Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the life of the young wife that is clipped by many “othering” factors that prevent her from becoming a Self. The analysis is focused on the “othering” factors and the impacts on the young wife and on her relationship with her sick husband. The analysis is done through the perspective of existentialism combining the existentialism of Sartre and Beauvoir. Since the focus is on the female character, the particular perspective used is on the existential feminism focusing on the “woman-being-for-others” mode of being. The methods of research are the combination of library research method with its close-reading technique, the qualitative method, and the contextual method of literary analysis. The result shows that it is difficult for a wife to be a Self when she has to face many “othering” factors such as the husband’s illness, the doctors’ suggestion to move to a temperate climate State, the new environment, and the death of the husband while they are still on the train. These “othering” factors do not only clip the wife’s socialization, love and relationship with her husband, and anticipation to return home, but also clip the wife’s life so that she will never have a chance to be a Self forever.
Highlights
INTRODUCTION “A Journey” is a short story written by a prolific American female writer, Edith Wharton (18621937)
Based on the brief summary of the short story, this paper will deal with the clipped life of the wife from the existentialism perspective
To support the discussion focusing on the wife’s clipped life from the perspective of existentialism, several concepts are used in this paper
Summary
INTRODUCTION “A Journey” is a short story written by a prolific American female writer, Edith Wharton (18621937) It is about a young wife who takes her sick husband home to die after a futile effort of following doctors’ suggestion to stay in a hot climate area for several months. Based on the brief summary of the short story, this paper will deal with the clipped life of the wife from the existentialism perspective. This focus has never been dealt before as shown in the following previous study. Tanguay in ““A Journey” by Edith Wharton” talks about “Female Roles in Relationships” and relates the short story with the author’s life (2012). Beauvoir has a specific view on marriage: “for the Another concept from Sartre borrowed for the vast majority of unmarried workers entertain the discussion is his concept on the modes of being hope - often enough illusive - that marriage will which consists of three modes; namely, Being-in- release them from work in which they have no real itself (etre‐en‐soi), Being-for-itself (etre‐pour‐soi), and interest and which they regard as a temporary
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