CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of study Marriage is a very interesting topic nowadays.
In some places in the world, marriage is
not considered important anymore. Some groups of women tend to postpone their marriage until they get 30 or
even some of them decide not to marry.
Free sex culture which comes from the Western also gives much influence to the view of marriage by modern. Or as
Prihantoroput it (in MATABACA, August
12th, 2006), people begin to question whether or not the institution of marriage is still relevant today. We can also
see this phenomenon on television or other
media. If we say that the viewpoint of the people is influenced by the Western culture, is it always like that in the
Western culture. But what about the people
of Western culture? Is it true that also begin to question marriage? Maybe the following statement will answer
(Gallagher, 2001: 18): Marriage is an
institution in crisis. Close to halfof new marriages end in divorce. A third of our children are
born out of wedlock. The majority of
children, at current
estimates, will experience
a fatherless or motherless
household. Making substantial progress in reversing
the trend toward
family fragmentation will
require that law
and society reject
the deepest presumptions
driving postmodern family as an
ideological and legal construct: the idea that marriage is essentially a private choice
created by and for the couple; that
children do just
fine in whatever
family forms their parents choose
to create; that
babies are irrelevant
to the public purposes of marriage.
The following data may be
interesting to note. Forwomen graduates born from 1930 to 1950, the average age of first
marriage was around age 23, and then
increases to 25.5 for those born in 1957 (Harvard Magazine December 2004). From the same source, Whyte points out
that Americans seem to be more hesitant
about getting married, and they're marrying later, but Americans have married at younger ages, and we still
marry atyounger ages, than in many
European societies and in Japan. (Western societies show a general pattern of later marriage and more nonmarriage
thanmost Asian and African societies, he
notes. In both traditional and modernChinese society, only a small percentage of men are "bare
sticks," as single men are known, and marriage for women is virtually universal; but
in European societies "bachelors"
and "spinsters" have long made up 8 to 12 percent of the population or more. Ireland had the highest
rates of nonmarriage in earlier times,
when a quarter to a third of the Irish nevermarried.) "There's very little evidence of rejection of marriage as an
institution," says Whyte, citing polls
reporting that 95 percent of Americans say they want to marry and think they will. (Among those who say they don't
want to marry are some gays and lesbians
"who reject marriage as a bourgeois, conservative, patriarchal institution," he notes.) It seems the institution of marriage in U.S.
or Western Culture is also being
questioned, at least by some of them. What about in the past? We can trace it back in Emma. Emma discussed at
length the marriage in the society of Highbury,
London in seventeenth century. It is inevitable that some works of literature really reflect the condition of the
society at that time and. Therefore, regarding
the theme of marriage, Emma is taken here.
Emma, published in 1815, has been
described as a "mystery story without a murder". The main character the
charming but perhaps too clever Emma Woodhouse,
who manages to deceive herself in a number of ways (including as to who she really loves), even though she
(and the reader) are often in possession
of evidence pointing toward the truth. Readers are also curious whether she would really get married or not.
Emmacontains a social phenomenon
– in this case, marriage -- happened in
England, exactly in Highbury in the early nineteenth century. The novel describes a year in the life of the village of
Highbury, portraying many of the various
inhabitants. The title of this novel is taken from the main character of the novel that is Emma.In this novel, Emma is
described as a lady from middle class
family who is close and appreciated enough by her neighbors.
The typical character owned by
Emma as told in thisnovel is that she liked matching her neighbors in marry. Even, she
tends tostate that a couple were match
and appropriate or not from her point of view. In her course of life, successfully she matched some of her neighbors
to be spouses. In the other hand, Emma
her self made a commitment not to be married to anyone along her life. But in the end of the novel, it is
being told that Emma married with a man
who was also her fellow. The novel focuses on marriage because marriage offers women a chance to show their
power,if only for a short time, and to
decide their own destinies without adopting the labors or efforts of the working class. Participating in the rituals of
courtship and accepting or rejecting
proposals is perhaps the most active rolethat women are permitted to play in Emma’s world
(http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/emma/, accessed on July th
, 2007).
The interesting thing here is the
reason Emma brokeher commitment not to
marry with any gentleman. Why did she virtually marry with Mr.
Knightley, one of her fellow?
From the core of thisnovel as if Austen wanted to tell the readers that marriage is an
important thing, especially for women.
That is why in this novel Emma
was very much busy in matching his friends or neighbors to marry, as if Emma herself
confessedthat marriage is important,
even she virtually married. As you can see here from Emma’s statement in the novel: I made the match, you know, four years ago;
and to have it take place, and be proved
in the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again, may comfort me for any
thing. (pp.10) It is also stated that Emma has a theme about social culture in
England in the early nineteenth century
including how important marriage was for women at that time (www.pinkmonkey.com). The setting
of time of the novel actually was in the
seventeenth century and the place background is Highbury, London England. But, literature has no
limitation of time and space. It means that
the social reality in Emma may also be true in other places, and the phenomenon did not only happen in the
seventeenth century. The mirror of the event
also can be suit to other time and places. Marriage is actually important for woman not only in England and in seventeen
century, but in many places until recent
time or even in the time before without the author understanding.
This theory is based on the
opinion that interpretation of literary work is independent, up to the reader (Kutha Ratna,
2004:58). Even sociology of literature
considers that literary work belongs to people (Kutha Ratna, 2004:59). Thus, even though literary work
history is affected very much by the
time and place of the author’s live, whenever the work was published, it becomes the right of the readers to give
meaning and interpretation.
For this reason, then it can be
said that a literary work gives no limit scope to the readers for research. So, no one has
the right to say that one literary work
may not be analyzed for more for it had been analyzed by many people.
However, the literary work is
classical one, however old it is, with the same title, there is still space to be analyzed and
appreciated.
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