MARITAL AND EXTRAMARITAL RELATIONSHIP
IN
ANNE SEXTON’S SELECTED POEMS
A Thesis Presented to
The Graduate Program in English Language Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Magister Humaniora (M.Hum)
in
English Language Studies
By
NANDY INTAN KURNIA 03 6332 019
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
This is to certify that all the ideas, phrases, and sentences, unless otherwise stated, are the ideas, phrases, sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if he/she takes somebody else’s idea, phrase, or sentence without a proper reference.
Yogyakarta, 23 August 2007
♥ ♥ ♥
I dedicate this graduate thesis to:
H. Achmad Muzamil bin Moehammad Alie
My Beloved Papa
Who died on July 24, 2005
(Three days after my sister’s birthday, and 2 days before mine)
Thank you for the joy and wisdom that you brought to me
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all I would like to thank Allah SWT for all His blessings. My life,
happiness, this thesis and everything that I have now are all because of Him, only Him who can make all things possible.
Thank you to all of my family who have not stopped believing in me. Papa
(H. Achmad Muzamil) and my big brother (Cikwie). I know both of you are
watching me from Heaven. Pa, thank you for your critical questions and loving memories. If everyone in this world had a father like you, they would understand why I love you so much. Mama (Hj. Maria SKM. M.Kes) and Dedek (Ririn Ramadhany
S.Si). Your constant love and support have kept me going through the hard and easy
times.
Mas (Bagas Prakosa S.IP) – My Guardian Angel. You are always there to
help me to keep my feet on the ground. Thanks for kicking my tail all the time, yet in return picking me up and pushing me to success. I love you.
My great thank is also for Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A. (Hons.). I would not
get this far if you did not give me your time, patience, friendliness, care, guidance and support. Without all of that, my thesis would be a blank page. I am honored.
My appreciation is also for some encouragement and care given by my best friend, Nilam Maharani S.S., M.Hum. Well this is it! Thank you from the bottom
of my heart. For me you will always be a beautiful person inside and out.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE ………... i
APPROVAL PAGE ………... ii
ACCEPTANCE PAGE ………... iii
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ………... iv
DEDICATION PAGE ………... v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………... vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS ………... vii
ABSTRACT ………... ix
ABSTRAK ………... x
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ………. 1
A. Background of the Study ………. 1
B. Research Problems ………. 5
C. Objective of the Study ………. 5
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW ... 7
A. Review of Related Studies ... 7
B. Theoretical Review ... 13
B.1. Women and Marriage in Sexton’s America ... 13
B.2. Feminism and The Feminine Mystique... 18
C. Theoretical Framework ... 23
D. Object of the Study ... 23
E. Approach of the Study ... 24
F. Method of the Study... 25
CHAPTER III MARITAL AND EXTRAMARITAL RELATIONSHIP IN THE EYES OF MEN AS SEEN IN SEXTON’S SELECTED POEMS .….. 28
A. Abuse of Power in the Marital Relationship from Men’s Perspective as Seen in Sexton’s Selected Poems ... 29
B. Abuse of Power in the Extramarital Relationship from Men’s Perspective as Seen in Sexton’s Selected Poems ……… 36
C. Two Sides of a coins: Marital or Extramarital Relationship?... 38
C1. Marriage as a Nightmare... 38
C2. Temporary Adultery ... 39
CHAPTER IV MARITAL AND EXTRAMARITAL RELATIONSHIP IN THE EYES OF WOMEN AS SEEN IN SEXTON’S SELECTED POEMS. 42 A. Abuse of Power in the Marital Relationship from Women’s Perspective as Seen in Sexton’s Selected Poems ... 43
CHAPTER V THE POEMS AND THE POET ... 72
A. Anne Sexton’s Marital Relationship ... 72
B. Anne Sexton’s Extramarital Relationship ... 79
C. Anne Sexton as an American Woman Poet... 84
C.1. The Body Image ... 86
C.2. Marital and Extramarital Relationship in the Poem and the Poet’s life... 92
CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION ... 96
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 99
APPENDICES... 102
Appendix 1... 102
ABSTRACT
Nandy Intan Kurnia. 2007. Marital and Extramarital Relationship in Anne Sexton’s Selected Poems. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies. Graduate Program. Sanata Dharma University.
This thesis examined nineteen selected poems written by an American woman poet - Anne Sexton. Sexton’s poems have various subjects to discuss, however they have similar underlined theme, i.e men and women relationship in terms of marital and extramarital relationship.
There were three research questions that the researcher tried to answer. First, the researcher tried to discover the question on men’s views on marital and extramarital relationship as revealed in Anne Sexton’s nineteen selected poems. Second, the researcher wanted to find out how are women’s perceptions on marital and extramarital relationship revealed in those poems. Third, sought to examine how the marital and extramarital relationship is contextualized with the socio-cultural condition and Sexton’s own perception.
Library research was used in this thesis and there were two types of data. The primary sources were taken from Sexton’s nineteen poems having similar theme, which is men and women relationship in terms of marital and extramarital relationship. Secondary sources were some sources related to the research problems, and they were divided into several parts. First, the researcher used some criticisms to get more information on the authors’ profiles and the poems that she produced. Finally, the researcher applied some books that gave some data related to the discussion on, first, the issues on women and marriage in American History. The second one is feminism and The Feminine Mystique.
ABSTRAK
Nandy Intan Kurnia. 2007. Marital and Extramarital Relationship in Anne Sexton’s Selected Poems. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies. Graduate Program. Sanata Dharma University.
Thesis ini menganalisa sembilan belas puisi yg ditulis oleh seorang penyair wanita asal Amerika - Anne Sexton. Puisi-puisi Sexton yang dianalisa disini memiliki subyek pembahasan yang amat beragam, akan tetapi kesemuanya memiliki tema yang sama, yakni hubungan antara pria dan wanita didalam pernikahan dan hubungan diluar pernikahan (affair).
Peneliti thesis ini menjawab tiga pertanyaan. Pada pertanyaan pertama peneliti bermaksud untuk mencari jawaban mengenai pandangan pria mengenai isu-isu pernikahan dan hubungan-hubungan diluar pernikahan yang diangkat didalam kesembilan belas puisi Sexton. Kedua, peneliti ingin mengetahui persepsi wanita mengenai topik yang sama. Ketiga, peneliti ingin mengkontekstualisasikan data-data yang telah ia dapatkan sebelumnya dengan kondisi sosial-budaya dan persepsi Sexton sendiri.
Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan melalui penelitian kepustakaan. Ada dua tipe data yang digunakan. Sumber data utama adalah kesembilan belas puisi karya Sexton yang memiliki tema yang sama, yakni hubungan pria dan wanita didalam pernikahan dan hubungan diluar pernikahan. Sumber data pelengkap adalah beberapa data yang berhubungan dengan topik yang dibahas. Data-data tersebut dibagi menjadi beberapa bagian. Pertama, peneliti menggunakan kritik-pembahasan mengenai Sexton dan karya-karyanya. Peneliti juga menggunakan beberapa sumber data mengenai isu-isu wanita dan pernikahan didalam sejarah negara Amerika Serikat, dan juga data tentang feminisme dan The Feminine Mystique.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
[Poetry] has never been used for the common purpose of life. Prose has taken all the dirty work on to her own shoulders; has answered letters, paid bills, written articles, made speeches, served the needs of businessmen, shopkeepers, lawyers, soldiers, peasants (Virginia Woolf in Olson, 2003: 42). The above quotation illustrates how people consider poetry and prose as having different kinds of function. People often use prose as one of the literary genres to expose such social, economical, political, and cultural problems in society, while poetry is rarely seen as a media to carry such a variety of functions. However, Gill argues that similar to prose, poetry can explore someone’s feelings, and create pictures (either detailed or impressionistic ones) about ideas, feelings, places, people and events (1995: 4).
British women poets in the nineteenth-century, for example, took up various topics in their poems, ranging from factory conditions, industrial labor, slavery, abolitionism, militarism, the rise of nationalism, to marriage and its discontents, motherhood and passion, as well as the ‘fallen’ woman and the prostitute (Armstrong el al, 1998: xxv).
any assumptions or stereotypes they may hold regarding the literary works produced by women. Women’s poems are as important as men’s, even some of those women poets are able to produce valuable literary works that sometimes are regarded as their way to expose their sorrows, as Montefiore puts it:
Poetry is, primarily, the stuff of experience rendered into speech; a woman’s poems are the authentic speech of her life and being. In reading or listening to a woman’s poem, we share the poet’s experience, which is the experience of suffering and resistance common to all women, and we enter into her mind (1994: 3).
For that reason, it is necessary to study poetry written by women poets. Indeed, nowadays issues on female identity has gained currency so it makes some woman poets do their best to explore the nature of female experience through their poetry (Gill, 1995:4).
Sexton makes use of her personal problems with the unusual frankness as her source of writings. She chooses to explore topics which are closely related to women and their problems in the society, namely adult men and women relationship. Many of her poems discuss the suppressed aspects of feminine experience, such as adultery and abortion, and also the normative ones, such as housekeeping and childbirth (Showalter, 1971: 137). In most of her poems, she is able to explore female experiences, which make readers, especially women, “identified strongly with the female aspect of the poems” (Kumin in Sexton, 1999: xix). As for the form of the poems, mostly they are written in narrative free verse poetry. Yet, one particular poem that actually draws my attention is written in the monologue, “The Interrogation of the Man of Many Hearts”, which will be addressed in the analytical part of this thesis.
of marital and extramarital relationship. Basically, this thesis is dealing with Sexton’s own perception on the way men and women see those subjects.
In conducting the research, Feminist approach was employed. There were some reasons why the researcher chose to utilize the feminist approach. First, as stated by Montefiore, poetry written by woman is “a huge resource of both female and feminist meaning” (1994: 3). Accordingly, the readers of that poetry will be able to understand female experiences, woman’s awareness and criticism of those experiences (1994: 3). Given that Sexton’s poems deal with women’s experiences, especially relating to the issue of marital and extramarital relationship in the perspectives of men and women, as well as their awareness of those experiences, Feminist approach may open up to some understanding of women’s poetry. Second, Feminist approach was used to help diminish suspicion because throughout the history, women have suffered, often without hope of improving their situation, and in this poor condition, the feminists have for long struggled for the women’s betterment. Nevertheless, some people suspect that feminists along with their activities will threaten the society. The quotation below shows these phenomena:
Women may be acceptable as equals, but feminists are often seen frightening, threatening, or simply unnecessary. This hostility to feminists and feminism cannot be dismissed simply by avoiding the terms, for these harsh stereotypes can always be used to discredit women activists, whether they call themselves feminists or not (Freedman, 2002:10).
feminists; Marxist feminists; lesbian separatists; women of color; and etc (Mitchell and Oakley, 1986: 9). As such, this study will hopefully promote not only the works of woman poets, but also the concept of feminism itself which has thus far developed through time.
The study, however, does not intend to argue whether Sexton is a feminist or otherwise. Rather, this thesis will examine how Sexton as a woman poet who is aware of the development of women movements in the United States of America presents issues of marital and extramarital relationship through her artistic works.
B. Research Problems
The research questions can be formulated as follows:
1. How are men’s views on marital and extramarital relationship revealed in Anne Sexton’s nineteen selected poems?
2. How are women’s views on marital and extramarital relationship revealed in Anne Sexton’s nineteen selected poems?
3. How are the poems studied contextualized with Sexton’s own socio-cultural condition and perception on marital and extramarital relationship?
C. Objective of the Study
relationship described. Those two objectives can be obtained through the close reading of Sexton’s nineteen selected poems.
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Review of Related Studies
All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build
little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out (McCabe in Her Kind
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z /sexton /herkind.htm>).
In an interview in 1968, Anne Gray Harvey or later known as Anne Sexton, explained
that she really wanted to have a blissful life with her own family. As an American
woman who came from the middle-class society, she tried to live in a conventional
life, which was to be a wife and mother.
Sexton, who was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in November 9, 1928,
started to write poetry as well as to perform in 1945 after her parents sent her to
Rogers Hall, a boarding school in Lowell, Massachusetts. As stated by Martin in
Anne Sexton’s Life, in Rogers Hall, Sexton mastered formal techniques of writing poems which then convinced her that poetry is an essential thing in her life
(http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/ sexton/sexton_life.htm). Sexton tried
to commit suicide for several times. On 29 May 1957, when she once again attempted
to commit suicide, her psychiatrist named Dr. Martine Orne encouraged her to keep
writing poems (Middlebrook, 1992: 42). Therefore, for her, poetry serves as a form of
therapy after being hospitalized for suicidal depression (Matthews, 1987: 214). After
she received encouragement through her poetry writing, her life began to change, as
In April 1960, Anne Sexton for the first time wrote “poet” rather than “housewife” in the “occupation” block of her income tax return (Middlebrook in Matthews, 1987: 214).
This is a momentous event both for Sexton and also for the history of American
literature because, as stated by Middlebrook, there are no other poets before her who
have the courage to write female subjects related to the family life and also problems
in it (Middlebrook in Matthews, 1987: 214). However, her decision to become a poet
was closely related to her poor mental condition.
She entered the peak of her successful career as a confessional poet at the age
of 46 in 1974. Regardless of her successful career in writing, she lost her battle with
mental illness and then committed suicide <http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?
prmID =14>. For this reason, sometimes critics associate her with some of the
confessional poets who committed suicide after suffering the mental illness, such as
her own close friend Plath, and Berryman (Baldick, 1996: 43).
Many people, who knew Sexton, consider her as a clever woman. As
commented by Furst, while taking the photographs, Sexton, cleverly, planned her
own death. She determined who would be her photographer and who would handle
her writing, and then she asked Furst to be her ‘authorized’ photographer. As stated
by him, “It was all part of Anne’s strategy. Like an Egyptian queen she was planning
for afterlife” (2000: viii). However, as stated by George in On Sexton's Career and
An Overview of Sexton's Canon, some others are furious with Sexton for killing herself, because she is a poet who often wrote the enjoyment of being alive
Sexton published some poetry’s books entitled To Bedlam and Part Way Back
(1960); All My Pretty Ones (1962); Live or Die (1966); Love Poems (1969);
Transformations (1971); The Book of Folly (1972) and The Death Notebooks (1974).
She also produced a play entitled 45 Mercy Street (1969). Her early poems deal with
her positive improvement from a mental breakdown, the death of her parents,
mother-daughter relationship, and her constant desire to commit suicide. The second volume,
All My Pretty Ones, continues to deal with several themes found in the first volume, but its main concern is “the loss of the beloved others that gave the speaker her
fragile sense of identity” (George in On Sexton's Careerand An Overview of Sexton's
Canon).
Related to the publication of Sexton’s poetry’s books, some critics also share
their opinion about her life, both as a woman and also as a woman poet. Kumin says,
“The facts of Anne Sexton’s troubled and chaotic life are well known; no other
American poet in our time has cried aloud publicly so many private details” (Kumin
in Sexton, 1999: xix). Her frankness attracts many readers, especially women readers.
Most of her poetry’s readers are able to see the female aspect in her poems. She is
able to explore various themes that obsess her, such as “love, loss, madness, the
nature of the father-daughter compact, and death” (Kumin in Sexton, 1999: xxix). She
produces poems in colloquial style with various kinds of subjects, and it attracts many
people from different backgrounds (http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/
syllabuild/iguide/sexton.html).
Meanwhile some other critics admit that Sexton is a talented writer. Showalter
In explosive, self-lacerating verse, Anne Sexton (b. 1928) lays bare her anxieties, guilt, and suffering with a confessional frankness few women writers have ever been able to afford (1971: 137).
It is clear here that Sexton reproduces her problems into some forms of literary
works. She exposes her own weaknesses, anxieties and problems in her works, which
are known as the confessional mode. Many of her literary works confront the issue of
gender, social role, and female life from her own perspective as a woman poet.
Showalter also adds that many of Sexton’s poems reveal the suppressed aspects of
feminine experience and also all the things that are related to the normative ones
(1971: 137). As commented by Manlapaz, it is not until Sexton deliberately broke the
taboo by writing poems celebrating her body’s experiences that poet discuss the
uncommon issues in their poems. (1997: 9). It means that Sexton consciously and
unconsciously had give assistance to open the sacred door, which is not only for
women poets, but also for female issues. She wrote from an easily identifiable
feminine position concerning subjects considered taboo, before such issues were even
topics for casual discussion. As explained by McCartan in Anne Sexton “She dove
headlong into territory considered taboo in her era: incest, addiction, mental illness,
and abortion, to touch on a few.” (http://empirezine.com/spotlight/ sexton/ sex1.
htm). As a woman, she is also successful in entering the world used to be known as
‘the men’s domination’, namely education. She becomes the first woman who is able
to gain a fellowship at Radcliffe College’s Institute for independent study.
Nonetheless, there are also many poets and critics, mostly male who took
offense. As quoted by Kumin, Louis Simpson in the New York Times Book Review
good writer because she insistently writes about things that he calls as a “pathetic and
disgusting aspects of bodily experience…” (Sexton, 1999: xx). Kumin also quotes the
statement of Robert Lowell who shares the same opinion with Simpson:
For a book or two, she grew more powerful. Then writing was too easy or too hard for her. She became meager and exaggerated. Many of her most embarrassing poems would have been fascinating if someone had put them in quotes, as the presentation of some character, not the author” (Kumin in Sexton, 1999: xx).
He sees Sexton, as a poet who dares to expose taboo’s subjects in her poems, in the
negative sense. It seems that although many people fall in love with her works, it
cannot make her a great poet.
As a confessional poet, there are many controversies related to her works, as
commented by Kumin, that her works “rapidly became a point of contention over
which opposing factions dueled in print, at literary gatherings, and in the fastnesses of
the college classroom” (Kumin in Sexton: 1999: xx). Nevertheless, Kumin believed
that poetry is the only thing that keeps Sexton alive for eighteen years, “the making of
poems remained her one constant” (Kumin in Sexton, 1999: xxiv). Although many
critics criticized her works, she won many awards, such as The American Academy
of Letters Traveling Fellowship in 1963 for her All My Pretty Ones and the Pulitzer
Prize for her Live or Die in 1967.
It cannot be denied that the confessional label had turn out to be a trap that
prevents readers and critics from interpreting the range of her achievement. Yet it
cannot stop her from writing poems that are able to reach beyond the personal
boundaries which is ostensibly formed the confessional territory. The academic
judgment. In the early days, feminism's appropriation of Sexton creates another
problem, because it only discusses her poetry on the surface and it constitutes another
form of limitation. One thing that keeps her works visible is the Anthologies of
women’s poetry: yet, the selections are limited to a few poems that celebrated
feminist subjects or reflected feminist concerns. George in On Sexton's Career and
An Overview of Sexton's Canon explained that recent feminist approach has created a great effect in the effort to clarify the range of her themes, the subject of her poetics,
and the radical nature of her vision (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/
s_z/sexton/career.htm).
Based on these criticisms reviewed above, it can be concluded that they
mostly discuss her life or more general topics and ideas relating her works to the
feminine experience. It is quite difficult to find critics who specifically analyze her
poems with regard to an adult men and women relationship which covers
perspectives from both sexes. However, one critic deserves some mention is
Matthews, but she only focuses her discussion on one of Sexton works, entitled
“Housewife” (Matthews, 1987:214-215).
This thesis is different in that it examines adult men and women relationship
in terms of marital and extramarital relationship through Sexton’s poems. Moreover,
this thesis will show some similarities and also differences of how both sexes see
those two kinds of relationships based on Sexton’s poems. Therefore, the nineteen
poems of Sexton selected here are worth further analysis. This thesis also intends to
women and how such relationship can be contextualized to the emerging of women’s
movement.
B. Theoretical Review
This section will discuss relevant theories applied in the study. The first is
Women and Marriage in Sexton’s America and the second is Reframing Feminism:
Feminine Consciousness in Poetry.
B. 1. Women and Marriage in Sexton’s America
Marriage in America where Sexton was born, commonly, is seen as an
institution. As commented by Kenschaft there are two important meaning when
people starts to see marriage as an institution. First, marriage is a social structure,
which leads to the opinion that laws, customs, traditions and cultural assumptions are
intrinsically involved in defining what is and is not a marriage. Those aspects make
the married couples must always come to terms in some way with the societal
expectations of marriage. Second, marriage has a history and a trajectory. It means
that marriage is a cultural creation, and like all cultural creations it has changed
through time in response to changing material and ideological conditions that emerge
in a certain society (The Making of Modern American Marriage: 1998).
Similar to Kenschaft, Humm defines marriage as “the institution traditionally
provides women with a social identity” (1990: 127). She also explicates three aspects
of marriage. First, it is the site where categories of gender are reproduced. Second, it
model for other social institutions of a sexual norm. She also reveals that sociologists
and historians suggest marriage as “a simple social contract” which is closely related
with the reproduction of children (1990: 128).
Kenschaft explains that through the middle of the eighteen century, the
expectations of American marriages seem to have been primarily practical,
“Courtships were often quite short, lasting only a few weeks or months, and a
courting couple would spend most or all of their time in a larger group. Such
courtships gave the couple little opportunity to get to know each other as individuals”
(Kenschaft: 1998). It means that knowing each other as individuals was not
considered as an important matter. Then, she sees the changing idea of material and
ideological basis of marriage in the United States around the end of the eighteenth
century. People at that time started to change their way of thinking when the issues of
land’s ownership and the beginning of urbanization emerge, at this point, to have
children is regarded as less important. By the turn of the nineteenth century many
married couples had chose to control their fertility, rather than simply accepting the
natural reproductive cycles that typically produced a child every two years or so.
When couples decide to get married, it means that they have to be a good
partner for each other:
Women and men will have to work together. They will want to together, to cooperate, and by doing so; they can free each other from the shackles that bound them for so long. By working together in harmony, men and women will coffer the greatest benefits upon each other and upon the whole of humanity (Montaqu, 1953:153).
The cooperation between women and men will create a lot of advantages for both of
cooperative. It means both husband and wife have to work together to accomplish
harmony, health, wealth, welfare, and happiness in their life (1953: 161). They also
have to build good relationship thus they can create a good condition for their
children’s character development (1953: 162). Moreover she states:
Above all, marriage must be based on mutual respect; and in the present state of the relations of the sexes I should add that on the man’s part it should be accompanied by sense of responsibility and obligation to the woman of his choice. (1953: 162)
Therefore, the main thing is respecting each other, which means that both of them
have to think they are equal. This concept of equality is called as ‘democracy’, where
“Men and Women must become partners in the greatest of democratic enterprises—
the making of a democratic world can only be made by persons who are themselves
truly democratic” (1953: 164).
In Women: A Feminist Perspective, Jo Freeman explains that God as the world's creator creates women and men with a certain “inalienable rights". Thus, both
sexes can have and pursue a happy life because they are created as equal beings
(1975: 439). Besides, in the relationship between man and woman in a marriage,
there must be a mutual relationship, in other words, both of them have an equal
position. Wife does not serve as the servant of her husband, both of them must be
complementary to each other (Dufoyer, 1964:48).
Unfortunately, women and men rarely gain equality in their relationship. In
marriage, sometimes women have to lose their freedom; even some women believe
that marriage can be seen as an institution that robbed their rights. Some people
from their opposite sex and it is the fundamental reason why the society placed them
in different sphere to men. It is even worse that some people also believe that women
are supposed to be very emotional, deserving for household works (Rowbotham,
1992: 16).
The society expects women to get married and to be good mothers for their
children; it means that women have to stay at home while men act as the
breadwinners. The traditional view of women’s role and place was adopted not only
by men but also most women, and in fact, by the mid-twentieth century many women
had begun to call themselves as “just a housewife” (Matthews, 1987: xiii). Although
then the number of women who entered the working force increased after 1945,
however most working women still considered themselves primarily wives, mothers,
and housekeepers. Even when women had more opportunities to pursue education
and careers during the 1960s, some of them still believed that marriage is the
important thing for them and their future identity is “ largely encompassed by the
projected role of wife and mother” (Ward and Green, 1993: 89).
In the history of American, under the English and American common law, a
married couple's presumed union of economic interests was embodied in the legal
principle of coverture. It declared that a married woman's economic and legal rights
were indistinguishable from her husband's. However, by the middle of the nineteenth
century, the social consequence of the shift to a market economy, with its sharp
division between work and not-work, was making many people questioned the
importance of having this principle. The married women's property acts
that was separate from their husbands. It was not until the 1970s, however, that
married women gained equal access to such capitalistic necessities as credit
(Kenschaft: 1998).
However, as stated by Carlson in Marriage On Trial: Some Lessons From
History, although some women sees marriage as their primarily plan, according to the survey on married life, since the 1960s some of the American couples who are able to
marry are in increasing numbers choosing not to do so. In general, the U.S. marriage
rate has fallen nearly 50 percent. Meanwhile, what the Census Bureau calls as the
"unmarried partner households" has climbed in number from 523,000 couples in 1970
to 4,900,000 in 2000. At the same time, the number of married couple families with
children actually declined slightly in absolute numbers, from 25.7 million back in
1960 to 25.2 million in 2000 (http://www.defendmarriage.org/allan.asp).
In terms of marriage age, by the end of the 1950s, the average marriage age of
women had dropped into 20 years old, and it was still dropping into the level of
younger women. Fourteen million girls were engaged by the age of seventeen. When
the discussion on the marriage age is linked to the discussion of education, by the end
of mid-fifties, 60 percent of women had dropped out of college to marry, or because
they were afraid too much education would create a marriage bar. Some of college
even built dormitories for so called “married students”, but the students were almost
always the husbands, while the wives – as stated by an American feminist Betty
Friedan – had got a new title as “Ph.T” as the acronym of Putting Husband Through
When discussion of divorce based on race appears, only 14 percent of white
women who married in the early 1940s eventually divorced, whereas almost half of
white women who married in the late 1960s and early 1970s have already been
divorced. For African-American women, the figures are 18 percent and nearly 60
percent (http:members.iquest.net/~dkoons/marriage.html).Young people, especially
young women, were more pessimistic about their chances to have a happy and
long-lasting marriage. Many of them even did not hesitate to take a divorce as a way out
when they were not succeed in their marriage lives. For children whose parents
divorced, the risk of divorce was two to three times greater than it was for children
from married parent families (http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/pubwhats
happening.htm).
Thus, according to projections based on the divorce rates above, marriage at
the time when Sexton lived is more likely to be broken by divorce or permanent
separation than by death. It is also the case of Sexton own marriage. She chooses to
divorce Kayo at the end of 1971 than trying to maintain her marriage in a good shape
for their two daughters -Linda and Joy.
B. 2. Feminism and The Feminine Mystique
Given the unbalanced position of husbands and wives in marriage as
explained above, America in Sexton’s time called for women’s struggle for equality.
Indeed, for more than a century women have tried to achieve full citizenship, the right
to take part in the political and social life and to stand on equal human dignity with
sometimes the society where they live cannot accept their existence; status and
position in the society. The society seems to accept this poor condition as a kind of
culture that cannot be changed because it exists since a long time ago and most of people already admit it as a true thing.
The feminist movement arouse to construct betterment for women, and slowly
but sure, the feminist movement forms the public opinion about women and able to
make people share their opinion about the existence, status and position of women.
For women themselves, feminist movement is like a little window of opportunity, and
with a bit of luck can lend a hand to them to get the betterment. As one of the
women’s movement, the feminist movement has come far enough for them to look
back and see where they started, and how they reached their present status. The
familiar term to call the way of thinking and acting of the feminist is feminism.
Encyclopedia of Knowledge stated that:
Generally, feminism means the advocacy of women's rights to full citizenship — that is, political, economic, and social equality with men. Feminism encompasses some widely differing views, however, including those which advocacy female separatism (1993: 235).
Therefore, it is clear that feminism supports the idea of giving women right to get the
same position as men in every sector of life that can give a strong influence to their
life as a person who lives in a society.
Margaret L. Andersen adds:
The quotation above is clearly stated that the feminists are fighting to make a social
change for women and they do not want women to be exactly like men, they only
believe that women are as precious as men, thus the society have to treat them
equally.
In the development of Feminism in America, there was a popular name that
was known as the founding mother of the Second Wave Feminism, i.e Betty Friedan.
In her Feminine Mystique, first published in 1963, she argued that millions of
American housewives found the destiny of mother and housewife which society
mapped out for them was too repressive and even dehumanizing:
… women were defined only in sexual relation to men – man’s wife, sex object, mother, housewife – and never as persons defining themselves by their own actions in society (Friedan, 1997:ix).
According to Friedan, women are increasingly taught to believe that their existence
and happiness is only limited to the roles of spouse, mother, and housewife, in the
other words, they are overly focused on their biological role.
Friedan realizes that many American women have to deal with various
problems which make them feel dissatisfied and unhappy with their own lives. Then
she defines it as ‘‘the problem that has no name’’ because many women noticed that
they have problems, but it is hard for them to define those problems clearly:
Friedan believes that the women who have to suffer from those problems “have a
hunger that food cannot fill” (Friedan, 1997:26) and many American women need
something more than their husband, children and their home.
Through her research, she blames the idealized image of femininity that she
calls the feminine mystique. Women, she argues, have been encouraged to place
themselves to the narrow roles of housewife and mother, neglecting education and
career aspirations in the process:
It is no longer possible today to blame the problem on loss of femininity: to say that education and independence and equality with men have made American women unfeminine (Friedan, 1997:26-27).
The feminine mystique denies women the opportunity to develop their own identities,
which can ultimately lead to problems for women and their families.
Friedan is also able to see that women have few opportunities for pleasure,
intellect, or self-expression and when women’s roles became increasingly limited
outside the home, their interest in sex began to increase. In this case, women seek
fulfillment from sex to compensate for their empty lives. Thus, sex for women
becomes a symptom of psychological hunger rather than attraction and pleasure.
However, they still failed to fulfill their needs:
These women and others like them, the suburban sex-seekers, lived literally within the narrow boundaries of the feminine mystique. They were intelligent, but strangely “incomplete.” They had given up attempts to make housework or community work expands to fill the time available; they turned instead to sex. But still they were unfulfilled. Their husbands did not satisfy them, they said; extramarital affairs were no better (Friedan, 1997:260).
To deal with the emptiness in the women’s hearts, Friedan suggests every woman to
the answer to her own problem in life:
Once she begins to see through the delusions of the feminine mystique – and realizes that neither her husband nor her children, nor the things in her house, nor sex, nor being like all the other women, can give her a self – she often finds the solution much easier than she anticipated (Friedan, 1997:338-339).
In her opinion, women have to take a new life plan, which has two steps. First, they
have to see housework for what it is – not as a career, but as “something that must be
done as quickly and efficiently as possible.” (Friedan, 1997:342). Second, they have
to see marriage as it really is; “brushing aside the veil of over-glorification imposed
by the feminine mystique.” (Friedan, 1997:342). The more women are encouraged to
make a new life plan, the less conflict they will face as wives and mothers, and the
less their daughters will make mistakes choices for lack of a full image of woman’s
identity. For that reason, Friedan sees the roles of educators as an important part
because those educators have to refuse the feminine mystique and to see that it is
insignificant to give courses on marriage and the family to women.
Friedan noticed the emptiness in the hearts of American suburban women and
the way they run away from the reality. Similar to those women that Friedan
discussed in her The Feminine Mysique, Sexton’s nineteen selected poems studied
also touch on the issue of women, especially the problems that American suburban
women in 1940s-1970s have to face related to the marital and extramarital
C. Theoretical Framework
The major concern of this thesis is to analyze Sexton’s nineteen selected
poems that touch on the issue of marital and extramarital relationship. This thesis
tries to reveal Sexton’s perception on abuse of power by men toward women in terms
of marital and extramarital relationship through her poems under study.
In so doing two fundamental examinations are attempted: first, the study on
women and marriage in American history, and second the particular concept of
feminism such as that explained by Betty Friedan in her The Feminine Mystique.
However, not all facets of American history on women and marriage will be used.
The study on women and marriage in Sexton’s own time will dominate the analysis,
it means that the discussion will limit itself to that of the history on women and
marriage in the 1940s up to 1970s.The reading of the selected poems will then be
contextualized against these backdrops.
D. Object of the Study
The researcher will use nineteen selected poems written by American women
poet named Anne Sexton. In general, Sexton’s nineteen poems that are used as the
object of study discuss the relationship between adult men and women in terms of
marital and extramarital relationship. From those poems, the researcher will be able
to find a clear pattern of how both sexes see their opposite sex related to the
discussion of marital and extramarital relationship.
In this research, Sexton’s own book entitled The Complete Poems: Anne
volume in 1999. It contains all the poetry in the eight books that Sexton sent to press
during her lifetime, as well as the poems from the two collections prepared for
publication after her death. The arrangement of the books’ compilation are based on
the chronological order, meaning that it is based on the first date of the publication,
and there are also a few poems written in the last year of her life that have not been
published before.
E. Approach of the Study
In conducting the analysis, this research employs the feminist approach.
According to Guerin, et al, “feminist literary critics try to explain how power
imbalances due to gender in a given culture are reflected in or challenged by literary
texts” (1999: 196). It means that feminist approach examines a literary work by
explaining how the author reflects the injustices experienced by people, especially
women which are caused by the gender stereotyping of the society through his/her
work. The feminist literary criticism is interested in analyzing the literary topics
such as language/discourse; textuality; and authors and attends to show how the
social ideologies and practices shape the literary text (Humm, 1994: viii). Often, it is
used as a political attack upon other forms of criticism and theory, and in its diversity
the focus is the marginalization of all women as a secondary class in the society
(Guerin, 1999:196).
Most of the feminist literary critics study sexual, social, and political issues
once thought to be "outside" the study of literature. They agree that their goal are to
and reevaluation women's literature, and to examine social, cultural, and
psychosexual contexts of literature and literary criticism (Guerin, 1999:197).
Principally, they concerned with the ways in which literary texts have the power to
create gender representations in opposition with women’s experiences (Humm, 1994:
ix).
Feminist approach is employed in this research since it covers some aspects
which are relevant to answer the problems formulated in the first chapter. The
research attempts to explore Sexton’s poems through the feminist perspectives, thus
the research can reveal the feminist’s values that the poet conveys through her works.
Therefore, before conducting the research, it is necessary to understand the theories
of feminism which can be applied in analyzing those works, because this research
would like to assist the readers in getting a deeper understanding of the poems
through the feminist point of view. In addition, the main purpose of this research is to
examine the different perspectives of men and women in viewing how power often
abused in terms of marital and extramarital relationship.
F. Method of the Study
The major concern of this thesis is to analyze Anne Sexton’s nineteen selected
poems about marital and extramarital relationship. Prior to the research, the
researcher had managed to interpret all poems written by Sexton as to be able to
choose which poems can be categorized as having marital and extramarital themes.
Several steps were taken as follows. First, the researcher interpreted the literal
relationship in terms of marital and extramarital relationship. Third, she made some
speculations on which poems can be categorized as the one discussing the given
topic. Final step was differentiating those poems into two groups. The first group
presents poems which discuss the issue of marital relationship and the second group
contains poems which discuss the extramarital relationship.
Since there was a high possibility that other researchers had the same topic as
that of this thesis, a certain research procedure is involved here, i.e. the library
research procedure. It means that in the process of completing this thesis, the
researcher had to gather all information and data from various sources, such as from
printed articles/books and internet sources. There were two types of data used,
namely primary and secondary data.
The primary data were Sexton’s nineteen poems that have similar theme,
which is adult men and women relationship in terms of marital and extramarital
relationship.Those poems can be seen as essential as to provide knowledge on how
Sexton as a woman poet develops her idea related to the issue of marital and
extramarital relationship.
Secondary data were those related to the research problems, and they were
divided into several parts. To begin with, the researcher used some books and
criticisms for supporting data on the authors’ profiles and the poems that she
produced. It was also necessary to provide the study with some discussion on
marriage. The second part of the data comprise of information and knowledge of
Sexton’s own perception on marital and extramarital relationship can be
CHAPTER III
MARITAL AND EXTRAMARITAL RELATIONSHIP
IN THE EYES OF MEN
AS SEEN IN SEXTON’S SELECTED POEMS
This chapter attempts to answer the first research question. It is to find out
the way men see the issue of marital and extramarital relationship through Anne
Sexton’s nineteen poems. The discussion will be roughly divided into two
subchapters. The first will show how Sexton’s nineteen selected poems studied
portraying men’s perspectives in seeing marital relationship and extramarital
relationship.
Almost all of the speakers in the poems studied are women, but the voices
of men can still be detected. Men’s voice regarding with issue on marriage are
heard in “The Farmer’s Wife”; “The Expatriates”; “That Day”; “Housewife”;
“The Wifebeater”, and “The Wedlock”. Thus, based on the selected poems
studied, the idea of how men and women see their relationship can be seen from
two different points of view. While the issue of extramarital relationship from
men’s point of view can be elaborated clearly through the deep analysis of “The
Interrogation of the Man of many Hearts”. Basically, this section is about
Sexton’s own perception on the way men see marital and extramarital relationship
A. Abuse of Power in the Marital Relationship from Men’s Perspective as Seen in Sexton’s Selected Poems
In Sexton nineteen selected poems studied, the discussion on marital
relationship in the perspectives of men cannot be separated from the influence of
time. Time can give a lot of effect to the quality of feeling between husband and
wife. When time starts to give an effect, men’s infatuation toward their partners
tend to decrees. Then when times fade away, men do not hesitate to use violence
to show their power and their marriage leads to violence.
Fading Infatuation. Through Sexton’s selected poems, it clearly shown
that times contribute massive influence to the quality of feelings between men and
women that are united under the umbrella of marital relationship. At first, men
seek affection from their women. Then when time goes by, their passion toward
their spouse starts to decrease.
The city image that appears in this poem is –Illinois– (the 3rd line). Here
Illinois refers to an actual “urban state of the north central region of the United
State” (Grollier. Vol 10, 37: MCMXCV). The speaker of the poem, who is in the
position as the spectator of all things happening to the farmer and his wife,
describes this place exactly the same as the real description of Illinois. As a
leading urban state, Illinois described by the speaker as a –hodge porridge– (1st
line)– which suggests that this city is a heterogeneous place that offers its citizen
with various kind of things, from good things to the bad one. The bad things
shown clearly by mentioning the –country lust– (2nd lines) it means that often the citizens involve some strong sexual desire in their activities. When seeing the title
of the poem, it is clear that agriculture can be found in this state, because this
Illinois is a state –where all their acres look like a sprouting broom factory, – (line 4-5). By illustrating the place where the farmer and his wife lives through
simile –look like a sprouting broom factory, – in this case, “Illinois” is associated with a fast growing state that starts to change from one sector of economic life to
the other, which is from agricultural to the manufacture sector. Thus, the speaker
uses the image of Illinois to describe the fast change in her life and she cannot run
away from it.
The fast change of Illinois can be related to the unpredictable change of
feeling of the farmer. It is clearly shown in the poem that there is a declining of
feelings, and it is noticeable from the way a man found in “The Farmer’s Wife”
sees his wife as – … his habit; – (line 7). In this poem, the couple had married for
ten years – they named just ten years now – (line 6), and when this man sees his
wife as ‘his habit’, it also indicates that he does not take his wife seriously.
Although he loves his wife, the way he reacts and treats her is only a mechanical
thing, which does not involve any feelings in every kind of his actions, in other
words, he does everything without compassion.
The farmer and his wife still does physical and sexual activity, and it is the
man who seems to be the one who is eager to invite her to have intercourse,
saying – honey bunch let’s go – (line 9). He does the sexual activity, for example, only as a part of his routine because of the fact that his wife sees it only as a – … old pantomime of love – (line 16), which means that as a husband he does it heartlessly. The way he treats her shows that after the passing of time, his passion
toward his wife starting to decrease. Having lived together for ten years, his heart
begins to change its form into the routine activity that he should and even must do
because of his roles as a husband, and even worst, he no longer shares similar
ambitions with his wife, – … They finally lie// each in separate dreams” – (line
23- 24). They start to walk different roads.
The declining of feeling toward his spouse also happens to the man in
“The Expatriate”. At first, the speaker of the poem mentions about two different
areas; they are New England and Norway. However, one will be able to conclude
when the speaker chooses to use the diction “false” like –in the false New England
forest– (line 6th), the word “false” is used in this line implies that the story is not taken place in the real New England, and of course, then, New England is not the
main thing that the speaker wants to converse about. When the speaker mentions –
the misplanted Norwegian trees–(line 7th), it is clear that the main concern is to describe and referring to something that happening not in a right place and right
situation. Thus, in this context, the speaker uses those areas as a kind of warning
that a bad thing is about to happen.
The man found in this poem got married for forty years, – For forty years
this experimental// woodland grew… – (line 12- 13). The way he treats his wife is not different to the man found in the previous poem. He used to love his wife with
all his heart and do things based on love, but today the one who still has this
feeling is only his wife. She dreams about her husband being able to please her as
he used to be, – And now I must dream the forest whole// and your sweet hands,
not once as frozen// as those stopped trees… – (line 24- 26). The way this woman describes how ‘frozen’ her husband’s ‘sweet hands’ (line 25) are, indicates that
Once again in poem entitled “That Day”, time does not improve the
quality of love in the marriage life. In the past, the couple found in this poem used
to be lovers, and they enjoy very much where their love direct their lives, – both
of us coiled in its slippery life.– (line 8). Based on the statement stated by his wife, as lover, they do many activities together just like commonly people do when they
are falling in love – That was the day I followed the king’s rules,// passing by your red veins and your blue veins, – (line 14-15), and without doubt, they show their feeling toward each other to the people around them, it is easy for those people to
see how much they love each other– For a miracle one stands in line and throws
confetti.// Surely The Press is here looking for headlines.// Surely someone should carry a banner on the sidewalk.– (line 23-25). However, that is the thing that
happens in the past. They used to bask in the power of love – Yesterday was the
day I bore gift for your gift// and came from the valley to meet you on the pavement.– (line 29-30). When they are drunk in the power of love, it seems like living in a fantasy where everything is colorful and full of joy. The man’s wife is
the one who describes this state, saying in her daydreaming: – while my fingers
drew little o’s on your shut eyes,// while my fingers drew little smiles on your mouth,// while I drew I LOVE YOU on your chest and its drummer// and whispered, “Wake up!” and you mumbled in your sleep,// “Sh. We’re driving to Cape Cod. We’re heading for the Bourne// Bridge. We’re circling around the Bourne Circe.” Bourne!– (line 35-40). This woman is fully aware of her own position and realizes where her love life is directing to. Today she is alone,
without her loved one by her side, and their love life is only a story to tell –
me// and love is where yesterday is at – (line 45-47) because time can change their love direction. This poem shows that, as a husband, this man is not aware of the
fact that the feeling between two lovers need to be well maintained because there
is a chance that their passion toward each other can be decreased through time.
When lovers start to lose their passion toward each other, the way they
react sometimes tends to be mechanical; even worse, the tendency of doing
violence to their spouse begins to escalate. It happens because when lovers are in
the stagnant state of feeling, it seems that they do not have to tolerate whether
their action will hurt their spouse or otherwise.
Violence. Based on the reading of Sexton’s nineteen selected poems, it
seems that man cannot be separated from violence. Similar to the discussion on
the fading infatuation of one toward his/her spouse, time shows its power in
effecting marriage couple’s lives. The married men show their power over their
wife by means of violence. They abuse their wives and treat them heartlessly.
Idea of violence is shown in “Housewife” as the man sees his wife only as
an object that he can treat as he likes, even he (similar to the things that his own
sex does) is able to use his power, – Men enter by force… – (line 7). The word
‘Men’ indicates the man in the “Housewife” is not the only one who does the bad
things since there are a lot of men who, likewise, show violent behavior to their
own wives. However, although those men dare to treat their wives in the wrong
manner, they cannot run away from the fact that they actually born from women,
which are their own mother: –Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah// into
side. There is magical force that pulls them back to their opposite sex just like the
way God’s power drags prophet Jonah from making a mistake by discarding
God’s Will to preach in Nineveh:
Jonah sought to evade God’s command to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, to preach repentance… Thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish, Jonah was vomited up on shore after 3 days and nights. He then
obeyed God’s command and preached in Nineveh. (Grolier Encyclopedia
of Knowledge. Vol 10: 385).
The word ‘fleshy mothers’ in line 8 of the “Housewife” shows that
although men (as husband) are capable of treating their wives badly, they cannot
avoid the fact that God created them from the flesh of women, in this case are
their own mother who used to struggle between life and death to fight for their
sons’ life. Every woman is the ‘mirror’ of the men’s mother, and it is the fact that
cannot be questioned.
Similar to the man found in the previous poem, the man in “The
Wifebeater” shows his power and dominance over his wife. The speaker of the
poem stated: – The wifebeater is out,// the childbeater is out// eating soil and
drinking bullets from a cup – (line 3-5). It shows that the one who will abuse, both the wife and also her child, is a man that the ‘victims’ call as a husband and also a
father. However, unlike the previous poem, this poem tries to give the reader a
story behind the man’s bad manner. From the man’s wife the speaker who stands
as the poem’s speaker, the reader will notice that all of the characters found in this
poem are hurt; the husband, the wife and also their daughter are only a victim of
this man’s bad experience – and we three will color the stars black// in memory of
victim. His mother used to abuse him badly. His bad memory in his childhood
forms him into becoming an abuser. Here, the way he sees all women is similar to
the way he sees her mother. He believes that women are enemies who will stab
him from behind – and made women through all these hazy years// the enemy
with a hearth of lies. – (line 25-26).
Meanwhile, in “The Wedlock”, the speaker of the poem calls her loved
one as Mr. Firecracker or Mr. Panzer-man (line 4-5).The use of the word ‘Mr.
Firecracker’ indicates this man’s identity. At least for his own wife, this man is a
man full of surprise and an emotional kind of person because he easily become
mad just like the way fire crack when someone burn it down. The word ‘Mr.
Panzer-man’ can be used as a clue that actually he is also a man that is close to
violence because the word ‘panzer’ itself is closely related to the military
equipment uses by the armed forces in war. At first, he seems to be an easy going
kind of person – You with your pogo stick,// you with your bag full of jokes. – (line
6-7). However, there is something strange from this man– At the corner of your
eyes, little incisions,// smile wrinkles that tell and tell – (line 8-10). Upon marrying the one that he loves, this man has started to react strangely; He seems
to refuse her and there is no compassion in the way he treats her – Suppertime I
float toward you// from the stewpot// holding poems you shrug off// and you kiss me like mosquito.// No zing and zap// or ounce of gentleness – (line13- 18). He kisses her without any passion. The way he kisses her looks like routinity and
there is no feeling of love in it. Even worse, now he often abuses her when he is
not in a good mood – and when anger comes// like a finger in a light socket,// you
(line 19-23). The way he treats her also proves that the words ‘Mr. Firecracker
and Mr. Panzer-man’ that she mentions earlier means that he is a bad tempered
man who likes to use violence when he is mad. After the time goes by, his love
starts to shrink off and he seems to see his wife is not more than his tool to
express his madness – More often now I am your punching bag. – (line 24).
In sum, based on Sexton’s nineteen selected poems studied, when love
comes and touches human’s souls, it can make life seems to be colorful. However,
human’s feeling is an unpredictable thing that should always be well maintained
because there is an important aspect that can make a great change. It is time that
contributes massive influence to the quality of feelings between men and women.
When married men fail to maintain their feeling toward their spouse, and start to
lose their passion, they tend to react mechanically. It would not be good for both
sides when they are in the stagnant state of feeling because the possibility of doing
violence to their spouse will be increasing, which obviously will affect their
marriage lives.
B. Abuse of Power in the Extramarital Relationship in Men’s Perspectives as Seen in Sexton’s Selected Poems
Most people will avoid troubles and they will make some kind of
self-introspection and reflection for what he or she has done in the past. By having a
self-introspection, it is hoped that people will find a way out and feel secure in his
or her own shoes. Self- introspection guides some men to choose to marry his
lover, while the other has courage to do the hardest way. The men who do not
dare to do, and for that reason they choose to have extramarital relationship
although this kind of relationship is risky and full of tension.
In this section, “The Interrogation of the Man of many Hearts” is the only
poem that is not written in narrative free verse poetry. This poem is a form of
monologue discussing extramarital relationship in the perspective of a married
man. Although it is the only poem, it consists of all the essence of men’s view
regarding extramarital relationship. This single poem is rich in information related
to the possible reasons for man in not choosing marriage as a way to legalize his
relationship with his loved one. He also sees time as an important aspect in the
lover’s life. When someone falls in love only time that has the power to show
people the truth about love – and every bed has been condemned,// not by
morality or law,// but by time. – (line 108-110).
The speaker of “The Interrogation of the Man of many Hearts” is one
example of a man who is able to justify why he has many lovers and also how
(and why) he treats them unfairly for the sake of his peace of mind. He tries to
communicate with his deepest heart; he wants to rationalize all the actions that he
has done. The conversation between the speaker and his inner self starts when his
inner self asks the speaker about is the woman who has a close relationship with
him - Who’s she,// that one in your arms? – (line 1-2). This unfaithful man tells
his inner heart that his partner plays important roles in his life because of the fact
that – She is the one I carried my bones to – (line 3). He sees her as a person that
he should marry with – and built a house that was just a cot – (line 4). However,
he has his own way of thinking that can make men rethink about their decision in
C. Two Sides of a Coin: Marital or Extramarital Relationship?
In this section, the researcher will use the speaker of “The Interrogation of
the Man of many Hearts” as the example of man’s point of view related to marital
and extramarital relationship. This speaker elaborates his opinion why men should
rethink of their decision to marry their lovers.
C.1 Marriage as a Nightmare
The speaker of “The Interrogation of the Man of many Hearts” elaborates
his opinion why men should re-think of their decision to marry their lovers. He
has two reasons and those reasons are based on his own experience:
The first reason, is that as a man, he has to choose the hardest way to keep
his dignity and to avoid broken hearted, which also means that he acts to be tough.
He is fully conscious that he cannot promise a prosperous kind of life to his lover
once he decides to marry her – a house that was just a cot – (line 4). If he cannot give any good life to his future wife, it means he fails to do his duty as a man, and
obviously this fact will hurt his dignity as a man. When the idea of marrying his
lover appears,He thinks that their life together is not forever – a life that was over an hour – (line 5), and as a result it will broke his heart.
Second, there is an unwritten scenario that a man should marry his woman.
The word ‘ceremony’ in – and built, in the end, a song// to go with the ceremony
– (line 7-8) indicates that it is the society where he lived and all the social value
that exist in his society forces him to take the decision to marry her. According to
the social value, a man must choose to end his relationship with his lover by
taking her as his wife – … in the end, a song// to go with the ceremony – (line
marrying his lover because there is a certain value in the society that create
boundaries in the relationship between man and woman – and, you see, we live in
a cold climate// and are not permitted to kiss on the street// so I made up a song that wasn’t true.// I made up a song called Marriage. – (line 16-19). So when he finally married his wife, it is not based on his free will, in the other word it can be
called as marriage by force.
C.2 Temporary Adultery
He feels overdose of passion in his heart, especially when he meets this
attractive woman, which leads him to commit adultery. When he says – Never.
Never. Not my real wife. – (line 23), it indicates he is an unfaithful man who cheats on his wife. He is having a conversation with his inner heart about the other
woman that he adores very much, who gives him happiness and also sadness at
the same time– She’s my real witch, my fork, my mare,// my mother of tears, my
skirtful of hell,// the stamp of mysorrows, the stamps of my bruises. – (line 24-26). As an unfaithful man, he is aware that he cannot have his secret lover
forever, and he cannot tie her up in a steady relationship called ’marriage’ because
people in his society believes in monogamy – You see the song is the life,// the life I can’t live. God, even when he passes, hands down monogamy like slang – (line 96-99). It means that even if he fights with all of his strength he still cannot have
her as one of his legal wife – I wanted to write her into law.// But, you know, there is no law for this. – (line 100-101). Thus, it proves that having a mistress is only a short-term solution.
When someone believes in a certain value, he or she will try to justify it,
