Analysis of Social Conflicts in Kathryn Harrison's 'The Binding Chair'.

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PREFACE

This thesis is submitted to the English Department of the Faculty of Letters, Maranatha Christian University, as a partial fulfilment of the requirements for the ‘Sarjana’ degree.

In this thesis, I try to put into practice the knowledge I have acquired during my studies at the English Department. I propose to analyse the conflicts in Kathryn Harrison’s The Binding Chair.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Jesus Christ for all His blessings and love that enable me to write and finish my thesis. I am also sincerely grateful to my supervisors for their invaluable guidance, advice, and patience during the whole process of writing this thesis. Last but not least, I would like to dedicate my thankfulness to my dearest parents and all my friends for all their support, help, and encouragement in the accomplishment of this thesis.

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Penulis menemukan bahwa kebanyakan konflik yang terdapat dalam novel ini adalah konflik sosial. Konflik sosial adalah konflik yang terjadi antara seseorang dengan orang lain. Dalam novel ini, sebagai protagonis May mengalami konflik dengan orang-orang. Konflik sosial tersebut terjadi karena May ingin lari dari kenyataan hidupnya. May merasa bahwa masa lalunya membayangi setiap tindakan yang dilakukannya. May tidak bisa melepaskan bayang-bayang masa lalunya hingga ia meninggal.

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APPENDICES

SYPNOSIS OF THE BINDING CHAIR

Chao-tsing (May’s real name) is five years old when her grandmother binds her feet and tells her not to cry out whatever happen. When May is fourteen she marries a silk merchant. She is the fourth wife and her husband has a sexual disorder. May feels that noone of her family support her wish. One day she run away to Shanghai, makes a funeral for herself, changs her name and works as a prostitute.

May hates all Chinese man because she has a trauma with her former husband. May thinks that all of Chinese men are same as her former husband. She wants to run away from her fate and buries all her past memories behind but she can not do it as easy as she wants. Considering that May makes herself difficult to be understood by other people who love and care to her. May does not want everyone in her new family know about her past life, moreover sometimes it cause a social conflict because of May’s inner conflict.

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Maranatha Christian University 20

BIOGRAPHY OF KATHRYN HARRISON

Kathryn Harrison was born in Los Angeles, California in 1961. Her parents were only eighteen when she was born and they lived with her maternal grandparents who ended up raising her. In her memoir, it is stated that Harrison’s childhood relation with her mother was dysfunctional and she only saw her father twice in twenty years. Then, when she did meet her father, she was manipulated into an incestuous affair that lasted four years. She also suffered from eating disorders for years.

Harrison graduated from the Iowa writers’ Workshop in 1987, and then she moved to Brooklyn, New York, with Collin Harrison, whom she married in 1988. Her grandmother moved east and lived with them until her death, two months before her 92nd birthday. She saw her first great-grandchild, Sarah, who was born in 1990. The Harrisons also had a son named Walker, who was born in 1992 and a younger daughter Julia, born in 2000.

Harrison is a frequent reviewer for the New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The new

Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Vogue, O Magazine, Salon, and other publications.

Harrison is the author of the novels Thicker Than water, Exposure, and

Poison. She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Collin Harrison,

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

I have decided to analyse novel rather than any other literary genres because although it is usually longer, it is easier to read since it gives more detailed and complete information.

According to Shaw, novel is “a lengthy fictitious prose narrative

portraying characters and presenting an organized series of events and setting”.

(Shaw, 1972:257) Moreover, he states “novel has no actual maximum length. Every novel is an account of life; every novel involves conflict, character, action,

setting, plot and theme”. (Shaw, 1972:257)

I have decided to analyse Kathryn Harrison’s novel The Binding Chair because I feel that this literary work is interesting; it tells a lot about Chinese women and Chinese tradition written by an American writer. Few western writers write novels about Chinese women and Chinese tradition. It is obvious that Harrison has a lot of knowledge about Chinese society and culture. The details she presents are convincing.

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forces upon which the action depends in drama and fiction. There are three kinds of conflicts; one type of conflict is elemental or physical: a struggle between man and the physical world. It represents man versus forces of nature, the difficulties and danger. Another type of conflict is social: a struggle between man and man. The third type of conflict is internal or phychological: a struggle between desires

within a person, but the focus is always upon the central figure’s inner turmoil”.

(Shaw, 91)

I have decided to analyse the conflict in Kathryn Harisson’s novel The Binding Chair because May as the protagonist has many conflicts with other characters throughout the novel, from the time she was a little girl until her death. She experiences social conflicts with other characters in this novel.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

After reading Kathryn Harrison’s The Binding Chair, I would like to formulate the problem as follows:

1. What are the conflicts in Kathryn Harrison’s The Binding Chair? 2. What causes the conflicts?

3. How are the conflicts resolved?

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

I intend to show:

1. The conflicts that the protagonist experiences in The Binding Chair. 2. The causes of the conflicts.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

In analysing this topic, I use formalism method; first I read Kathryn

Harrison’s The Binding Chair, and then I decide the topic I want to discuss. After

I have decided the topic, I use library research to support my work. I use some reference books which are relevant to the topic and I search in the Internet to get additional information. I use the data I have collected for the analysis.

ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

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CHAPTER THREE

CONCLUSION

After analysing the conflicts in Kathryn Harrison’s The Binding

Chair, I come to the conclusion that the conflicts in this novel are very important. The conflicts are worth analysing because they are realistic, meaning that such conflicts may also be found in real life. Some of us may have hatred for any ethnic group because we have a psychological or physical trauma. Throughout the story May develops hatred towards the Chinese men, later in the story she refused to serve Chinese clients when she was a prostitute, eventhough that did not give her a benefit, because she did not have a chance to get away from prostitution. Western people will not marry a prostitute, Chinese men do. It is because of her bad experiences in her past marriage.

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The first conflict between May and her grandmother happens because since she was a little girl May has been forced by her grandmother to be a highly regarded woman. Whether she likes it or not, May has to have her feet bound for the sake of her own future. May also has a conflict with her mother and her grandmother. The conflict happens because neither her mother nor her grandmother supports her wish. May feels very disappointed because her mother does not understand her feeling nor does her grandmother. In real life, it is normal for a girl to have a conflict with her mother or with her grandmother because although they belong to the same family, they have different characteristics, feelings and wishes. The conflict between May and Alice is because May does not like Alice for what she has done. May does not want anyone to know about her past life, she wants to bury it deep. May has very bad memories about her former husband, a Chinese man who badly and cruelly treated her. Her past bad experience makes her clearly refuse to serve Chinese clients when she is still a prostitute. None of her new family knows about it; moreover, Alice’s behavior reminds her. To have a husband like her husband, most women probably will act like she does. Especially nowadays, women do not want to be badly treated by their husbands. They want to have equal rights. When they are treated badly, they may ask for a divorce. Treating a woman as badly as May’s husband should not happen in this modern time.

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begun from the Han Dynasty. Chinese men can have one wife or more. It is common for rich Chinese men to have more than one wife. One of the reasons is to continue the father’s family name.

Her husband treats May like an object of sexual exploration. He is bored with normal sex that he does with three other wives. He only does the anal sex to May. Anal sex is one form of human sexual behavior. Anal sex is sometimes seen as preserving female virginity, another reason is that the rectum is giving more pleasure for the penis, being tighter than the vagina. This type of sexual behavior is known widely around the world. In this novel May’s husband does it and May cannot refuse because her husband is a rich man, but she hates him for practising this to her.

May’s inner conflicts cause her social conflicts. May wants to run from her

past, but it is not easy for May to do. It makes her uncomfort and causes conflict with other people around her in this novel. May has hatred for all of Chinese men group because she has a psychological and physical trauma with her first Chinese husband.

So far as the other resolutions of the conflicts are concerned, they are also plausible; for example when May fails to get her mother’s and grandmother’s support, she leaves them and she also leaves her husband, who has treated her badly. May’s love for Alice makes her wish to do her best for her. Her anger towards Alice’s indecent attitude is a manifestation of her love for her. Likewise, Alice’s insistence that May should have her feet properly fixed is also a

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the people one love although they may have a different interpretation of what one intends to do for them.

May is a dynamic character; she undergoes certain changes in her life. It can be seen from May’s social conflicts with the other characters in the novel. The most essential changes of her characteristics are the fact that the obedient little girl has become a woman of a stronger character who can express her own desires.

The moral lesson that I get from this novel is that life is not as easy as I think. I must struggle to get something that I want to have and face everything I find in my life. Eventhough it is hard to get, I still must do it, because I believe that I am going to get what I want if I try the best; if I do not succeed in getting it, I do not give up easily. Life is a struggle and I must be tough to get through it.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

REFERENCE

Kenney, William. How to Analyze Fiction. New York: Monarch Press, 1996 Shaw, Harry. Dictionary of Literary Terms. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972

Yerkes, David (ed.). Webster’s Enchyclopedic Unbridged Dictionary of the English Language. New York: Portland House, 1989

INTERNET

http://www.news.wisc.edu./harisson/bio.html http//www.bookbrowse.com/index.cfm http//www.kathrynharrison.com

http//www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki http//www.rotten.com/library

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