behavior. I tend to agree with
McLeod that psychoanalysis has some advantages as Freud believed that people could be cured
by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining “insight”. The
aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences (1).
One part of psychoanalysis which is very important that will be discussed in this research
rational. Freud claimed that we are not aware of most of the forces at work in shaping our
behavior – most of the influences on our behavior are unconscious (Halonen and Santrock 379).
As Tyson stated, in regards to dealing with our problems, there is a defense mechanism
which is at work unconsciously to protect ourselves (15). Halonen and Santrock identified eight
types of defense mechanism to decrease people’s problems, especially anxiety, they are:
repression, denial, rationalization, displacement, sublimation, projection, reaction formation, and
regression (381).
I have decided to use three types of defense mechanisms to analyze Anne’s character,
which are: repression (the ego pushes unacceptable id impulses and traumatic memories out of
conscious awareness and into the unconscious mind), denial (the ego rejects realities that are too
traumatic) and displacement (the ego shifts unacceptable feelings from one object to another,
more suitable object), Halonen and Santrock (381).
I choose repression, denial and displacement as the defense mechanisms for Anne in
Anne of Green Gables because, based on my reading of the novel, those three defense
mechanisms are very dominant in the character of Anne. Repression helps me to analyze how
Anne is using her imagination to cope with childhood trauma. While denial helps me to dig more
information about how Anne is using her imagination in dealing with society’s judgments.
Displacement gives me more information as to how imagination, as an object of the defense
mechanism, works in Anne’s life to cope with her present condition.
Based on my explanation above, I can summarize that there are three key words in this
research; they are: psychoanalytic criticism, unconscious and defense mechanism. Here, I will
Psychoanalytic Criticism
Barry stated that psychoanalytic criticism is a form of literary criticism which uses some
of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature (69-79). In my opinion,
psychoanalytic criticism is the right critical method to be use in analyzing human behavior as
described in a novel or part of a literary work. My argument is strengthened by Tyson’s
statement that psychoanalytic criticism is useful to literary criticism to show how this view of
human behavior is relevant to our experiences of literature (12).
Tyson added that whether we realize or not, psychoanalytic concepts have become part of
our everyday lives, and therefore psychoanalytic thinking should have the advantages of
familiarity (11). I tend to agree with Tyson that psychoanalytic criticism makes it easy to analyze
Anne’s character because psychoanalytic criticism is familiar with humans’ life, especially in
discussing humans’ behavior.
Unconscious
The history of the study of the unconscious mind is explained by Rivkin and Ryan. Freud
discovered the unconscious by studying patients with neurotic symptoms which pointed towards
conflicts between inclination or feelings and the repressive demands of the ego or conscious self
(389-390).
According to Freud, each of our lives is filled with tension and conflict; to reduce this
tension and conflict, we keep information locked in the unconscious mind. Freud believed that
the unconscious mind holds the key to understanding behavior (Halonen and Santrock 379).
Eagleton in Minderop Psikologi Sastra analyzed the picture of iceberg which was Freud’s
unconscious mind than the conscious mind. According to Eaglaton, Freud described the human
mind as like an iceberg with the unconscious mind being the biggest part. Here is the picture of
the iceberg of the human mind by Freud:
<http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/learning_modules/psychology/02.TU.04/?section=10>
The unconscious mind has advantages in humans’ life. Tyson (12) stated that the
unconscious works as the store house of painful experiences and emotions and unresolved
conflicts we do not want to think about. The unconscious comes into being when we are very
young through the repression, the expunging from consciousness, of unhappy psychological
events. Tyson added that, for psychoanalysis, the unconscious is not a passive reservoir of
neutral data but a dynamic entity that engages us at deepest level of our being.
Defense Mechanism
Researchers at Utah Psych have said thatwhen people experience difficulties, they have
different ways of handling their pain. These different ways of dealing with pain are called
defense mechanisms. Originally conceived by Sigmund Freud, much of the research into defense
unhealthy depending on the circumstances and how much a person uses them.
http://utahpsych.org/defensemechanisms.htm
According to Tyson, defense means the process by which the contents of our unconscious
are kept in the unconscious (15). On the other hand, Atkinson and Hilgard argued that the word
mechanism is not the most appropriate as it implies that some sort of mechanical device is
involved. Actually, Freud was influenced by the nineteenth – century tendency to think of the
human being as a complicated machine (433).
Atkinson and Hilgard (433) stated that defense mechanisms are hypothetical constructs
inferred from observations of the way people behave. Defense mechanisms are useful ways of
summarizing the psychological processes that we hypothesize are occurring in order to explain
some observed behavior.
As mentioned, I have chosen three defense mechanisms, which are particularly dominant
in Anne Shirley’s character, they are:
1. Repression
Repression is a defense against internal threat. In repression, impulses or memories
that are too threatening are excluded from action or conscious awareness. Freud
believed that repression of certain childhood impulses is universal.
2. Denial
When people cannot tolerate the pain that acknowledging reality would produce, they
resort to the defense mechanism of denial. Sometimes, denying facts may be better
than facing them. In a severe crisis, denial may give the person time to face the grim
3. Displacement
The function of displacement is actually to reduce anxiety. Through the mechanism
of displacement, a motive that cannot be gratified in one form is directed into a new
channel.
Discussion
Character Analysis
The Character of Anne Shirley and Her Imagination
“We are rich…. We have our wonderful imaginations; we should be as happy as queens.”
Anne Shirley
The quotation above was the first quotation that I read when I saw the picture of Anne of
Green Gables on the internet. I was interested in the reason L. M. Montgomery, the writer of
Anne of Green Gables, implicitly asks us to use our imagination to encourage ourselves. I was
very intrigued as to how imagination works as a tool to build the positive spirit for people.
Rugg (1817), a poet and the scientist, stated that all day long we imagine our way around
the house or the community; visualizing alternative courses and consequence of action.
According to Rugg, imagination is the instrument of discovery. As human beings, our daily lives
are dependent on imagination. Imagination is universal and indispensable.
I tend to agree with Rugg’s statement because I myself cannot deny that people use
imagination in everyday life. As Freud explained that our unconscious mind is more dominant
than conscious mind, so it is possible that imagination plays an important role in our lives. In this
discussion, I try to relate how imagination as the part of the unconscious mind works as defense
mechanism in Anne Shirley’s life.
L. M. Montgomery tried to grab the readers’ attention by describing the character of
Anne Shirley in detail. She divided the character of Anne as stated in Anne of Green Gables by
First, ordinary observer described Anne from her physical appearance, as L. M.
Montgomery stated in Anne of Green Gables (13):
She wore a faded brown sailor hat, and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white, and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were eyes that looked green in some lights and moods and grey in others.
Second, extraordinary observer described Anne not only by her physical appearance but
also through the meaning behind her appearance like L. M. Montgomery wrote in Anne of Green
Gables (14):
…an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short,….
In other words, L.M Montgomery tried to deliver a message to the readers that certain
aspects of Anne’s physical appearance represented Anne’s character. L. M. Montgomery
described Anne as a little orphan girl that was knowledgeable, imaginative, talkative, full of
spirit and vivacity. Chen, as the reader, in his critical evaluative essay, stated that Anne Shirley
captivated her readers irresistibly by being cheerful, amusing, happy and imaginative (2004).
This indicates that L. M. Montgomery successfully delivered her message to the reader.
Defense Mechanism
We turn now to the most important aspect of this discussion of Anne’s character, that
being how Anne’s imagination works as defense mechanism. The function of defense
mechanism is to protect ourselves from threatening conditions. The process of using defense
Humans use their defense mechanism by transferring their emotion to another object (it
can be animate or inanimate), for example: brake breaking a vase, hitting someone else or just
screaming to make them relax. In the case of Anne Shirley, the object that can make her relax is
her imagination.
Anne Shirley used her imagination as the object to transfer her unwanted feeling to
imagination as an expression of her defense mechanism. As L. M. Montgomery said, Anne was
very creative in using her imagination, as detailed in Anne of Green Gables (22-23):
Anne Shirley: “When I don’t like the name of a place or person I always imagine a new one and always think of them.”
Through imagination, Anne Shirley has a defense mechanism without realizing it. She
described her condition of imagination by two groups, her imagination before living in Green
Gables and her imagination after living in Green Gables. Before Anne lives in Green Gables, she
said that there was not enough scope for her imagination; it means that there was not enough
space in her mind to express her imagination to protect herself because she experienced
childhood oppression. But, after she lives in Green Gables she said that there was enough scope
for her imagination.
In Green Gables, her imagination is working a lot. She used her imagination in Green
Gables as a defense mechanism to protect herself from childhood trauma (labeled repression in
defense mechanism), society’s judgment (labeled as denial in defense mechanism) and her
present condition (labeled displacement in defense mechanism).
In discussing repression as a defense mechanism, I seek to restate Atkinson and Hilgard’s
statement that repression works when childhood memories come up and threaten human feelings.
I have explained before that before living in the Green Gables, Anne Shirley had a bad
experience that resulted in childhood trauma.
According to L. M. Montgomery in Anne of Green Gables, there are two experiences that
are repressed in her; they are the experience of being an orphan and the experience of being
oppressed by her adoptive family.
First, I attempt to discus about how imagination plays a role as a defense mechanism to
deal with her experience of being an orphan. Cori, in her book The Emotionally Absent Mother
(2), assumed that no one escapes wanting a mother’s love. In Anne’s case, Anne had a strong
desire belong to anybody, but the fact is she says herself that no one wanted her as part of a
family. The condition of being orphan leads Anne to the repressed condition. Below are some
monologues that represent her repressed condition as being an orphan or not belong to anybody:
Anne Shirley (15):
“Oh, it seems so wonderful that I’m going to live with you and belong to you. I’ve never belonged to anybody – not really. But, the asylum was the worst. I’ve only been in it four months, but that was enough. I don’t suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you can’t possibly understand what it is like. It’s worse than anything you could imagine.”
Anne Shirley (66):
“I’d love to call you Aunt Marilla,” said Anne wistfully. I’ve never had an aunt or any relation at all – not even a grandmother. It would make me feel as if I really belonged to you (….) but we could imagine you were my aunt.”
From those two monologues above, there are two different conditions. The first monologue
described Anne’s condition in the Asylum. Earlier in Anne’s history, after the husband of her
first adoptive family, Mr. Thomas, passed away she was sent to an asylum. She stayed in an
overcome her conflict in an asylum, she decided to use her imagination as she explained in the
first monologue.
In the second monologue Anne explains that she wanted to be the part of Cuthbert’s family
and call Marilla as her aunt, but unfortunately Marilla refused to be called her aunt. Although
Marilla refused her request, Anne still used her imagination to call Marilla as her aunt.
In Anne of Green Gables (67-68), Anne said that she was just imagining that she was one
of the children of God, standing off by herself in the corner as if she didn’t belong to anybody.
She had a strong desire to be the part of a family. Fortunately her imagination helps her to
encourage herself so that the reality did not bring her into the depth of despair.
On the other hand, Anne Shirley not only experienced being an orphan but also childhood
oppression. After the death of her parents, Mrs. Thomas decided to keep her. Anne described
Mrs. Thomas as a harsh and unkind woman. She lived with the Thomas family until she was
eight years old. After that, Anne stayed with the Hammond family. Mrs. Hammond used Anne as
a slave and left Anne to take care her three sets of twins. Then, after the death of Mrs.
Hammond’s husband, Anne was sent to an Asylum. She stayed there for about four months
before Mrs. Spencer, the worker at the asylum, brought Anne to Matthew when she was eleven
years old.
The experience of living with Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond as her adoptive family
was make Anne so frustrated because they used Anne as a slave not as their child and it caused
trauma. In dealing with her frustrating condition, Anne stated that imagination is able to think
about the outside of the reality of being unwanted or unloved.
Anne Shirley is very sensitive about her physical appearance and fashion. Mrs. Rachel
Lynde (the town busy body) and Gilbert Blythe (Anne’s classmate) were the representatives of
the society in Green Gables who hurt Anne’s feelings by talking about her physical appearance.
L. M. Montgomery created Anne Shirley with red hair, freckled face and slim body. The
society in the story viewed Anne’s physical appearance as ugly, homely and skinny. Anne
consciously realized her condition, but unconsciously she used denial as a defense mechanism to
protect herself.
Burger, in his Personality: Theory and Research, said:
When we use denial, we simply state that certain facts do not exist. This is more than saying we do not remember, as in repression. Rather, we are insisting that something is not true, despite all evidence to the contrary (61).
In this case, Anne regarded what the people said about her physical appearance as
judgments. She tried hard to deny the fact about her physical appearance by using her
imagination in order to see herself differently. In denial, Anne used her imagination creatively to
forget the fact that people hurt her feelings. These are the examples when Anne’s imaginations
created denial as a defense mechanism:
Anne Shirley (20):
“Yes, it’s red,” she said resignedly. “Now you see why I can’t be perfectly happy. Nobody could who had red hair. I don’t mind the other things so much – the freckles and the the green eyes and my skinniness. I can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I cannot imagine that red hair away.”
Anne Shirley (72-73):
“Now I’m going to imagine things into this room so that they’ll always stay imagined. (….) I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. (….) My hair is of midnight darkness,”
Those two monologues above explain about how Anne deals with her physical condition.
She was unsatisfied with her physical appearance. The only way to solve her problem is to use
Anne was not only dealing with her physical appearance, but also about fashion. Poverty
was the reason why she could not wear a beautiful dress. As an imaginative girl, she won’t give
up. She uses her imagination to deny the reality that she had no beautiful dress to wear. Here are
examples in Anne of Green Gables that display Anne’s imagination related to fashion:
Anne Shirley (16):
“I just love pretty clothes. And I’ve never had a pretty dress in my life that I can remember – but of course it’s all the more to look forward to, isn’t it? And then I can imagine that I’m dressed gorgeously.”
The monologue above clearly demonstrates that Anne has a good sense of fashion but the
reality is that she never had a pretty dress in her life. She is successfully in using her imagination
to create a beautiful dress in purpose to reduce her feeling of being disappointed. Imagination
taught Anne to be a positive thinker.
Below is another example that explains how members of society regard her fashion:
Anne Shirley (17):
“When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be looking at me and pitying me. But, I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress – because when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worthwhile….”
She said that everybody must be looking and pitying her because of her old fashion. Anne
lives in poverty so that she is not able to buy a beautiful dress as she wished. Although she has a
good sense of fashion, in reality she only has a very simple dress like the very plain asylum
dresses.
Below is a beautiful example of Anne’s imagination:
Anne Shirley (93):
The monologue above shows how Anne uses her imagination to make her feeling
better. Unconsciously, imagination leads her to a hope that one day she will get a beautiful
dress like what she wants. Imagination teaches Anne to be an optimistic girl.
Displacement
As Atkinson and Hilgard stated, the function of displacement is actually to reduce anxiety
(437). Relate the displacement to Anne Shirley’s condition; displacement has a function to
reduce Anne’s anxiety with imagination since she has negative experiences in the present
circumstances after she lives in Green Gables.
I found three monologues that represent how imagination works as displacement:
Anne Shirley (45):
“I’m not going to think about going back to the asylum while we’re having our drive. I’m just going to think about the drive. Oh, look, there’s one little early wild rose out! Don’t you think it must be glad to be a rose? Wouldn’t it be nice if roses could talk?”
The first monologue above tells about her condition when Marilla wants to send her to the
asylum. Anne had already said that asylum is the worst place for her and she doesn’t want to go
back there. To reduce her anxiety, she uses her imagination in order to make herself relax and
enjoy the trip. Anne is very creative in using her imagination. In this case, Anne imagines that
she is able to communicate with nature.
The second monologue described how Anne tries to forget or avoid telling about her past
experience.
Anne Shirley (46):
“Oh, what I know about myself isn’t really worth telling,” said Anne Shirley eagerly.
The monologue happened when Marilla asked Anne about her history. Anne does not want
to tell about her history because it is too painful for her. She starts by offering Marilla to tell
about her imagination because imagination is more interesting that her past.
The third monologue described how Anne deals with her physical appearance.
Anne Shirley (16):
“I guess that’s why I’m so thin – I am dreadfully thin, ain’t I? There isn’t a pick on my bones. I do love to imagine I’m nice and plump, with dimples in my elbows.”
The monologue above sounds similar to denial. The difference is in denial Anne tries to
deny her physical appearance because of society’s judgment, but in displacement Anne tries to
shift her negative expectation about herself in the present condition not because of society’s
judgments. The anxiety purely comes from herself. In this case, Anne is successful in using her
Conclusion
If we look at the situation around us, not many people realize that imagination has a
positive power for everyone who uses their imagination wisely. Unfortunately, in my own
country, Indonesia, many people in society do not value imagination as a precious or valuable
thing. Examples that demonstrate how members of society do not appreciate imagination
include: lack of public interest in enjoying art and literature which are produced as a result of
human imagination; few people love to read books and there is low value placed on selling
works of art and literature.
As L. M. Montgomery stated in her work, Anne of Green Gables, imagination has a
power to make people as happy as a queen. L. M. Montgomery’s statement makes me believe
that imagination is not a passive thing, but it has a power and it makes me curious in analyzing
her book. L.M. Montgomery’s statement is support by Shuffelton’s statement (321) that
imagination helps children to cope with ills of social life. The reason why I decided to choose
Anne of Green Gables to conduct my academic research was because I was curious as to how
imagination was applied in the character of Anne; I attempted to show that people who actually
use their imagination are powerful and we have to use our imagination wisely.
To show the result of this research, I have attempted to answer the research questions.
First, Anne Shirley uses imagination as a defense mechanism because imagination is the only
thing that she has. Imagination works well in her life because she uses it wisely. Second, Anne
uses three kinds of defense mechanisms, namely: repression, denial and displacement.
I agree with a quotation by Siddhartha Gautama that we are what we think, we arise with
our thoughts and with our thoughts we make the world. In other words, restating Gautama’s
unreal to be real and we have to use it only in positive ways. Anne Shirley teaches me to be wise
in using my imagination, because imagination can lead to faith that things can be different one
day. From Anne’s story, I always encourage myself to not be afraid to have a big imagination,
because imagination has a power in our mind. I am not shy of being a poor orphan girl because I
have a rich imagination to create everything that I need.
There are still many possibilities to develop this work, as this study is not complete and
there is room for further research. I hope that this research is useful and helpful for readers or
researchers who is interested in analyzing the text of Anne of Green Gables; it is open to anyone
who wants to develop this work for the future research. I also have an idea for future research
using feminism theory to analyze Anne of Green Gables.
Feminism theory can help the researcher to better view life as a woman and its struggles.
Furthermore, combined with my attempt to apply feminism theory, the topic is about the struggle
of an orphan girl in dealing with society’s judgment. The purpose of the future research would be
to analyze how societies view an orphan girl and why people are discriminating against Anne
because she is a girl.
Since feminist theory also analyze women's oppression, the story of Anne of Green
Gables is one of examples to analyze the issue of women’s oppression. In the novel, it illustrates
situations where males are held above females, for example: Marilla Cuthbert regrets and tries to
reject Anne because she would rather adopt a boy. Marilla’s reaction shows the discrimination.
The societies believe girl cannot do the physical work like what boy did. Girl is a week creation.
Another example of oppression is Anne use like a slave for the families before she moves to an
Through this study I hope that there can be further studies that analyze other points of
view about Anne of Green Gables, because I believe there are many topics that could be explored
Acknowledgement
First of all I would like to say many thanks to my Father, God and Savior, Jesus Christ;
for His blessings and for making almost all my imaginations come true, especially His guidance
in the process of finishing this research. Second, thanks a lot to my beloved daddy (Cicum
Pranugrahadi) who has always stayed and lives in my heart and imagination. I love you! Third, I
would like to say thanks to Ibu Suzana as my supervisor and Danielle (my kindred-spirit) as my
examiner. Thanks for your help, patience; encouragement and also that I can graduate this year.
So thank-you!
Finally, thanks to my grandparents (you are like Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert for me!
My heroes!), my big family (Atmowasono and Wasidi family), Faith Rudolph (my “bosom
friend” forever), Ibu Tyas Utami who loaned me Anne of Green Gables and finally gave it to me
(hahahahaha… Thanks a lot!), Dorcas Rudolph for your support, Pak Gustavo’s family (thanks
for the great opportunity!), mi amiga loca y buena (Keily, Faby and Elba), Pak Duncan Barlow
(for the input), mbak Janti, koh yayan (thanks a lot for always encourage me... thanks also for the
passport!), Jonathan Van Braeden and my best friends forever: Cyponk, Yessi, Rara, Nina, mbak
Prih and family, Ibu Ruth Sati (RIP), Marcia-Sandro-Gaby Silva, SWCC’s family, kak Agnes,
Bibliography
Atkinson, Rita L.; Richar C. Atkinson; Ernest R. Hilgard. Introduction to Psychology.
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