Mid-term test
Feminist Literary Criticism Class
4th semester
I made this paper because at that moment I'm in love with the book. The feminist literary class was discussing freudian psycoanalisys theory that I found out quite shocking for me. However I relized the connection between "Veronica decides To Die" and the theory. This can be quite confusing for those who don't know about the theory, so enjoy! hehehe...
Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die:
When a Sexual Release Means Being Alive
Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer, is best known for mystical fables told in simple yet symbolic language. He has received wide popular acclaim both in Brazil and internationally for his work about spiritual quests of self-discovery. A recurring concept in Coelho’s books is the personal legend, in which his characters follow their dreams and pursue paths of self-discovery. Though they meet hardships along the way, only by staying true to their dreams can they achieve spiritual fulfillment. Coelho uses simple, clear language to blend religious and philosophical concepts in his work. Concerned with his teenage rebelliousness and desire to be a writer, his parents sent him to a mental institution, where he received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a therapy that uses a current of electricity through the forehead. From his experiences during in the mental hospital, he wrote a piece called Veronika Decides to Die, a novel with rich symbolism about a girl who tried to commit suicide because of her mental problem during her youth and how she finds the meaning of life through her sexuality.
Sets in Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia, Veronika is a twenty-four-year-old that has everything that a young woman ever dream of: beauty, fulfilling job, loving family, and she seems having no problem at all in her love life. Yet she decided to commit suicide by swallowing a large amount of sleeping pills and hoping that she will never wake up. The first reason why she decides to die is her unwillingness of experiencing the same routines in her life, and once her youth is gone she thinks that her life will be nothing but sufferings. The second is her philosophical reason, that she is tired of witnessing what is going on in the world; war, poverty, etc, that makes her feel even more powerless.
She takes sleeping pills and believes that it would end her life, however she does wake up in a mental hospital called Villete where is told she only has days to live because of heart damage by the sleeping pills. In the Villete, she meets two new friends, Zedka and Mari that helps her finding another perspective in seeing her life. Moreover, she meets Eduard, a schizophrenic, and they fall in love. Finally in her last days to live, she realizes the true meaning of life, but maybe it was too late for her to undo the suicide act that shortened her life. As the unique way of Coelho’s story-telling, the end of the novel is sweet, surprising, and left the reader enlightened.
In Veronika Decides to Die, besides the touching story about spiritual self-searching, there are three things that are related to feminism theories that uniquely depict in the writing of a male author. First, the symbolism of the insane that lives inside a cage of the mental hospital. Second, Veronika’s relationship with her parents. Third, sexuality as Veronika’s way in finding the true meaning of her life. All these three points: symbolism, relationships within the family structure, and sexuality, will be discussed with psychoanalytic framework. The last point leads to Veronika’s (and also her friends’) mental and psychological enlightenments that give her the idea of what it means to be alive. Even though Coelho did not show these ideas explicitly, we can see that the enlightenment that Veronika (and other character like Mari and Zedka) gets from the mental hospital creates a more positive and enlightened human being.
Since the beginning of the novel, Coelho already shows the difference nature of femininity and masculinity as shown in this line; “Shooting, jumping off a high building, hanging, none of these options suited her feminine nature. Women, when they kill themselves, choose far more romantic methods_ like slashing their wrists or taking an overdose of sleeping pills” [p. 3]. Based on this quotation, we can see that Veronika is positioned as a feminine (“None of these suited her feminine nature”) The act of taking sleeping pills reflect femininity because it is less daring than shooting, jumping off a high building, hanging, etc. Shooting or jumping involves adrenalin rush, while in the text Coelho writes that slashing their wrists or taking an overdose pills as far more romantic way to kill oneself than shooting, jumping, or hanging, as if woman is less daring than man to attempt suicide by doing an adrenalin rush act. This ‘romantic act’ is associated with woman, and in Veronika Decides to Die; a death because of taking an overdose sleeping pills is described as a feminine act. Therefore we can conclude that there are difference characteristics of femininity and masculinity in the novel, and this difference natural characteristic leads to the patriarchy social assumption that masculinity is more superior than femininity [Rosemary P Tong: Feminist Thought, p.190]
Ljubljana is described as a beautiful city where people keep doing the same routines in life. On the contrary, Villete mental hospital described as a prison, where the insane lives in isolation from the outside world and have to face the inhuman electricity shot treatment called electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and all the doctors and nurses are the ruler in the society,
Villete came to symbolize all the worst aspects of capitalism: to be admitted to the hospital, all you needed was money […] Villete was the place from which no one had ever escaped, where genuine lunatics_ sent there by the courts or by other hospitals_ mingled with those merely accused of insanity or those pretending to be insane [p. 12 – 13]
The similarity of a prison and Villete is that the patient that has to be medicated in Villete was ‘accused’ of insanity. The word ‘accused’ is used as if the insane are criminals. The surroundings, the tall strong walls, the routines of the Villete is the similar like a jail, with all the masculine characteristic in the language (capitalism, walls, prison, etc) and the mean electroconvulsive therapy. Yet, the patients that are ‘accused’ of insanity were described as passive, narcistic, masochist, and vain, which according to Sigmund Freud as feminine characteristics. These feminine characteristics can be found in both in female and male characters. Veronika’s act of committing suicide is the act of masochism, and then she become very passive in waiting for her death to come. Zedka and Mari, both are narcistic (self-loving) characters; we can see this from their justification, arguments, and excuses for themselves about their insanity so that they seem right about everything. Eduard, the schizophrenic character is the most passive and vain character. Ever since he became schizophrenic, Eduard lives without interacting and communicating to the others, he lives in his own world where he is very passive and vain. Zedka and Eduard have to do the electroconvulsive therapy, where the divine rights of their own body is taken and forced to do the inhuman electricity shock therapy because there are ‘accused’ as lunatics. These passiveness, vanity, masochism, and narcisticism according to Freud are the ‘marks of womenhood’ [Susan Watkins: Twentieth-Century Women Novelist, p.86. Rosemary P Tong, p. 195] Even though Eduard is a man, he still represents the characteristic of ‘marks of womenhood’, it shows that the insane (no matter they are male or female) are the symbol of women that is oppressed. It also shows how man (in this case, represented by Eduard) is still possible to be trapped in the border. Based on all this characteristic of the setting and character, then we can conclude that the insane are the symbol of women that trapped inside the patriarchy society where everyone inside has to obey all the assumptions and norms of the society and the walls of Villete is the symbol of the border, a masculine superego that oppresses feminine desires that is seen as insanity.
The next point that we can find in the novel is a big role of family structure that shapes Veronika’s character. Veronika was described as a woman that had enough love from such a caring family. However, Veronika hates her mother as in this quotation depict:
Then she started to feel hatred for the person she loved most in the world: her mother. A wonderful wife who worked all day and washed the dishes all night, sacrificing her own life so that her daughter would have good education, know how to play the piano and the violin […] How can I hate someone who only ever gave me love? Thought Veronika, confused, trying to check her feelings. But it was too late; her hatred had been unleashed; she had opened the door to her personal hell. She hated the love she had been given because it had asked nothing in return, wich was absurd, unreal, against the law of nature. That love asking for nothing in return had managed to fill her with guilt, with the desire to fulfill another expectations, even if that meant giving up everything she had ever dreamed of [p.68-69]
We can see that her hatred to her mother explained her disappointments of her life, that she feels her life is ‘shaped’ like her mother wants her to be; a woman that is able to play piano, have good education, getting married someday and having children. In other words, a woman that lives in the symbolic order. Next, it is clear that Veronika experiences Oedipus complex, an attraction of love for the parent of opposite sex, with the corresponding jealousy of the parent of the same sex [Havelock Ellis: Psychology of Sex, p.73] We can see the evidence of this theory in this novel from the description about Veronika’s father and how Veronika loves her father as a man when she was young:
She hated her father too, because, unlike her mother, who worked all the time, he knew how to live; he took her to bars and to the theater, they had fun together; and when he was still young, she had loved him secretly, not the way one loves a father, but as a man. She hated him because he had always been so charming and so open with everyone except her mother, the only person who really deserved such treatment. [p.69]
Based on this quotation, however, there is an ambiguity about the jealousy of the parent of the same sex. It is possible that Veronika unconsciously jealous with her mother, yet she defends her mother by hating her father for abandoning her mother. This confusion then leads to Veronika’s depression and disappointment of her life that finally makes her decided to kill herself.
Another important point in Veronika Decides to Die is how sexuality plays a big role in her self-discovery. All of the Freud’s “marks of womanhood” that are mentioned above is happen when the characters; Veronika, Zedka, Mari, and Eduard have not get the enlightenment yet. One day Mari tells her to masturbate, to see how far she can go before death comes unto her. Veronika agrees and finds Eduard, the mute schizophrenic and masturbate in front of him. She let it all out and finally finds herself with multiple orgasms:
Veronika and Eduard are both standing up, face to face, she naked, he fully clothed. Veronika slid her own hand down to her genitals and started to masturbate; she had done it before, either alone or with certain partners, but never in situation like this, where the men showed no apparent interest in what was happening […] She wanted to die in orgasmic pleasure, thinking about and realizing everything that had always been forbidden to her [p.133]
From this quotation comes a question; what was the things that had been forbidden to her? The answer is clear, the openness to sexuality, more specific: wild desires. When finally Veronika finds her openness to her sexuality, it helps her find herself. As before she tries to find out how far she can go she never really understand herself; “Although she had known many men, she had never experienced the most hidden part of her own desires, and the result was that half of her life had been unknown to her [p.135]” and in “I discovered that I’m a pervert, doctor. I want to know if that played some part in my attempted suicide. There are so many things I didn’t know about myself [p.141]”
As we can see, Veronika identify herself as a pervert after she did this sexual act. Normally, this act is considered as an immoral act by the society. On the contrary, it is actually the release of Veronika’s Id; her unconscious that has no values, her pleasure principal, where all this time it has been oppressed by moral restrictions that involve punishment/reward in the society, the superego. By letting her Id out, it means that she let her unconscious take control of herself. She then relies that she had never explore herself before, and this might be her reason to attempt suicide. In other words, Veronika is breaking the border that oppress her unconscious, letting her Id out of the circle of ego and superego, left her with more question about herself that she has never known before. Finally, this curiosity leads her willingness to be alive and knowing herself better.
After the masturbation as her sexual release, she finds out that Eduard is cured. He is no longer a schizophrenic and he can interact as well as communicate with the society. They planned to get out of Villete and enjoy Veronika’s last days alive. Veronika shares her experience with Mari and Zedka, and finally both Mari and Zedka experience enlightenment too from Veronika that is changed from a passive and depressed person to a woman that more appreciate life.
The enlightenment Veronika and her friends get is from Veronika’s sexual awakening. After they got enlightened and realize how they should live their live, the “marks of womanhood” character in them has transformed into people who appreciate life more than ever that one example can be seen in Mari’s letter for her friends in the Villete about how she changes with the symbolism of an aquarium and fountains as her life:
When I was still a young lawyer, I read some poems by an English poet, and something he said impressed me greatly: ‘Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains’. I always thought he was wrong. It was dangerous to overflow, because we might end up flooding areas occupied by our loved ones and drowning them with our love and enthusiasm. All my life I did my best to be a cistern, never going beyond the limits of my inner walls […] We lived together like fish in an aquarium, contented because someone threw us food when we needed it, and we could, whenever we wanted to, see the world outside through the glass […] I learned something important: Life inside is exactly the same outside [p.198]
Before Mari and Zedka knows Veronika, they had a dark past with insanity, Zedka with her depression and Mari with her paranoia. They are trapped in a society that ‘accused’ them as a lunatic people inside the Villete, just like women that are oppressed in the patriarchal society. Both Mari and Zedka finally decide to get out of the Villete too, and they move on with their own plan as an independent, cured, human being. Their ‘walk-away’ from the wall of the Villete for their freedom is a fulfillment of all kind of feminist’s utopian dreams; being liberated from the wall of negative patriarchal social assumption about woman.
At the end, Veronika and Eduard are together in the city center, and Veronika not die. She was secretly become the object of a new kind medicine for her heart damage by her doctor, dr.Igor. She does not even know that she is actually cured, and finds that every day is a miracle for her life.
From the discussion above, Coelho uses sexuality as one important aspect in self-development. Therefore he shows that to be liberated from oppression is to get to know our self as a being. With the symbol of the Villete, the lunatics, the patriarchy society and the utopian feminist dreams of liberty, supported the characters, Veronika Decides to Die reflects how sexual discovering as one powerful way to be released from oppression and a reason to keep alive.
Bibilography
Feminist Literary Criticism Class
4th semester
I made this paper because at that moment I'm in love with the book. The feminist literary class was discussing freudian psycoanalisys theory that I found out quite shocking for me. However I relized the connection between "Veronica decides To Die" and the theory. This can be quite confusing for those who don't know about the theory, so enjoy! hehehe...
Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die:
When a Sexual Release Means Being Alive
Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer, is best known for mystical fables told in simple yet symbolic language. He has received wide popular acclaim both in Brazil and internationally for his work about spiritual quests of self-discovery. A recurring concept in Coelho’s books is the personal legend, in which his characters follow their dreams and pursue paths of self-discovery. Though they meet hardships along the way, only by staying true to their dreams can they achieve spiritual fulfillment. Coelho uses simple, clear language to blend religious and philosophical concepts in his work. Concerned with his teenage rebelliousness and desire to be a writer, his parents sent him to a mental institution, where he received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a therapy that uses a current of electricity through the forehead. From his experiences during in the mental hospital, he wrote a piece called Veronika Decides to Die, a novel with rich symbolism about a girl who tried to commit suicide because of her mental problem during her youth and how she finds the meaning of life through her sexuality.
Sets in Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia, Veronika is a twenty-four-year-old that has everything that a young woman ever dream of: beauty, fulfilling job, loving family, and she seems having no problem at all in her love life. Yet she decided to commit suicide by swallowing a large amount of sleeping pills and hoping that she will never wake up. The first reason why she decides to die is her unwillingness of experiencing the same routines in her life, and once her youth is gone she thinks that her life will be nothing but sufferings. The second is her philosophical reason, that she is tired of witnessing what is going on in the world; war, poverty, etc, that makes her feel even more powerless.
She takes sleeping pills and believes that it would end her life, however she does wake up in a mental hospital called Villete where is told she only has days to live because of heart damage by the sleeping pills. In the Villete, she meets two new friends, Zedka and Mari that helps her finding another perspective in seeing her life. Moreover, she meets Eduard, a schizophrenic, and they fall in love. Finally in her last days to live, she realizes the true meaning of life, but maybe it was too late for her to undo the suicide act that shortened her life. As the unique way of Coelho’s story-telling, the end of the novel is sweet, surprising, and left the reader enlightened.
In Veronika Decides to Die, besides the touching story about spiritual self-searching, there are three things that are related to feminism theories that uniquely depict in the writing of a male author. First, the symbolism of the insane that lives inside a cage of the mental hospital. Second, Veronika’s relationship with her parents. Third, sexuality as Veronika’s way in finding the true meaning of her life. All these three points: symbolism, relationships within the family structure, and sexuality, will be discussed with psychoanalytic framework. The last point leads to Veronika’s (and also her friends’) mental and psychological enlightenments that give her the idea of what it means to be alive. Even though Coelho did not show these ideas explicitly, we can see that the enlightenment that Veronika (and other character like Mari and Zedka) gets from the mental hospital creates a more positive and enlightened human being.
Since the beginning of the novel, Coelho already shows the difference nature of femininity and masculinity as shown in this line; “Shooting, jumping off a high building, hanging, none of these options suited her feminine nature. Women, when they kill themselves, choose far more romantic methods_ like slashing their wrists or taking an overdose of sleeping pills” [p. 3]. Based on this quotation, we can see that Veronika is positioned as a feminine (“None of these suited her feminine nature”) The act of taking sleeping pills reflect femininity because it is less daring than shooting, jumping off a high building, hanging, etc. Shooting or jumping involves adrenalin rush, while in the text Coelho writes that slashing their wrists or taking an overdose pills as far more romantic way to kill oneself than shooting, jumping, or hanging, as if woman is less daring than man to attempt suicide by doing an adrenalin rush act. This ‘romantic act’ is associated with woman, and in Veronika Decides to Die; a death because of taking an overdose sleeping pills is described as a feminine act. Therefore we can conclude that there are difference characteristics of femininity and masculinity in the novel, and this difference natural characteristic leads to the patriarchy social assumption that masculinity is more superior than femininity [Rosemary P Tong: Feminist Thought, p.190]
Ljubljana is described as a beautiful city where people keep doing the same routines in life. On the contrary, Villete mental hospital described as a prison, where the insane lives in isolation from the outside world and have to face the inhuman electricity shot treatment called electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and all the doctors and nurses are the ruler in the society,
Villete came to symbolize all the worst aspects of capitalism: to be admitted to the hospital, all you needed was money […] Villete was the place from which no one had ever escaped, where genuine lunatics_ sent there by the courts or by other hospitals_ mingled with those merely accused of insanity or those pretending to be insane [p. 12 – 13]
The similarity of a prison and Villete is that the patient that has to be medicated in Villete was ‘accused’ of insanity. The word ‘accused’ is used as if the insane are criminals. The surroundings, the tall strong walls, the routines of the Villete is the similar like a jail, with all the masculine characteristic in the language (capitalism, walls, prison, etc) and the mean electroconvulsive therapy. Yet, the patients that are ‘accused’ of insanity were described as passive, narcistic, masochist, and vain, which according to Sigmund Freud as feminine characteristics. These feminine characteristics can be found in both in female and male characters. Veronika’s act of committing suicide is the act of masochism, and then she become very passive in waiting for her death to come. Zedka and Mari, both are narcistic (self-loving) characters; we can see this from their justification, arguments, and excuses for themselves about their insanity so that they seem right about everything. Eduard, the schizophrenic character is the most passive and vain character. Ever since he became schizophrenic, Eduard lives without interacting and communicating to the others, he lives in his own world where he is very passive and vain. Zedka and Eduard have to do the electroconvulsive therapy, where the divine rights of their own body is taken and forced to do the inhuman electricity shock therapy because there are ‘accused’ as lunatics. These passiveness, vanity, masochism, and narcisticism according to Freud are the ‘marks of womenhood’ [Susan Watkins: Twentieth-Century Women Novelist, p.86. Rosemary P Tong, p. 195] Even though Eduard is a man, he still represents the characteristic of ‘marks of womenhood’, it shows that the insane (no matter they are male or female) are the symbol of women that is oppressed. It also shows how man (in this case, represented by Eduard) is still possible to be trapped in the border. Based on all this characteristic of the setting and character, then we can conclude that the insane are the symbol of women that trapped inside the patriarchy society where everyone inside has to obey all the assumptions and norms of the society and the walls of Villete is the symbol of the border, a masculine superego that oppresses feminine desires that is seen as insanity.
The next point that we can find in the novel is a big role of family structure that shapes Veronika’s character. Veronika was described as a woman that had enough love from such a caring family. However, Veronika hates her mother as in this quotation depict:
Then she started to feel hatred for the person she loved most in the world: her mother. A wonderful wife who worked all day and washed the dishes all night, sacrificing her own life so that her daughter would have good education, know how to play the piano and the violin […] How can I hate someone who only ever gave me love? Thought Veronika, confused, trying to check her feelings. But it was too late; her hatred had been unleashed; she had opened the door to her personal hell. She hated the love she had been given because it had asked nothing in return, wich was absurd, unreal, against the law of nature. That love asking for nothing in return had managed to fill her with guilt, with the desire to fulfill another expectations, even if that meant giving up everything she had ever dreamed of [p.68-69]
We can see that her hatred to her mother explained her disappointments of her life, that she feels her life is ‘shaped’ like her mother wants her to be; a woman that is able to play piano, have good education, getting married someday and having children. In other words, a woman that lives in the symbolic order. Next, it is clear that Veronika experiences Oedipus complex, an attraction of love for the parent of opposite sex, with the corresponding jealousy of the parent of the same sex [Havelock Ellis: Psychology of Sex, p.73] We can see the evidence of this theory in this novel from the description about Veronika’s father and how Veronika loves her father as a man when she was young:
She hated her father too, because, unlike her mother, who worked all the time, he knew how to live; he took her to bars and to the theater, they had fun together; and when he was still young, she had loved him secretly, not the way one loves a father, but as a man. She hated him because he had always been so charming and so open with everyone except her mother, the only person who really deserved such treatment. [p.69]
Based on this quotation, however, there is an ambiguity about the jealousy of the parent of the same sex. It is possible that Veronika unconsciously jealous with her mother, yet she defends her mother by hating her father for abandoning her mother. This confusion then leads to Veronika’s depression and disappointment of her life that finally makes her decided to kill herself.
Another important point in Veronika Decides to Die is how sexuality plays a big role in her self-discovery. All of the Freud’s “marks of womanhood” that are mentioned above is happen when the characters; Veronika, Zedka, Mari, and Eduard have not get the enlightenment yet. One day Mari tells her to masturbate, to see how far she can go before death comes unto her. Veronika agrees and finds Eduard, the mute schizophrenic and masturbate in front of him. She let it all out and finally finds herself with multiple orgasms:
Veronika and Eduard are both standing up, face to face, she naked, he fully clothed. Veronika slid her own hand down to her genitals and started to masturbate; she had done it before, either alone or with certain partners, but never in situation like this, where the men showed no apparent interest in what was happening […] She wanted to die in orgasmic pleasure, thinking about and realizing everything that had always been forbidden to her [p.133]
From this quotation comes a question; what was the things that had been forbidden to her? The answer is clear, the openness to sexuality, more specific: wild desires. When finally Veronika finds her openness to her sexuality, it helps her find herself. As before she tries to find out how far she can go she never really understand herself; “Although she had known many men, she had never experienced the most hidden part of her own desires, and the result was that half of her life had been unknown to her [p.135]” and in “I discovered that I’m a pervert, doctor. I want to know if that played some part in my attempted suicide. There are so many things I didn’t know about myself [p.141]”
As we can see, Veronika identify herself as a pervert after she did this sexual act. Normally, this act is considered as an immoral act by the society. On the contrary, it is actually the release of Veronika’s Id; her unconscious that has no values, her pleasure principal, where all this time it has been oppressed by moral restrictions that involve punishment/reward in the society, the superego. By letting her Id out, it means that she let her unconscious take control of herself. She then relies that she had never explore herself before, and this might be her reason to attempt suicide. In other words, Veronika is breaking the border that oppress her unconscious, letting her Id out of the circle of ego and superego, left her with more question about herself that she has never known before. Finally, this curiosity leads her willingness to be alive and knowing herself better.
After the masturbation as her sexual release, she finds out that Eduard is cured. He is no longer a schizophrenic and he can interact as well as communicate with the society. They planned to get out of Villete and enjoy Veronika’s last days alive. Veronika shares her experience with Mari and Zedka, and finally both Mari and Zedka experience enlightenment too from Veronika that is changed from a passive and depressed person to a woman that more appreciate life.
The enlightenment Veronika and her friends get is from Veronika’s sexual awakening. After they got enlightened and realize how they should live their live, the “marks of womanhood” character in them has transformed into people who appreciate life more than ever that one example can be seen in Mari’s letter for her friends in the Villete about how she changes with the symbolism of an aquarium and fountains as her life:
When I was still a young lawyer, I read some poems by an English poet, and something he said impressed me greatly: ‘Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains’. I always thought he was wrong. It was dangerous to overflow, because we might end up flooding areas occupied by our loved ones and drowning them with our love and enthusiasm. All my life I did my best to be a cistern, never going beyond the limits of my inner walls […] We lived together like fish in an aquarium, contented because someone threw us food when we needed it, and we could, whenever we wanted to, see the world outside through the glass […] I learned something important: Life inside is exactly the same outside [p.198]
Before Mari and Zedka knows Veronika, they had a dark past with insanity, Zedka with her depression and Mari with her paranoia. They are trapped in a society that ‘accused’ them as a lunatic people inside the Villete, just like women that are oppressed in the patriarchal society. Both Mari and Zedka finally decide to get out of the Villete too, and they move on with their own plan as an independent, cured, human being. Their ‘walk-away’ from the wall of the Villete for their freedom is a fulfillment of all kind of feminist’s utopian dreams; being liberated from the wall of negative patriarchal social assumption about woman.
At the end, Veronika and Eduard are together in the city center, and Veronika not die. She was secretly become the object of a new kind medicine for her heart damage by her doctor, dr.Igor. She does not even know that she is actually cured, and finds that every day is a miracle for her life.
From the discussion above, Coelho uses sexuality as one important aspect in self-development. Therefore he shows that to be liberated from oppression is to get to know our self as a being. With the symbol of the Villete, the lunatics, the patriarchy society and the utopian feminist dreams of liberty, supported the characters, Veronika Decides to Die reflects how sexual discovering as one powerful way to be released from oppression and a reason to keep alive.
Bibilography
- Amiruddin, Mariana. ”SEX and TEXT (Sexts): Konsep Pembebasan Seksualitas Perempuan Lewat Sastra”. Jurnal Perempuan No.30: Perempuan dalam Seni Sastra. Jakarta: Yayasan Jurnal Perempuan. 2003
- Arivia, Gadis. Filsafat Berperspektif Feminis. Jakarta: Yayasan Jurnal Perempuan. 2003.
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Teori dan Praktik (Terj.) Yogyakarta: Kreasi Wacana. 2004. - Brooks, Ann. Posfeminisme dan Cultural Studies: Sebuah Pengantar Paling Komprehensif (Terj.). Yogyakarta: Jalasutra.
- Coelho, Paulo. Veronika Decides to Die. NY: Harper Perennial. 2001.
- Ellis, Havelock. Psychology of Sex. NY: The New American Library. 1938.
- Hidayana, Irwan M, dkk. Seksualitas: Teori dan Realitas. Depok: Program Gender dan Seksualitas FISIP UI. 2004.
- Tong, Rosemarie Putnam. Feminist Thought: Pengantar Paling Komprehensif Kepada Arus Utama Pemikiran Feminis (Terj.) Yogyakarta: Jalasutra.
- Watkins, Susan. Twentieth-Century Women Novelists. NY: Palgrave. 2001.
- Wright, Elizabeth. Psichoanalitic Criticism: Theory in Practice. London: Routledge. 1989.
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