The Effects of Loveless Marriage on Human Sexuality Revealed by the Main Characters of Junichiro Tanizaki’S the Key

THE EFFECTS OF LOVELESS MARRIAGE ON HUMAN SEXUALITY REVEALED BY THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI’S THE KEY

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

EMERENSIA ROSWITA NAGE RAGA

Student Number: 034214031

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008 THE EFFECTS OF LOVELESS MARRIAGE ON HUMAN SEXUALITY REVEALED BY THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI’S THE KEY

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

EMERENSIA ROSWITA NAGE RAGA

Student Number: 034214031

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008

iii LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma :

Nama : Emerensia Roswita Nage Raga Nomor Mahasiswa : 034214031

Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul: The Effects of Loveless Marriage on Human Sexuality Revealed by the Main Characters of Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Key beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di Internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.

Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.

Dibuat di Yogyakarta Pada tanggal: 10 April 2008

Yang menyatakan

(Emerensia Roswita Nage Raga)

The path that I’m walking I must go alone I must take the baby steps ‘till I’m full grown Fairytales don’t always have a happy ending, do they? And I foresee the dark ahead if I stay (Big Girls Don’t Cry-Fergie)

This undergraduate thesis is dedicated to My beloved parents My brothers and sisters

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I praised my Lord Jesus Christ and Mother Mary for all blessings so that I was able to do my best to finish this undergraduate thesis. Therefore, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for the following people.

My greatest gratitude comes to Dewi Widyastuti, S.Pd., M. Hum as my advisor who had been willing to guide me and also to spend her time for reading and guiding me to finish this thesis. No doubt that this undergraduate thesis will not be finished without her advice and assistance from month-to-month. I would like to show my gratitude to Dra. Theresia Enny Anggraini, M. A. as my co- advisor who had been willing to read and correcting this thesis. I also show my deep gratitude for all lecturers of English Letters for sharing all their knowledge, and for the secretariat staff for the help and service.

My greatest love goes to my beloved parents, (†)Bonefasius Raga, BA and Paulina Kii for the unconditional love, understanding and support. I am very proud to have you as my parents who let me be myself and never blame me for all my mistakes but let me fix them by myself. My love also goes to my brothers

(†)Milus and Yoan, my sisters Angly, Melni, Anna, and Inne for understanding my bad characteristics, and to my big family in Sumba and Flores for the kindness and love.

Next, I would give big thanks to Riany and fr. Frid Amtonis, CSsR for the friendship, understanding, support and time we shared together. I was so grateful to have Ka Cici, Ka Mia Parera, Ka Ima Monteiro, Ka Helen, Ka

Marcel, Encik, Erin, Ardicku, Fatno, Ito Siga, Adi Malo, The Hugo’s sisters-

v Detty, Arum, Ratna-, Lely da Silva, Ida Kakang, Nino, Erni Langgar, Ivon

Jehamat, Indri Malo, Icul, Jimmy, Patrick, Loritha, Yusta, Lien, and Etty as my brothers and sisters who are always here to accompany and support me especially when I was in my bad time. Also I would give thanks to my

Syuradikara’s friends: Elvira, Uchiek, Fanny, Hilda, Suzan, Inlar, Linda, Reni,

Abbe, Rith, Felix and Tony for our togetherness.

My life would be so monotonous without my dear 03’ friends in my campus: Ella, Prita, Widhy, Tyaz, Yayac, Vallone, Ronald, Frieda, Ajenk,

Lucy, Armando, Richard, Dian, Jonathan, Putri, Alice, Meme, Tika, Jonny,

Danang also Ketan Item a.k.a We Won’t Pay crews. I thank them for being my best friends for five years. Hope our friendship will remain the same.

I would not forget to give thanks to all crews of Wisma Sang Penebus

Nandan for the support and encouragement to finish my undergraduate thesis.

Then, the thanks will go to the family of Y. Rillo Sudarso in Kasihan, Bantul, the family of F.X. Sunaryo and all friends in Menur 11a for all of kindness and attention.

The last, I would show my gratitude for all people whose names are not mentioned here who give a lot of contributions during the writing of this undergraduate thesis.

Emerensia Roswita Nage Raga

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE...... i APPROVAL PAGE...... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE...... iii MOTTO PAGE …………………………………………………………… . iv DEDICATION PAGE ……………………………………………………... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... v TABLE OF CONTENTS...... vii ABSTRACT...... viii ABSTRAK...... ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 A. Background of the Study...... 1 B. Problem Formulation...... 3 C. Objectives of the Study...... 4 D. Definition of Terms...... 4

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW ...... 6 A. Review of Related Studies ...... 6 B. Review of Related Theories ...... 8 1. Theory on Character and Characterization...... 8 2. The Relation between Literature and Psychology ...... 10 3. Theory of Love and Marriage ...... 11 4. Theory of Human Sexuality ………………………………………. 16 C. Theoretical Framework...... 23

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ...... 24 A. Object of the Study ...... 24 B. Approach of the Study ...... 25 C. Method of the Study...... 26

CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ...... 27 A. The Characteristics of the Main Characters...... 27 B. The Causes of Loveless Marriage ...... 36 C. The Effects of Loveless Marriage on Human Sexuality...... 45 1. The Sexual Ideas ...... 46 2. The Sexual Attitude ...... 51 3. The Sexual Behaviours ...... 53

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ...... 59

BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………... 64

vii ABSTRACT

Emerensia Roswita Nage Raga. The Effects of Loveless Marriage on Human Sexuality Revealed by the Main Characters of Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Key. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2008

Love and sex can not be separated from the aspect of human life especially when related to the marital life. They are elements which support each other to gain the happiness in a marriage. Love is the reason why a man and a woman end in a marriage, even though it is not the main point of the successful marriage. The commitment and communication can be the other points. In a marriage, sex can be the way to communicate because it expresses the deepest feeling of each other in an intimate way. The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki is a novel which has theme about sexuality in marital life. The main characters are a husband and a wife who experience a loveless marriage, thus it affects their sexuality. The study has three objectives. First, to find out the characteristics of the main characters. Second, to find out the possible factors that cause the main characters of The Key, in particular the husband and the wife, experience the loveless marriage. The last is to find out how the loveless marriage affects their sexuality. To answer the problems, the writer conducted the library study to get the related theories and information that may support the study. The primary source was the novel entitled The Key and the secondary sources were from the internet and books related to the theories of love, marriage and human sexuality. The study has three results. First, the husband has characteristics as the introverted person and also the person who always feels suspicious of the others, while the wife is a modest and introverted person. Second, the characteristics of the husband and the wife make them have less of love in their marriage. The causes of loveless marriage are the lack of commitment and the lack of communication between both characters because of their characteristics makes them difficult to gain the commitment and good communication on their marriage. Third, the loveless marriage which has the lack of commitment and lack of communication affects their sexuality, in particular, the sexual ideas, attitude and behaviours. Both characters have the different ideas of sex. The wife considers sex as taboo and only the duty as a good wife, while the husband considers sex as a way to gain the pleasure. Both characters have the negative attitude towards sex since they do not enjoy sex. The loveless marriage also affects the sexual behaviours which are the extramarital sexual relationship done by the wife, the sexual fantasies and dreams, and after-drunk sexual activity as the way to gain the sexual pleasure.

viii ABSTRAK

Emerensia Roswita Nage Raga. The Effects of Loveless Marriage on Human Sexuality Revealed by the Main Characters of Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Key. Yogyakarta: Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2008

Cinta dan seks tidak dapat dipisahkan dari aspek kehidupan manusia khususnya ketika berkenaan dengan kehidupan perkawinan. Elemen-elemen tersebut saling mendukung satu sama lain untuk mencapai kebahagiaan dalam sebuah perkawinan. Cinta menjadi alasan ketika seorang pria dan seorang wanita menikah walaupun bukanlah hal utama dalam kesuksesan perkawinan. Komitmen dan komunikasi menjadi hal penting lainnya. Dalam perkawinan, seks dapat menjadi cara untuk berkomunikasi karena seks mengekspresikan perasaan terdalam satu sama lain. Novel The Key oleh Junichiro Tanizaki mengangkat tema seksualitas dalam kehidupan perkawinan. Karakter utama yaitu suami dan istri mengalami perkawinan tanpa cinta dan ini berdampak pada seksualitas mereka. Ada tiga pokok tujuan dalam studi ini. Pertama, untuk mengetahui karakteristik dari karakter utama. Kedua, untuk mengetahui faktor-faktor yang menyebabkan karakter utama dalam novel The Key, mengalami perkawinan tanpa cinta. Ketiga, untuk mengetahui bagaimana perkawinan tanpa cinta mempengaruhi seksualitas mereka. Untuk menjawab permasalahan tersebut, penulis menggunakan studi kepustakaan untuk memperoleh teori-teori yang berhubungan dan informasi yang membantu studi ini. Data primer yaitu novel berjudul The Key dan data sekunder berasal dari internet dan buku-buku yang berhubungan dengan teori cinta, perkawinan dan seksualitas manusia. Studi ini memperlihatkan tiga hasil. Pertama, sang suami memiliki karakter sebagai seorang yang introvert dan selalu curiga terhadap orang lain sedangkan sang istri adalah seorang yang sederhana dan introvert. Kedua, karakteristik suami dan istri menyebabkan mereka tidak memiliki cinta dalam perkawinan mereka. Penyebab perkawinan tanpa cinta itu adalah kurangnya komitmen dan komunikasi diantara keduanya karena karakteristik mereka menyulitkan keduanya untuk berkomitmen dan berkomunikasi dengan baik. Ketiga, perkawinan tanpa cinta yang ditandai oleh kurangnya komitmen dan komunikasi berdampak pada seksualitas mereka, khususnya, pada ide, sikap dan perilaku seksual. Kedua karakter mempunyai ide yang berbeda tentang seks. Sang istri menganggap seks sebagai hal tabu dan kewajiban sebagai istri yang baik, sedangkan sang suami menganggap seks sebagai cara untuk mendapatkan kepuasan. Kedua karakter mempunyai sikap negatif terhadap seks sejak mereka berdua tidak benar-benar menikmati seks. Perkawinan tanpa cinta juga berdampak pada perilaku seksual yaitu perselingkuhan yang dilakukan sang istri, fantasi seksual dan aktifitas seksual pada keadaan mabuk untuk mendapatkan kepuasan seksual.

ix CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Literature is a work of imagination or creative writing. The forms of writings can be fiction, drama or poetry and they can be the results of author’s imagination and creativity as the reflection of what happens in his surrounding, for example, the story of human life. As readers, we may be confused to consider novel or fiction as the reflection of reality or as the result of author’s imagination and creativity.

Bressler said in his book Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practise(2nd edition)

Although it may simultaneously communicate facts, literature’s primary aim is to tell a story. The subject of the story is particularly human, describing and detailing of variety of human experiences, not stating facts or bits and pieces of information. By so-doing, literature concretizes an array of human values, emotions, actions and ideas in story form (1999: 11).

It is clear that he said about literature’s primary aim which is to tell a story about human life and human experiences and it may have its value of life. It can help us to understand the literary work and its whole elements based on our point of view.

Since the literature’s purpose is to tell a story about human, it directly leads us to one intrinsic element of the story, which is character. It can also covers the aspect of individual and his characteristic and also his relationship

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with other characters. Human being and their relationship are very complex, thus it influences character’s relationship in the novel.

When talking about human relationship, we can talk about the relationship between men and women. E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel said that “the main facts of human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death”. In particular Forster talked about love as the base of human relationship which can lead to an union with another human being

No human relationship is constant, it is unstable as the living beings who compose it, and they must balance like jugglers if it is to remain; if it is constant it is no longer a human relationship but a social habit, the emphasis in it has passed from love to marriage (1974: 38).

As the base of human relationship, the balance love can become the important point of a marriage, but we should realize that love is not the only point of successful marriage although we can not ignore that love is the reason why a man and a woman declare their love in a marriage. The communication between partners in a marriage can help for the successful marriage and reduce the conflicts. In a marriage, sex can be the way for partners to communicate because it expresses their love in a very intimate way and also their deepest feeling to each other. James M. Humber said that “it is natural for humans to use sex to communicate. Because sex is a communicative art...”

(in Primoratz, 1997: 154). Sometimes in a marital life, sex can create a misunderstanding between partners. Men and women are similar in their desire for loving, warmer and closer sexual relationship, but one trouble is found that they seem to have the communication problem. They wish their partner will tell what they want in their sexual life. They only think and hope

that their partner will do what they want sexually. Unfortunately, it will not happen if one of them does not take initiative. The sexual life then seems boring and it influences more to the marriage.

The sexual problem in marital life is experienced by the main characters of The Key, a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki. The main characters are a husband and a wife who have problems in communicating what they want in their sexual life. They are remaining silent of it, and after twenty years of marriage, when they grew older, the problem is going worst. They only dream and wish, but they do not tell their partners. Both partners are telling their problems of love and sexual life in their own diary that were kept secretly.

They concern of less love they have in marriage and also the sexual relationship. What happened between both characters makes me interested in choosing this topic because the writer thinks that marriage, love and sex can not be separated from the aspect of human life. In particular, love and sex give contributions to each other to make seuccessful and happy marriage.

B. Problem Formulation

1. How are the main characters described in this novel?

2. What are the possible factors that cause a loveless marriage?

3. How does it affect their sexuality?

C. Objectives of the Study

In this thesis there are three problems that are going to be discussed here. In relations to the problems, the study has three objectives. First, to find out the characteristics of the main characters. Second, to find out the possible factors that cause the main characters of The Key, in particular the husband and the wife, experience the loveless marriage. The last is to find out how the loveless marriage affects their sexuality.

D. Definition of Terms

There are definition of terms that are going to use in this study.

1. Love

Love is “a feeling of attraction and a sense of self-surrender arising out of a need and directed toward an object that offers hope of gratification

(Sadler, 1944: 134-135). E. M Forster (1974: 35) in Aspects of the Novel simplifies the meaning of love as “the desire to give and get”. On other words, love is a kind of mutual relationship between those who can give and receive the feeling of attraction.

2. Marriage

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of The English Language

Unabridged (Volume II) defines marriage is “the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife” (1981: 1384). It means that marriage is related to the relationship of a man and a woman who are united as a husband and a wife.

3. Sex and Sexuality

The “sex” term (or sexual) is commonly understood as the genital organs and its function are closely related to the “sexual intercourse” which biologically meant to have production or procreation. Whereas sexuality shows the whole characteristics by which differentiate human being as man and woman (gender) such as their physics, their psychology, their characteristic, their way of thinking, the shape of their body, etc (my translation; Gilarso, 2004: 1). We can say that human sexuality not only covers the aspect of physical but covers both physical and non-physical aspect includes sex.

4. Character

M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms defines characters are

“the persons presented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with moral and dispositional qualities that are expressed in what they say-the dialogue-and by what the do-the action” (1981:

20). A character is also an imagined person who inhabits a story. But usually we recognize in the main characters of a story, human personalities become familiar to us. It is important to know the character of the story because it makes us easier to understand based on the personal characteristics. Most writers of the literary story attempt to create characters who strike us not as stereotypes but as unique individual (Kennedy and Gioia, 1999: 60).

CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Review of Related Studies

As far as the writer knows when conducting this undergraduate thesis, the reviews and studies dealing with novel The Key have not been published yet, but there are many reviews and comments about its author, Junichiro

Tanizaki. He is said to be one of the major writers in modern Japanese literature and also the most popular Japanese novelist who was awarded

Japan's Imperial Prize in Literature in 1949. He had written 21 works during the period of 1910-1961 included novels, short stories and plays.

Tanizaki was well-known of his “wrapping technique of narrating stories”. He often used the wrapping technique in narrating most of his stories.

This technique parallels to a Japanese preoccupation with wrapping. In the

West, people tended to regard the wrapping around a gift as a way of hiding it, of teasing the recipient. If a wrapped gift were accepted and put to one side unopened, they would be offended. In Japan, on the other hand, to open a present immediately is thought to display too much interest in the object itself rather than the sentiment which motivated it. It influenced the way Tanizaki narrated his stories, he was “wrapping” the stories and let the reader find the preoccupation of ‘unwrapping” the whole stories (Atkinson, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_200307/ai_n9256307/pg_2).

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Junichiro Tanizaki had a mixed reputation and gained pro and cons toward his works. Even though he was very popular in West as the famous modern Japanese writer, but in his own country he got cons because of the uncommon topic or theme of sexuality he took was considered as vulgarity.

Although he is widely regarded in the West as one of the major figures of modern Japanese fiction, critics from his own country are ambivalent about a man who wrote so freely of sado-masochism, incest, and the erotic fantasies of elderly men-many in Japan were no doubt relieved when he died before he could be awarded the Nobel prize for which he had been so strongly tipped. (Atkinson, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_200307/ai_n9256307/ pg_2)

After Tokyo earthquake of 1923, which destroyed half the city, he moved to the Kansai region (the greater Kyoto-Osaka area), where a more traditional lifestyle still prevailed. The new environment influenced his outlook, and many of his works carry an implied condemnation of excessive interest in Western things. His works were often dealing with “the tensions between the traditional and modern culture of his native land and often used irony and the obsessive erotic desires of his characters to mirror the influence of the West on the old cultural heritage”

(http://www.litweb.net/biography/138/Junichiro_Tanizaki.html).

Tanizaki often writes of women, taking as his themes obsessive love, the destructive forces of sexuality, and the dual nature of woman as goddess and demon (http://www.questia.com/library/encyclopedia/tanizaki- junichiro.jsp). He was bravely writing the novel that took the theme of sexuality, the uncommon topic at that time. In The Key he shows that the

submissive wife can be wildly obsessed of sex and alcohol although she covers up by her traditional Japanese upbringing

The author of this novel takes the theme of sexual problem in middle age where the lacks of communication and understanding become the points of this problem as seen in the quotation below

The two protagonists start to use their diaries as a means of communication by tacitly agreeing to read each other's diaries while outwardly pretending that they do not. The diaries reveal their problems of understanding each other and separateness even during the shared activity of sexual union (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tanizaki.htm).

This work wants to give a view about the effect of loveless marriage on human sexuality. Since the main characters are husband and wife, the writer wants to show the importance of love and sex in marital life.

B. Review of Related Theories

Here the writer will elaborate some theories that will be necessary in dealing with the topic of this undergraduate thesis.

1. Theory of Character and Characterization

A character is an imagined person who inhabits a story. We usually recognize that in the main characters of a story, human personalities become familiar to us. It is important to know the character of the story because it makes us easier to understand based on the personal characteristics. Most writers of the literary story attempt to create characters who strike us not as stereotypes but as unique individual (Kennedy and Gioia, 1999: 60).

M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms (1981: 20) said that a broad distinction is frequently made by the alternative methods for

“characterizing” the person in a narrative are showing and telling. In showing, the author presents his character talking and acting and then leaves the reader to infer what the motives and disposition behind what they say and do. In telling, the author himself intervenes authoritatively in order to describe, and often to evaluate, the motives and dispositional qualities of his characters.

There are few ways in which an author makes his character understandable (Murphy, 1972: 161-173). a. Personal description

The author can describe a person’s appearance and clothes. It is a kind of

physical description that helps us to imagine the character. b. Character as seen by another

The author describes the character through the eyes and opinions of

another character and they are the reflected image of the character. c. Speech

The readers can get clues to the character through what the person says in

a conversation or when he puts forward an opinion. d. Past life

What happen in the past life can give the clue to understand what shaped a

person’s character. This can be done by the direct comment by the author,

the character’s thought, through the conversation or other characters.

e. Conversation of other characters

A clue to a person’s character can be derived through the conversation of

the other characters and the things they say about him. f. Reactions

How that person reacts to the various situations or events can give the

reader clues to the person’s character. g. Direct comment

The author can describe or give comment on a person’s character. h. Thoughts

The author can give us directly what the person’s thinking about. i. Mannerism

A clue to the person’s character can be a person’s mannerism, habits or

idiosyncrasies.

2. The Relation between Literature and Psychology

Since literature is dealing with human and taking the characters that are usually human, we can say that the object of human is also the object of psychology. Roger B. Henkle (1977: 29) in Reading the Novel: an

Introduction to the Techniques of Interpreting Fiction distinguishes novels into two modes: social novel and psychological novel. The psychological novel is said to be organized according to the mental and emotional experience of one or a few characters, while the social novel is organized through social interaction. Psychological novel focuses on an individual’s

development, including the movement of his thought, the forming of his personality and the complex internal motives that animate him. It will help us to understand the person’s feeling and attitude as we share his particular experiences extensively.

The emergence of modern psychology, especially Sigmund Freud theory of the unconscious, affected a new dimension of human drama “the working out of anxieties in dreams, the psychic patterns of trauma and repressions, of wish fulfilments and sexual desires and death wishes” (Henkle,

1977: 35). Kennedy and Gioia also said that modern psychology had an immense effect on both literature and literary criticism, allowed us to explore new and controversial areas such as wish fulfilment, sexuality, the unconscious and repression (1999: 1947). We can say that psychology will help us more to analyze the character’s mind and give understanding of what a person thinks, of his attitude and also behaviour based on psychological interpretation.

3. Theory of Love and Marriage

Love and marriage are important and they are complex aspects of people’s lives. A man and a woman who love each other usually end in marriage in order to make their love perfect. Marriage based on love is also believed to remain constant in relationship. In other words, the commitment to declare the love in an institution called marriage is expected to maintain the marital relationship between partners.

Love is “a special kind of attitude with strong emotional and behavioral components” (Crooks and Baur, 1983: 196). It means that love involves someone’s emotion or feeling and behavior dealing with the attitude towards another person. Commonly, we understand that love is distiguished into passionate love and companionate love. a. Passionate Love

Ellaine Hatfield and Richard L. Rapson (1996: 3) in Love and Sex:

Cross-Cultural Perspectives define passionate love is “a hot, intense emotion, sometimes called a crush, obsessive love, lovesickness, head-over-heels in love, infatuation, or being in love.” They defined it this way:

A state of intense longing for union with another. Passionate love is a complex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective feelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behaviors (1996: 3).

Sex researchers tend to use the terms passionate love and sexual desire almost interchangeably. This is because passionate love has been defined as a

“longing for union” and sexual desires as “a longing for sexual union”.

Researchers tended to say that passionate love may include both “longing for union and sexual union (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996: 3).

Robert Crooks and Karla Baur in Our Sexuality also define passionate love, also known as romantic love or infatuation as “a state of extreme absorption in another. It is characterized by intense feeling of tenderness, elation, anxiety, sexual desire, and ecstacy” (1983: 208). From the definition

above, we can say that the passionate love is closely to the physical aspect of a human, especially when related to the sexual desire. b. Companionate love

By contrast companionate love (sometimes called the true love or marital love) is “a warm, far less intense emotion. It combines feelings of deep attachment, commitment, and intimacy (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996: 3)”. They defined:

The affection and tenderness we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined. Companionate love is a complex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective feelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behaviors (1996: 3).

Companionate love is “a less tense emotion. It is characterized by friendly affection and a deep attachment that is based on extensive familiarity with the loved one” (Crooks and Baur, 1983: 210). It is clear that the companionate love is not involving the physical attraction at all, however, it is more to the feeling of affection and tenderness.

From that definition of passionate and companionate love, we can say that love is very complex. It covers many aspects including the physical and non-physical side. The sexual desire, infatuation, hot and intense emotion, intense feeling of tenderness, elation, anxiety, and ecstacy are the characteristics of the passionate love or romantic love, whereas, a less tense emotion affection, a deep attachment, commitment, and intimacy are the characteristics of the companionate or marital love.

True love or companionate love is necessary to a truly happy marriage.

Because the purpose of marriage is to gain happiness by the union of two people, love can become the basis of the happy marriage. Marriage is also called “the union of love” that is legalized by an institution; it should be based on love and commitment between a man and a woman as partners in life to gain the happiness. Unfortunately, in the past time, marriages were arranges through contracts between parents; “romance” was not expected to play a part.

“Happiness” is sometimes thought to be an automatic outcome of marriage.

(Crooks and Baur, 1983: 455-456)

Igor Primoratz in Human Sexuality also emphasis that the importance of marriage institution that can control the human sexuality. He said “unlike the procreation view, which sees human sexuality as originally animal like and means to elevate it by channelling into it socially (and religiously) sanctioned institution of marriage... (1997: xiv)”.

There was a time when marriage meant procreation, but this is no longer true. The desire for children is common to most young married people but as the years pass, the time eventually arrives when the family is complete.

Successful sex life in a marriage can not be so difficult to achieve unless husband and wife realize that sex is a beautiful thing to be shared and as the expression of their love and feelings in an intimacy. In middle age, the marital life can face the declines in satisfaction, commitment, expression of love, romantic feelings and friendship (Morris, 1990: 389).

The stability in a marriage may be gained from the balance of three components of love; Robert J. Sternberg mentioned it as “triangular theory of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment” (in Brannon, 1996: 242, 254).

Intimacy means the intimate communication between partners. Intimacy is also the desire for close, confidential communication with the other (Crooks and Baur, 1983: 196). Passion can mean the intense sexual desire between the partners. Then, commitment can mean the decision to keep the relationship in a marriage institution. According to Sternberg as quoted from Brannon’s

Gender: Psychological Perspectives, relationships that have only one of the components should be more stable than those that lack one. Furthermore, love relationship that have two components should be stable than those with only one (1996: 254). Love relationships without institutional support, such as cohabition is easily to break up than marriage, even though the institutional support for marriage is not the guarantee for stable relationship between partners.

Commonly married people expect their partner to be more seductive, initiate sex more, be more experimental, be more complimentary, be wilder and sexier, talk more lovingly, give more instructions, and be warmer and more involved (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996: 142). Men and women create different activities to make intimate communication. In a marriage, sex is often used by men to create intimacy and means of communication but women create emotional intimacy through talk and self-disclosure (Brannon, 1996:

244). The difference in communication between men and women can create a

misunderstanding between both partners. It makes difficult for them to talk to each other. Brannon said that “both interpret the underlying messages as well as the words, and the differences in styles may lead men and women to understand messages that their partners did not intend to send (1996: 245)”. It means that the different style of communicating can create misunderstanding or even conflict between partners.

4. Theory of Human Sexuality

Jay Braun, Darwyn E. Linder and Isaac Asimov (1979: 382) in

Psychology Today: An Introduction (4th edition) explain more about human sexuality as the subject of great interest to all of us as sexual beings. Human sexuality is begun with the sex diversity: male and female that lead to the concept of gender: maleness and femaleness. Genetic factors, hormonal influences and social influences make a great influence to the gender identity and gender roles. In particular, the social and cultural influence affects how a person relates to other people emotionally and sexually, the things that will arouse the individual sexually, and much more (1979: 385).

Ruth Blaier gave a long explanation about human sexuality:

Our individual sexuality, like our natures, are socially constructed from our individual histories of interactions with other people and society, and they continually change....A person’s sexuality may express a desire or need to be vulnerable to another person or, alternatively, a determination never to be vulnerable to another person. It can express a general need to experience commitment to, dependence on, submission to transcendence with, or physical-psychic unity with another person. It can express a need to always be in control of oneself, of another person, of all situations, or of all people one develops any relationship with. On the other hand, it can express the

need to be, for once, not in control, but to surrender control to another. Sexuality can be seen also as a survival mechanism; a trading of needs and desires, a desire to be liked, needed, wanted, indispensable, the highest priority in someone else’s life. Sexuality can be perceived as a measure of one’s attractiveness to other people, as a route to intimacy, as the way to be entrusted with another’s vulnerability. Perhaps too obvious to mention is the possibility that sexuality may also have something to do with love...and with (uncomplicated?) physical pleasure. And, of course, our sexuality can express many of these needs at different times and simultaneously (in Hatfield and Rapson, 1996: 112).

She wants to show that human sexuality is very complex but naturally bound up to every human being. Human being grown up during his every phase of life to find out the maturity of individual sexuality that influenced by the social-environmental situation, and the interaction to other people surround him. The sexuality expresses the desire to unite to another person physically, emotionally, and psychologically in an intimate way.

In Our Sexuality, Robert Crooks and Karla Baur (1983: 3) said that human sexuality is governed more by psychological factors (motivational, emotional and attitudinal) and by social conditioning (the process by which we learn our society expectations and norms) than by the biological factors such as hormones or instinct. The psychological and social factors influenced our sexual attitude, ideas and behaviour more than the sexual instinct and hormones because these biological factors exist naturally since we are born, whereas, the psychological and social factors shapes our sexuality through the process.

Related to the ideas of sexuality, in his introduction on Human

Sexuality, Igor Primoratz said that there are four major theories of human

sexuality. Sex has been conceived as bound up with procreation, or with love, or as a type of body language or finally as a source of a certain type of pleasure (1997: xxi). Sex that bound up with procreation is presented as a natural function to fulfil someone’s maturity and to get the children. Sex that bound up with love can be explained as a way to express the deepest love between a man and a woman. Sex can be the language of those people to communicate their feelings to each other. Sex as a source of certain pleasure means that sex is a source to fulfil the sexual desire and sexual instinct that can create a kind of pleasure.

Gender roles also give the influence to human sexuality. The belief about the maleness and femaleness, the assumption about the appropriate sexual behaviour according to the norms may influence human sexuality.

Woman is seen as undersexed, while men are oversexed. Women are believed to be inherently less sexually inclined than men. Women is told by her parents, peers, and books that sex is something a woman should do to please a man especially her husband. The society also emphasised that

“normal women” do not enjoy sex as much as men. Some women, believing that it is not appropriate to be easily aroused sexually; they should hide their normal responses to the sexual arouses. Men are believed to be initiator while women are recipients. In most societies, men should initiate intimate relationships with their partners. A man is said to be active, assertive, and even aggressive in controlling the sexuality. In contrast, a woman may not act like that because she is taught to have a role of “passivity”. It may result in sex

becoming more of a duty than a pleasure. Men also said to be a “sexperts”; to enjoy the role as a sex teacher. It seems that men understand the sexual needs better than women (Crooks and Baur, 1983: 47-51).

In Love and Sex: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Elaine Hatfield and

Richard L. Rapson also talked about the study case of sexual satisfaction in marital life. The opinion towards the sexual satisfaction between the couples in marriage changed through time. Earlier, they said that men and women were different and unequal; also sex was considered as a woman’s distasteful duty and it urged women to shed their traditional passivity and enjoy sex.

Then, the opinion changed that men had a duty as a “sexual teacher” and his job was to awaken his wife dormant sex drive. Now, the ideal was of male and female sexual autonomy. Both men and women were portrayed as sexual, independent agents, self-sufficient and in control of their own sexuality (1996:

136). It means that the duty to fulfil the sexual satisfaction in a marriage is not only the duty of a wife or a husband only, but it is the duty of both partners as a way to express their sexuality, love and feeling.

Jay Braun, Darwyn E. Linder and Isaac Asimov in Psychology Today:

An Introduction (4th edition) defines attitude is “a relatively enduring evaluation formed on the basis of two components: knowledge and beliefs about an object (a person, as situation, a behaviour) and affective reactions to the object” (1979: 582). More simply it is said that “attitudes are likes and dislikes” (Braun et al., 1979: 567). People have different attitudes about an enormous number of subjects whether they are negatives or positives.

Attitudes can be formed through the condition in which a positive or negative emotional reaction becomes associated with some object and through the repeated behaviours. Thus, the attitude towards sex varies from person to person. It can be positive or negative depends on the knowledge and beliefs about sex.

Sigmund Freud, a well-known psychologist said that the basis of human behaviour is to be found in various unconscious instincts or drives. The instincts are distinguished into death instincts (show up as self-destructive, suicidal tendencies or aggression towards others) and life instincts (the survival of individual includes hunger, thirst, self-preservation and especially sex).

Freud used the term of “sexual instinct” not just to refer to erotic sexuality but to the desire for virtually any form of pleasure. The death and life instincts is a part if the id that operates based on the “pleasure principle” that is “the way in which the id seeks immediate gratification of an instinct”

(Morris, 1990: 451). Since the id is an unconscious part of human mind, we can say that sex is an unconscious desire that will continually seek expression to fulfil the pleasure. But we should not forget that there are ego and super ego that control our unconscious mind. The ego that operates by “reality principle” mediates between “environmental demands (reality), conscience (super ego) and instinctual needs (id)”. The super ego that is “the social and parental standard of what one would like to be” (Morris, 1990: 452) also will control the basis of our instincts includes sex.

The psychosexual stages introduced the way in which the sexual instinct is satisfied during the course of life. a. Oral Stage ( birth to 18 months)

The first stage in which the infant’s erotic feelings centre to mouth, lips

and tongue. b. Anal Stage (roughly 18 months to 3 ½ years)

Second stage when a child’s erotic feelings centre on anus. c. Phallic Stage (after age 3 and so)

Erotic feelings centre on the genitals. Children discover their genitals and

the pleasure of masturbation. At this time a child may experience Oedipus

Complex, which is a child’s sexual attachment to the parent of the

opposite sex and jealously toward the parent of the same sex. In this

period, boys will attract more to their mothers while girls attract more to

their fathers. d. Latency Period (5 or 6 years to 12 or 13 years)

A period after phallic stage in which the child appears to have no interest

in the opposite sex. Boys play with boys, girls play with girls, and neither

sex takes much interest in the others. e. Genital Stage

At this time, our sexual impulses reawaken and directed toward member of

the opposite sex. In love making, the adolescent and the adult are able to

satisfy unfulfilled desires from infancy and childhood. Ideally, immediate

gratification of these desires is replaced by mature sexuality, in which

postponed gratification, a sense of responsibility, and caring for others all

play a part.

The sexual behaviour refers to the sexual activities and its patterns can be masturbation, erotic fantasy and dreams, shared touching, oral-genital stimulation and coitus (Crooks and Baur: 1983: 252). When a person reaches its genital stage and he is mature and responsible enough to control his sexuality, marriage can be the institution that can control human sexuality, in particular the sexual behaviours as quoted from Human Sexuality “unlike the procreation view, which sees human sexuality as originally animal like and means to elevate it by channelling into it socially (and religiously) sanctioned institution of marriage... (Primoratz, 1997: xiv). All healthy men and women are physiologically equipped to respond both physical stimulation (touching and being touched by the hands, lips, body and perhaps objects) and psychological stimulation (provocative sights, sounds, behaviour and erotic fantasies (Braun et al., 1979: 387-388). Both men and women can become sexually aroused by psychological and physical stimulation; but effective sexual stimulation varies from person to person. They can be aroused by the touch in erogenous zone that is varies with the individual, visual stimulation, and sexual fantasies to arouse the sexual response (1979: 398). More, “the key to understanding human sexual arousal remains locked in emotional processes which we do not…fully understand” (1979: 389). Feeling relaxed and affectionate are more effective than feeling anxious and hostile in sexual arousal.

Most people think human sexuality increases at puberty; it reaches full strength at early adulthood, gradually fades away with increasing age, and eventually stops. We can not ignore that the increasing of age can affect the decrease of hormones production and the physical condition influences the sexual responsiveness, particularly, in the middle age. There will be a time when a person can not be aroused or satisfied sexually. The individual may be tired, preoccupied, drunk, angry at the partner, anxious about “performing” well, or simply uninterested in sex at that time (Braun et al., 1979: 391). The sexual problem can be the responsibility of both partners and sexual interaction can not be improved without communication between partners and the effort to reduce the anxiety and negative attitude towards sex.

C. Theoretical Framework

The theory of character and characterization is needed to answer the first problem about the characteristic of the major character. This theory will help more to identify the characteristic of the husband and the wife in this novel. The theory of love and marriage is used to analyze the second problem about the possible factors that cause the loveless marriage. The last theory is the theory of human sexuality, will be applied to answer the last problem.

How the loveless marriage affects the major character’s sexuality will be examined using the theory of human sexuality. Therefore, the writer thinks that the theory of character and characterization, theory of love and marriage, and theory of human sexuality will help more to analyze the three problems.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The study particularly focuses on the novel entitled The Key. This novel was written by a Japanese author, Junichiro Tanizaki, originally published as Kagi in 1956 and then became the best seller. This tenth edition of this novel was translated into English by Howard Hibbert and published by

Tuttle Publishing Tokyo in 2001. The novel was narrated by the husband and the wife in parallel diaries, telling about their sexual desires to their partners.

Both husband and wife wrote their own diaries and kept them secretly.

Actually, they knew that their partners kept diaries but none of them would ask for it even to look what were written in the diaries.

The husband who first wrote the diary, telling about his dissatisfied wife, his fear that in his middle age he would never give sexual satisfaction to his wife and also the fear that his wife would have an affair with a young fellow, Mr. Kimura. Frustrated, the husband decided to keep a diary of his sexual acts with his wife, hoping that she would read it and the book would act as a bridge between them. The wife, Ikuko, also felt dissatisfied with her husband after love-making. She did it because as an old-fashioned woman, she had to obey her husband. She did whatever her husband wanted, even against her will, because she considered it as her duty. She eventually attracted to Mr.

Kimura and found the sexual satisfaction, had an affair because she thought

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that her marriage was dreadful. Realizing that his wife had an affair because he could not give sexual satisfaction, the husband tried several ways to improve his sexual satisfaction including the injections of hormones and stimulants, but unfortunately they made him paralyze and die.

B. Approach of the Study

The psychological approach will be applied in conducting this study.

The psychological approach uses the various theories of psychology in order to give understanding and explain about the character’s personality and his problem related to the psychological side. This approach attempts to explain how and why of human actions without developing an aesthetic theories.

Literature also related to the psychology. The writer can use the understanding provided by psychology to enrich the stories and it also help to analyze the characters. This approach may gain the understanding of human behaviour and conflict seen from the psychological point of view.

Modern psychology has had an immense effect on both literature and literary criticism. Psychological criticism often employs three approaches.

First, it investigates the creative process of the artist: what the nature of literary genius is, and how it relates to normal mental functions. The second is the psychological study of a particular artist. Most modern literary biographies employ psychology to understand their subject’s motivation and behaviour.

The third common area of psychological criticism is the analysis of fictional

characters, which tries to bring modern insight about human behaviour to the study of how fictional people act (Kennedy and Gioia, 1999: 1947).

The reason why the writer chooses this approach because it will show the psychological side of characters and will help to answer how the loveless marriage affects the main characters’ sexuality.

C. Method of the Study

The library research is done to deal with more theories related to the study and to get more information that may support the study. The primary source is the novel entitled The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki and secondary sources are from the internet and books related to theories of love, marriage and human sexuality.

Dealing with the study, there are several steps taken. The first was reading and re-reading the novel to understand about the story and character.

The second step was to find references and books to get the theory of character and characterization, theory of love and marriage and also theory of human sexuality that helped the writer to answer the problem formulation. The third step was using the theory of character and characterization to describe the characteristic of the main characters, using the theory of love and marriage to find out the causes of loveless marriage and using theory of human sexuality to find out how the loveless marriage affects the characters’ sexuality. The last step was making the conclusion of the analysis that answered the problems.

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

This chapter will be the analysis of three problems that need to be answered. The first is the analysis of the characteristics of the main characters, here, the husband and the wife. Second is the analysis of the possible factors that cause a loveless marriage experienced by both characters in their marital life. The last is the analysis of the effect of the loveless marriage on human sexuality revealed by the characters of husband and wife.

A. The Characteristics of the Main Characters

X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia (1999: 60) in Literature: An

Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama said that through the character we usually recognize human personalities and it is important to know the character of the story because it makes us easier to understand based on the personal characteristics. There are few ways in which an author makes his character understandable: personal description, character as seen by another, speech, past life, conversation of other characters, reactions, direct comment, thoughts and mannerism (Murphy, 1972: 161-173). The main characters in this novel are a husband and a wife whose characteristics will be elaborated here.

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1. The Husband

The husband is introverted and very suspicious of other people especially his wife. He rarely shares his feelings to others, and only trusts his thought to his own secret diary. He always worries that his wife will find and read his diary. He keeps the diary in a drawer locked by a key that he has hidden all the time. Every time he comes back home, he always checks whether the key is in the same place as he leaves the house or not. He also tapes the diary, in case when his wife tries to open the diary, he will know it soon. Actually he has a lot of diaries written before they were married, but this diary is very special because telling about their sexual problem, a topic that is ignored by his wife to be discussed. He has the fear that Ikuko will find the diary, even though he expects that she will read it.

His wife, Ikuko also thinks her husband’s degree of suspicion is very high, as she told in her diary. Her husband’s habit to lock the drawer, often makes her think that her husband suspects she will read it without permission although she swears of never reading it.

What hurts me, though, is that he’s so suspicious. Apparently he doesn’t feel safe unless he takes the trouble to lock it away and hide the key (p. 9-10).

One day, the wife finds that the husband forgets to hide the key and she considers it as an odd thing because he is very careful to keep his diary untouched by anyone

Yet I can’t believe he dropped it out of sheer carelessness. That would be very unlike him. In all his years of keeping a diary he’s never done anything of the kind (p. 9).

He also always feels suspicious of Ikuko, that she will have an affair with another man because he is inadequate as a husband to fulfil her sexual desire. As a man in his middle age, his physical decline is something that disturbs him more, knowing that his wife in her forty four is still attractive. In his fifty-five, the bodily needs can not be fully satisfied because of the decreasing of hormones, losing of vitality, high blood pressure, and especially the decline in function of reproductive organs as usually experienced by other men in their middle age (Morris, 1990: 384). He realizes his physical decline by saying, “only, my physical stamina is not match for hers” (p 5-6). To give the physical enjoyment to his wife concerns him more because he is easily fatigued by love-making. Indeed, it makes him very anxious that another man knows about his wife’s physical endowment and his sexual inadequacy then will take the chance to attract his wife.

It is hard for him to think that his wife will have fallen in love to

Kimura, because his wife is usually cool toward guests, especially men, but she is friendly enough to Kimura. His suspicion changes into the deep jealousy since his wife repeats murmuring Kimura’s name every time she had fainted, drunken or when they make love. He thinks about it repeatedly, from time to time, he tries to convince himself that Ikuko will never betray him, however, the feeling of jealousy takes control of his mind, makes him suspicious of his wife every time she goes outside home. He will be wondering where she goes, for what reason she goes out and with whom.

Moreover, the husband is an introverted person. He rarely talks to others about his feelings, even to his wife. Sometimes he wants a warmer relationship with her, how he needs more love and affection. He keeps in his heart about all his wishes and imaginations that his marriage will be better.

Never to whisper a few soft, loving words as we lie in each other’s arms- is that a real marriage? I am writing out of frustration at never having a chance to talk about our sexual problems. From now on, whether she reads this or not, I shall assume that she does, and that I am talking to her indirectly (p. 5)

His introverted personality can be seen in his habit of writing diaries.

He only feels free to write it in a diary, because of thinking that he will never have a chance to talk to his wife. Through the diary he is hoping that she will know what he feels. The husband writes freely about his sexual relations with

Ikuko, his wife because he does not want to talk to her directly by the reason that she will feel offended. His greatest fear is that the diary will hurt her, even though the diary means to be the bridge between them both.

I have always avoided commenting on my sexual relations with Ikuko, for fear that she might surreptitiously read my diary and be offended (p. 1)

He likes to spend most of his time in his studying room for reading, doing his work, writing his diary or only sitting and looking at the outside view from the window. His studying room becomes the private place for him; even his wife rarely enters the room except for cleaning the room. His studying room becomes his “small world” where he can spend most of time to do what he likes most, and of course it becomes the place where he keeps a lot of diaries.

In his life, he tries not to tell the other people about his problem, always pretending that everything is going well. He realizes that in fifty five years old, it is difficult for him to have sexual act normally as the twenty years younger man. He had injections of male hormones and stimulants every four or five days to increase his sexual performance in bed. He ignores the risk that the hormones and stimulants can increase his blood-rate, make him paralyze, lose memory, thus his health gradually becomes worst. Gradually he has the symptoms of paralysis such as dizziness, doubling and distortion of his vision, and lapses of memory. However, his anxiety that his wife will turn to another man persists him to ignore the risk even though the doctor had advised him to take a rest and prevent the sexual activity that may cause him paralyze. He does not tell his wife, Ikuko about his sickness and manage to survive it without telling anyone, without even letting it is noticed (p. 71).

Ikuko may notice about her husband’s health, but feels that no way to find out because her husband never tells her about it and pretends to stay calm.

She can not force her husband to tell everything

I wonder if my husband’s diary reveals anything about the state of his health. How much does it worry him? I have no way to find out what he’s thinking, of course, but for at least a month I’ve noticed that there’s something wrong. (p. 108).

She finally met Dr. Kodama and Dr. Noma who told her about the state of her husband’s health. She understands that telling about his problem is something that is very difficult for her husband to do. However, she is surprised that

“unlike most educated men, he tended to ignore his doctor’s advice” (p. 167).

The husband can not communicate what he feels and what he thinks.

He also has difficulties to show or express his feelings and thoughts. As an introverted person, he centres his attention and his thought to himself.

Although sometimes he thinks about the way to satisfy Ikuko, his wife, actually it means to his own need of satisfaction. He only dreams and imagines about everything in his life, especially when it is related to the feeling towards Ikuko, and the fact that he is passionately in love to her. When seeing his wife, he can not deny the desire to get more in their marital sex.

However, he never tells about it because he knows about his wife’s ignorance of the topic. Thus, she will not know what is in his mind unless he tells her.

2. The Wife

The wife, Ikuko, is a modest and introverted person. She is very proud of her old-fashioned thinking and behaviour, what she calls as “traditional upbringing” and rarely shares her feelings to others, even to her husband. In her life, she only follows and believe what is taught by her parents, what she calls as “refinement” and “feminine modesty”. Her parents had taught her to behave like the other conventional wives who have to be dutiful, unaggressive, calm, and careful in speech, thought, and behaviour. She is very dutiful to her husband, and also to her parents. She married him because her parents wanted her to, not because she fell in love with him. Although she often thinks that her decision is wrong, and her marriage is dreadful, she has to spend her life with him because she had no choice.

But now I have the feeling that I accepted a man who is utterly wrong for me. Of course I have to put up with him, since he’s my lawful husband (p. 13).

She is an old-fashioned woman who rarely wears Western clothing and usually wears Kimono in daily life. Physically, she is well proportioned for a

Japanese woman of her age, and kimonos fit her figure very well. When she wears Western clothes, the dress does not seem to suit her and her figure. At that time, it is very popular to wear “Japanese things in a Western manner” but

Ikuko does the opposite things. Her husband notices that “there was a lack of harmony between her clothes, her accessories, and her figure” (p. 122).

Although she wears a western dress, her manner is truly the model of the traditional Japanese woman. The way she walks, speaks and her body language can not fit to the western clothes. After all, her true style is kimono.

Talking about their sexual relations is “what she most dislikes” (p. 6).

She refuses to talk about sex because she considers it as an “unnatural thing” or as taboo. Her husband knows that talking about it will make her ashamed.

In their twenty years of marriage, “She refuses to do more than perform the act in silence” (p. 5). She never says or whispers the loving words as had expected because a woman ought to be calm and never shows her feelings.

In their sexual relations, Ikuko always maintains the conventional love-making, old-fashioned mode of sexual relationship, even though her husband always complains about the same method and the same position she will not change

I suppose it’s not unreasonable of him to think of me in that way. But my parents brought me up to believe that a woman ought to be quiet and demure, certainly never aggressive toward a man (p. 12).

She does not like to try another position or fore-play, either refuses to express her sexual excitement because she was grown with a belief that “a woman ought to be quiet and demure, certainly never aggressive toward a man (p. 12).

As a modest wife, she has to have a well-manner. Whenever she is drinking alcohol, she will suppress her reaction so well that people often realize that she has too much. Then if she gets drunk, she will hide in the lavatory as she said that “I’ve got into the habit of shutting myself up in the lavatory as soon as I begin to feel unsteady” (p. 35) because it is an embarrassing thing for a woman to be seen in that state.

Her husband’s decision is the most important. She had no objection.

When Toshiko wants to move out, she said “Go ask Papa yourself, and see what he says,…..If Papa says it’s all right, I won’t object” (p. 43). When her daughter, Toshiko, finds out that there are a lot of pictures of her lying naked that are pasted in Kimura’s book, she says that those pictures were taken when she’s drunk. It makes her so ashamed. Then, she convinces Toshiko that it is

Papa who took those pictures. As a dutiful wife, she will do everything that her husband asks her to. For twenty years, she thinks that a marriage should be like this. She had felt obliged to suppress her dissatisfaction with her husband.

Even it is against her will, she has to obey her husband because it is believed to be, as taught by her parents.

The wife is an introverted person. She does not like to share what she feels or thinks to another person. She rarely talks to her husband about anything, never speaks up, or begins a conversation. She said

I don’t like to let others know what is in my own mind, and I don’t care to pry into theirs.....This year I’m beginning a diary of my own. Someone like me, someone who doesn’t open her heart to others, needs to talk to her self, at least (p. 10).

For that reason, she only shares her feeling and thought in her secret diary because she does not want to talk to anyone. Her introverted personality is also recognized by the way she does not want to involve herself into someone’s privacy, even though it is her husband’s private diary. She pretends to ignore, it seems that she never wants to pry herself into someone’s privacy

I am definitely not reading his diary. He ought to realize that I’m very old fashioned, a woman who’s been carefully brought up, who wouldn’t dream of infringing on anyone’s privacy (p. 56).

Her introverted personality makes her a secretive person. At first her husband does not realize that his wife is keeping a diary because she uses rice papers and writing-bush to make no noise that will attract him. She also writes her diary only when her husband is not at home; she always waits until he goes out before writing the diary. Sometimes, she does all her writing late at night when her husband sleeps. Then, she tapes the diary in order to be noticed easily if her husband opens it. She knows that her husband keeps a diary too; however, she prefers to keep her own secretly, not to be read by her husband.

She always changes the hiding place, tries not to make a mistake that can make her secret is revealed.

She was grown up with well-manner of traditional Japanese woman that had her not to show up her deepest feeling to others. When she feels that

Kimura is very attractive than her husband, she can only dreams about it. As a normal person who never feels the sexual satisfaction from her husband, Ikuko often imagines Mr. Kimura. It makes her arouse, fully satisfied. She often feels displeased about the sexual relationship with her husband and often complains quietly about how dull and monotonous he has been during their twenty years of marriage, leaving her feel dissatisfied of his touch

Never in more than twenty years of marriage had my husband given me an experience like that. How dull and monotonous it had always been-dreary, stale, leaving a disagreeable aftertaste (p. 36).

Because of her dissatisfaction, she writes in her diary about the way her husband treats her in bed. Whenever thinking about what happened the last night in bed, makes her feel ashamed and angry. She can not complain to him but she shows her anger and shame by her way to be quiet in bed and never shows her sexual desire because as a modest wife, she is hoped to repress all her dissatisfaction in front of her husband.

B. The Causes of Loveless Marriage

Love and marriage are important and they are complex aspects of people’s lives. In a marriage, companionate love (sometimes called true love or marital love) is expected to exist in order to gain the happiness in a marriage. Companionate love is “a warm, far less intense emotion. It combines the feelings of deep attachment, commitment and intimacy”

(Hatfield and Rapson, 1996: 3). More, Crooks and Baur (1983: 210) said that the companionate love is not involving the physical attraction at all, however it is more to the feeling of affection and tenderness. We can say that love covers many aspects including the physical and non-physical side. The husband in The Key seems to passionately in love with his wife, Ikuko. He has a great sexual desire to his wife, obssesed and infatuated with her physical attractiveness. During twenty years of marriage, he rarely shows his affection or tenderness to her. He think sex as the way to communicate his feeling and his admiration to her, and consider that make her satisfaction in bed as the expression of love. It is not true love because the husband only concern about the “longing for sexual union” (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996: 3). On other hand, the wife does not love her husband since the first time of their marriage. She considers that to be an obedient and dutiful wife is enough to show her duty to her husband and her parents. Bearing a daughter for him, taking care of the household job, serving her husband in bed are more important in her life.

The stability in a marriage may be gained from the balance of three components of love; Robert J. Sternberg mentioned it as “triangular theory of love: intimacy, passion and commitment” (in Brannon, 1996: 242, 254).

Intimacy can mean the close and intimate communication, passion can mean intense sexual desire and commitment can mean the desicion to keep the marriage. Ikuko and her husband has been married for more than twenty years, they have passion or sexual desire but their marriage seems to have less commitment and less communication.

1. Lack of Commitment

Two people who love each other usually end in a marriage in order to make their love perfect. A marriage is the best way to declare their love and make it legal. Marriage is not only about estabilishing a home or getting children, but also about maintaining the commitment between both partners and dealing with the marital problems. Thus, a marriage is a commitment between the partners to gain the happiness by their union based on love.

However, the main characters of The Key experience a different thing. Their marriage is an arranged marriage.

Ikuko is a modest person. She is a kind of traditional Japanese woman who is really obedient to her parents. She married her husband because she had to obey her parent's will. She said in her diary that “I married him because my parents wanted me to, and for all these years I’ve thought marriage was suppose to be like this” (p. 13). Her parents had taught that as a daughter she had to follow what is said and also to follow the old tradition that parents who has the right to choose the mate for their children. She had no choice in finding her spouse because in the past time, marriages were arranges through contracts between parents, “romance” was not expected to play a part and

“happiness” is thought to be an automatic outcome of marriage (Crooks and

Baur, 1983: 455-456). She has never been intimate with the other men so that when her parent told her to marriage his husband, she had to have no

objection. Ikuko, as an obedient daughter, considers her marriage as the commitment towards her parents, not towards her husband.

The husband is an introverted person who had “lacked of experienced with many other women” (p. 7). He rarely made friendship or socialized with the others especially women neither had he been intimate with women. Since studying in the university he only spent most his time by reading a book or writing in his note books. Now, he is a professor who has a good relationship with his coleagues in the university, in fact, his close friends are only two, Dr.

Noma and Dr. Kodama. The only woman who attracts him is his wife, Ikuko.

He is “passionately in love with her” (p. 7) because since the first time, he was mesmerized by his wife’s physical endowment and her natural beauty of

Japanese woman. It made him agree to marry her with the hope that in future he would have the whole body and love of his wife. He is obsessed by his wife’s body and her physical endowment, also he always feels an anxiety that his wife will intimate with another man.

Their marriage is not based on the commitment between them both, but it is an arranged marriage. Actually, when two people, a man and a woman decide to marry, there must be several steps to be taken before making a commitment that is legalized by the law. They should take much time to know each other's characters or personality. In this novel, their marriage is lack of the commitment because it was not their decision, but the parent's. They did not know each other until they married and they did not understand fully about the characters of their spouse. After getting married, Ikuko played her part as a

good house wife, while her husband played as a good head of house.

Furthermore, Ikuko realizes that her marriage “was a dreadful mistakes”(p.

12) because they can not simply understand each other. Often she think there should be a better partner for her and for him too. The husband never cares whether she is happy or not. He only cares about their sexual relationship. Her marriage is very monotonous, she only does her job as a housewife, serving her husband the best she can do because a traditional Japanese wife is expected to be like this. She said to Toshiko, her daughter that

I was only obeying your father. I do whatever he wants, even against my will, because I consider it my duty. It may be hard for you to understand, but to a person like myself, brought up on old morality, there’s no choice in the matter (p. 74).

The arranged marriage is not only about the commitment between a man and a woman, but also the commitment to the parents. Whether she likes or not, she has to accept the decision because it is the duty to her parents.

2. Lack of Communication

Intimacy is “the desire for close, confidential communication with the other” (Crooks and Baur, 1983:196). It also means the intimate communication between partners. An intimate communication is needed between the two people so that they can understand each other because the openness is the goal of communication. The openness is gained by the good communicaton. The husband and the wife can communicate everything including their feelings, their doubt of their partners’ faith, their dissapointment, problems and anything in their marital life. Thus, the people

can not live without others, they need friends and partners. The partner is the person for whom we can share or discuss anything in our marital life.

Both characters of The Key have the characteristics that makes them very difficult to open theirselves to each other. The husband is an introverted person. He is also very suspicious of his wife. On other hand, the wife is a modest and also introverted person. It is difficult for them to gain the openness. During the twenty years of marriage, the wife never complained about the monotonous marriage. With a daughter who is old enough to marry, she never shows her dissatisfaction. They also rarely share nor talk to each other. Ikuko never begins the conversation with her husband, she only answer when she is asked. When he complains, she only remains quiet. Sometimes she thinks “it’s not unreasonable of him to think of me in that way” (p. 12), however, she can not complain because a wife is told to obey and to be quiet.

Even though she feels ashamed and angry when thinking of what her husband did with her in their bed, she keeps quiet because she consider it as her duty because “in the old days a virtuous woman simply obeyed her husband’s wishes, no matter how indecent or how disgusting” (p. 65).

Ikuko has been grown up with the traditional belief that a woman should have a feminine modesty and act in a well manner. Her parents had taught her to behave like the other conventional wives who have to be dutiful, unaggressive, calm, and careful in speech, thought, and behaviour. A man is the leader and the head of the household. All decisions are taken by the husband except for something that the husband consider too trivial for his own

attention. When their daughter, Toshiko wants to move out, she asked her to go to Papa. She said “Go ask Papa yourself, and see what he says,…..If Papa says it’s all right, I won’t object” (p. 43). As a dutiful wife, the husband’s decision and agreement is important in making a decision.

The wife also never wants to involve herself into someone’s privacy, even though it is her husband’s. She keeps pretending ignorance to others’ business. She keeps the diary in order to talk to herself, not to be read by other people. She said

I began it solely for the purpose of talking to myself, since I don’t like to open my heart to another person. Now that it’s obviously being read by someone else, I suppose I ought to abandon it. Yet the “someone” is my husband, and we have an unspoken agreement to behave as if we weren’t aware of each other’s secrets (p. 55).

The husband is very suspicious of his wife. When thinking about his disability to satisfy his wife, he always supposes she will have an affair with another man. “I know that I am inadequate as a husband, and yet- suppose she will become involved with another man” (p. 6). After all, the fact that his wife in her forty four years old is still attractive makes him worry and jealous, especially toward Kimura-san, the boyfriend of his daughter. His wife is usually cool toward the guests, but surprisingly she is friendly enough to

Kimura. It adds his felling of suspicion. Many people think that jealousy is a measure of love and devotion, but Crooks and Baur (1983: 198) said that the feeling of jealousy is more related to fear of losing someone we posses or control than we love. The husband’s jealousy is more to the feeling that he will lose his wife because Kimura-san is more attractive than him.

Furthermore, the husband is also an introverted person who likes to write the diaries instead of telling his wife about his thought and feeling. He said, “I am writing out of frustration at never having a chance to talk to her about our sexual problem (p. 5). His feeling of frustration is caused by his suspiciousness and also by Ikuko who always denies him. He prefers to write the diary instead of talking to her because he can write freely about everything, including the risqué topic that will make her feel offended. He hopes the diary will become the bridge between them.

Both husband and wife are introverted persons who like to keep the feelings, problems, thoughts by themselves and rarely share to others. They only talk to themselves about the dissatisfaction, and the disabilities of their partners to understand them. They think and guess then hope that their partners will realize about that they want their partners to do. The husband’s suspicion to his wife makes everything worse. Also his wife’s modesty to pretend calm, ignorant and never cares about other’s business makes them more difficult to communicate.

In a marriage, sex is often used by men to create intimacy and means of communication but women create emotional intimacy through talk and self- disclosure (Brannon, 1996: 244). It is true that the husband usually use sex as the way to communicate, however it is different when considering the wife. If women usually create emotional intimacy through talk and self-disclosure, the wife’s introverted personality and traditional upbringing restrict her to talk and get self-disclosure with her husband. Both husband and wife have less

communication in their marriage, especially to the sensitive topic such as the sex topic. Brannon said that “both interpret the underlying messages as well as the words, and the differences in styles may lead men and women to understand messages that their partners did not intend to send (1996: 245)”. It happens in their marriage that the husband always blames his wife that she is too demanding, she should be more seductive, be more experimental, be wilder and sexier (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996: 142); on other hand the wife blames her husband that he ought to learn how to satisfy her and she does not want to understand his sexual decline.

Moreover, the husband and wife were stuck in formal relationship where affection and even anger was left unexpressed. The members of the family are rarely talking to each other. They only have a little time to chat in a formal way, in a sheer of politeness when they are in the dining room, or when they have a guest. Both husband and wife have togetherness only in their bed room in the night. Along the day, the husband spends his time in the university because he is a professor. When he comes home, he usually shut himself off in his studying room, except for the meal time or having a guest. Furthermore, there is no closeness between the daughter and the parents. Their daughter,

Toshiko, likes to stay in her room than to spend the time with her parents.

Every time her parents drink alcohol with her boyfriend, Kimura, she prefers to leave the sitting room than to involve with them. Finally she decides to move out rather than stay with her parents. Maybe she feels ashamed by her

parent’s habit of drinking alcohol and her mother who always gets drunk and fainted in the bathtub.

C. The Effects of Loveless Marriage on Human Sexuality

Sexuality as the part of human beings can not be separated from the aspect of human lives. Human sexuality begun with the sex diversity: male and female that lead to the concept of gender: maleness and femaleness

(Braun et al., 1979: 385). During human development, a lot of factors can influence it, for example, environment, society and norms. Those factors may restrict sex until the right time it would be expressed, and the time when an individual is mature and responsible enough for his sexuality.

Robert Crooks and Karla Baur (1983: 3) in Our Sexuality said that human sexuality is governed more by psychological factors (motivational, emotional and attitudinal) and by social conditioning (the process by which we learn our society expectations and norms) than by the biological factors such as hormones or instinct. The psychological and social factors influenced our sexual attitude, ideas and behaviour more than the sexual instinct and hormones because these biological factors exist naturally since we are born, whereas, the psychological and social factors shapes our sexuality through the process. Sex as the part of human sexuality is the basic instinct of humans that develops during the psychosexual stages of life, and reaches the fulfilment in the genital stage (Morris, 1990:452). To be mature sexually, a sense of

responsibility and caring for others play the important parts. In this way, marriage is an institution that can control our sexuality.

The Key is a novel that has a theme about the sexuality in marital life.

The main characters are a husband and a wife who have problems in their marital life, in particular the problem in their sexual life. They started from nothing, never knew each other before they were married because their marriage was an arranged marriage. During the twenty years of marriage, both characters find difficulties to understand their partner’s characteristics, to communicate and to make the commitment to the partners; so that we can say that their marriage is loveless. The loveless marriage affect on human sexuality, shown by the sexual ideas, attitude and behaviours.

1. The Sexual Ideas

The belief and assumption about the appropriate sexual behaviour according to the norms may influence the idea of sexuality. The society also constructed the idea of what a man or a woman should be in their sexual life.

Women are seen as undersexed, while men are oversexed. Women are believed to be inherently less sexually inclined than men. Women are told that sex is something a woman should do to please a man especially her husband.

The society also emphasised that “normal women” do not enjoy sex as much as men. Some women, believing that it is not appropriate to be easily aroused sexually; they should hide their normal responses to the sexual arouses. Men are believed to be initiator while women are recipients. In our society, men should initiate intimate relationships with their partners. A man is said to be

active, assertive, and even aggressive in controlling the sexuality. In contrast, a woman may not act like that because she is taught to have a role of

“passivity”. It may result in sex becoming more of a duty than a pleasure. Men also said to be a “sexperts”; to enjoy the role as a sex teacher. It seems that men understand the sexual needs better than women (Crooks and Baur, 1983:

47-51).

Igor Primoratz said that there are four major theories of human sexuality. Sex has been conceived as bound up with procreation, or with love, or as a type of body language or finally as a source of a certain type of pleasure (1997: xxi). The lack of commitment and communication in a loveless marriage makes both characters of The Key have different ideas of sex. The lack of commitment affects the idea that the marriage is the commitment towards the parents since their marriage was arranged, also the idea that the marriage should be based on the norms and belief that are followed in the traditional marriage. It includes the image of a model wife in a traditional marriage, and a belief that sex is taboo. Since the first time, their marriage has less commitment because it is not the husband and wife’s decision to marry so that both characters have different ideas of marriage and sexual relationship in marital life. Moreover, the lack of communication also affects the different ideas about the meaning of sex. The wife thinks sex is a part of duty while the husband thinks sex as a way to get pleasure.

Ikuko, a woman who grew up with the traditional belief of “passivity” has the two ideas about sex. First, sex is taboo to be discussed openly. The

wife avoids discussing sex because it will make her ashamed. Even, when her husband wants to tell her about their sexual problem, she pretends to ignore because “being outspoken on a subject like this is what she most dislikes” (p.

6). Her husband realizes about this sensitive topic will make her offended, so that he prefers to write it in his diary than to discuss it with her. Thinking that sex is taboo is a part of her “antique morality” that has to be kept over since she is very dutiful to the belief taught by her parents. She persists over her traditional belief that “the passion lies deep within” (p. 12). A woman should never show her passion or desire and it is emphasized that “normal women” do not enjoy sex as much as men. Even to some women, believing that it is not appropriate to be easily aroused sexually; they should hide their normal responses to the sexual arouse (Crooks and Baur, 1983: 48). Thus far, her husband sometimes thinks that her way of thinking is outmoded. Her husband is more open-minded about sex since he is an educated man who thinks in a quite modern way about sex. However, nothing can be done to change her idea of sex. When she begins her own diary, which is telling about her dissatisfaction of her marriage, and also about her sexual dissatisfaction, she feels sorry to her parents.

How shameful to put such a thing in writing! “Be true to your conscience,” my father used to say. How he would be grieve at the way I’ve been corrupted, if he only knew! (p. 11)

The lack of commitment between the husband and the wife makes her think this marriage is a commitment to her parents. Even when her parents had died,

she keeps following the belief that sex is taboo. Writing about sexual dissatisfaction will make them very disappointed.

Second, sex is a part of a duty as a good wife and a way to please her husband. Ikuko is a modest wife who got married because of the commitment towards the parents, not because of love. Since the commitment towards her parents is the most important thing, she has a sexual relationship as a way to give the pleasure to her husband. She does whatever her husband asks her to do. Even if it is against her will. When knowing the fact that her husband made nude photographs of her when she got drunk, she does not show her dissatisfaction. She only said that

In the old days a virtuous woman simply obeyed her husband’s wishes, no matter how indecent or how disgusting. She did as she was told, there was no question about it. And I have all the more reason to indulge him if it’s true he can’t satisfy me unless he is stimulated by the crazy pranks like that (p. 65).

On other hand, the husband is an educated man who has a quite modern idea about sex. He thinks sex as the way to get pleasure. Sex is a source of pleasure to fulfil the sexual desire. For him, sexual satisfaction is the duty of both partners. In the past time, men is said to be the “initiator and sexual teacher” (Crooks and Baur, 1983:48, 50; Hatfield and Rapson, 1996:

136) but the husband has a different idea that both husband and wife are responsible for sexual satisfaction. He never complains about the way his wife take care of household job. As a dutiful wife, she does the best she can do in their marriage. But it is different when talking about the sexual satisfaction. n this novel, it is clear that the husband tries to give pleasure and satisfaction. In

his fifty five, dealing with his physical declining is more difficult. He thinks that he is inadequate as a husband, so he takes hormones injections to improve his stamina in bed and ignores the risk of getting paralysis. Moreover, he feels dissatisfied that Ikuko is not trying to satisfy him. He wants her to be initiative and aggressive. He said to her that “if you really love me you ought to be more passionate” (p. 12). Her conventional way of love making does not please him, so that he looks for another way to please his sexual desire.

The loveless marriage makes both characters do not have the idea of sex as the way to express their love feelings to their partners in a very intimate way. During twenty years of marriage, the lack of communication makes both characters never talk about sex, never share the thought or idea about sex, in particular about the meaning of sex itself. The difference in communication between both partners creates the misunderstanding about their sexual relationship. The wife thinks that sex is taboo and also as a part of her duty as a wife, while the husband considers sex as a source to get pleasure. They want their partners to know what they want in their sexual life, but the lack of communication makes them misunderstand the message. The husband wants his wife to be warmer, more passionate and seductive to give him the sexual satisfaction. Also he wants her to change her conventional way of love- making. On other hand, the modest characteristic of the wife makes her will never change the way of love-making because for her the conventional love- making is a way that is normally done by a modest wife. Furthermore, sex for her is not a way to show her love. It is only a part of a duty as a modest wife to

please her husband. The lack of commitment only makes her do the sexual activity as the part of commitment to her parents because making her husband dissatisfied means making the mistake towards her parents.

2. The Sexual Attitudes

Jay Braun, Darwyn E. Linder and Isaac Asimov in Psychology Today:

The negative attitude towards sex is shown by the main characters of

The Key, here the husband and the wife. Since both characters experience a loveless marriage which has less commitment and less communication, also the ideas that sex is only a duty and the source of pleasure, both characters never really enjoy their sexual relationship. Sex is not the way to communicate the feelings and love, but it only deals with the physical pleasure.

Because of the passivity shown by his wife, the husband does not really enjoy their sexual relationship. He enjoys their relationship only when she gets drunk or fainted because of the after effects of alcohol. At that moment, he can explore her body, touch, and do all the “sexual vagaries” that

she calls annoying, disgusting or shameful. He can fulfil all his sexual fantasies which are only kept in his mind for a long time. In a normal way,

Ikuko never let him to do like that. Letting him see her barefoot is something that will make her ashamed, even though, she knows that he admires her beautiful feet.

Surprisingly, the wife has the same attitude towards their sexual life.

She does not happy nor enjoys their sexual relationship. She said that

As usual, my husband seemed to have reached an ecstatic climax; as usual, I was left unsatisfied. I felt miserable afterward. He’s always apologizing for his adequacy, yet attacks me for being cold. What he means by cold is that, to put in his way, I’m far too “conventional,” too “inhibited”- in short too dull….he complains that for twenty years I’ve never been willing to deviate from the same method, the same position (p. 11).

She always left dissatisfied after love-making and often her husband blames her for being too conventional or too dull as the reason of the sexual dissatisfaction. He asks her to be more passionate and makes her disappointed by saying that she never makes an effort to cooperate with him. She writes in her diary that

I suppose it’s not unreasonable of him to think me in that way. But my parents brought me up to believe that a woman ought to be quiet and demure, certainly never aggressive toward a man. It’s not that I lack of passion; in a woman of my temperament the passion lies deep within, too deep to erupt. The instant I try to force it out, it begins to fade. My husband can’t seem to understand that mine is a pale, secret flame, not one that flares up brilliantly (p. 12)

From the quotation above, we can clearly see they both can not understand the sexual tastes of the partner. She only feels satisfied only when getting drunk and imagines that it is Kimura-san, not her husband who is in

the bed. In a normal state, it is difficult for him to be comfortable by his touch.

More, she feels disgusting with his repulsive way of love making.

In middle age, the sexual problem can be the responsibility of both partners and sexual interaction can not be improved without communication between partners and the effort to reduce the anxiety and negative attitude towards sex (Braun et al., 1979: 391). Both husband and wife have the negative attitude towards sex. They are not really enjoying sex. They only concern about the sexual pleasure without trying to understand their partner’s sexual taste. Sex is not a way to express the love but only as a source of pleasure. Both blame each other for the sexual dissatisfaction. They hope their partner will learn to satisfy their sexual desire. In fact, the husband considers his sexual relationship is too conventional, while the wife considers it repulsive.

3. The Sexual Behaviours

Sexual behaviour is the last part that can be analyzed in relation to the main character’s sexuality. Sigmund Freud talked about sex as a natural instinct that human being has. The sexual instinct basically shapes our sexual behaviour, even though there are a lot of factors such as family, environment, society and norm that give contribution in developing our sexuality. The psychosexual stages show us that there is a time in human life when people can be mature sexually and the individual can take responsible for his sexuality. The last stage of psychosexual stages is genital stages when “our

sexual impulses reawaken and directed toward member of the opposite sex”

(Morris, 1990: 452). This is the time when our sexuality is expected to be mature.

Sexual behaviour refers to the sexual activities and its patterns can be masturbation, erotic fantasy and dreams, shared touching, oral-genital stimulation and coitus (Crooks and Baur, 1983: 252). The loveless marriage that has lack of commitment and communication makes more effects on the sexual behaviours shown by the main characters. First is an affair or extramarital relationship because of the lack of commitment between a husband and a wife. The marriage is loveless. Both are married because of the parent’s will. They never knew each other until they married. The marriage is still maintained because this is the commitment toward the dead parents. Lack of commitment opens the chance to commit an affair. Here, the wife who often thinks her twenty-years-monotonous-marriage is dreadful decides to have an affair with Kimura. Her feeling of dissatisfaction makes her look for other pleasures from another man. There should be a better partner for her who can understand her more. Her husband usually feels suspicious of her and his suspicion is worst since in his middle age, his physical declining prevents him to perform well in bed. Although he tries to improve his inadequacy,

Ikuko is still dissatisfied. Since the first time, she considers sex as a part of duties as a modest wife. She let him enjoy her body. Even, she let herself getting drunk so that her husband can freely explore her body under the

fluorescent lamp and also let him take the nude photographs of her lying on the bed. She told to Toshiko, her daughter that

I was only obeying your father. I do whatever he wants, even against my will, because I consider it my duty. It may hard for you to understand, but to a person like myself, brought up to the old morality, there’s no choice in the matter. If he’s so eager to have nude photographs of me, I’m willing to swallow my shame and expose myself to the camera- especially if he’s the one who operates it (p. 74).

When leaving dissatisfied every time they make love, she realizes that she needs someone to fulfil her desire. She meets Kimura, and gradually she finds that Kimura is more attractive than her husband. She is starting to dream of him and imagine of the sexual fantasy with him. When making love with her husband, it is Kimura that she wishes to be her partner. Eventually, she has an affair with Kimura-san. They go to a small hotel in Osaka and spend a day on the bed. Then, they often meet in Osaka without being noticed by her husband. Having an intimate relationship with Kimura gives her a satisfaction which she had never experienced in her twenty years of marriage. Kimura knows how to satisfy her, thus she thinks she is falling in love with him.

Giving her body to her husband is only a kind of duty, but giving it to Kimura is a kind of pleasure. She does her responsibility as a wife to please her husband, but to please herself is different.

“I‘ve been meeting Kimura-san at a certain rendezvous. I go because I wanted to lie in his arms- somewhere flooded by the healthy rays of the sun, at a time when my mind isn’t dulled by liquor (p. 103).

It means that she really enjoys her relationship with Kimura-san. She feels a very different thing when she has to spend a time in bed with her husband; when she can enjoy sex only when getting drunk.

Second, there are sexual fantasies and dreams as a kind of sexual behaviours pattern. It is a kind of psychological stimulation (provocative sights, sounds, behaviour and erotic fantasies (Braun et al., 1979: 388). Both husband and wife have their own sexual fantasies and dreams because in the real world they never get the sexual satisfaction from their partners. The husband has fantasies to explore his wife’s naked body in the fluorescent lamp and to touch her below the waist since the wife never let him to explore her body. He said “However, my real reason was a desire to see Ikuko’s naked body in that white radiance. That had been my fantasy since I had first heard of fluorescent lighting (p. 28)” because “Ikuko has never let me examine her that way…..Only by touch I have been able to picture my self the beauty of her body, which is why I wanted so desperately to look at under that brilliant lights (p. 28). The husband is obsessed by Ikuko’s physical attractiveness because she is a beautiful woman whose “physical endowment is equalled by very few women” (p. 7). Even, the obsession makes him can not concentrate as seen in quotation below

When I became intent on satisfying Ikuko, I have found myself losing interest in everything else. My ability to think has so declined that I can’t concentrate for five minutes. My mind teems with sexual fantasies. (p. 120-121).

Not much different from her husband, the wife who dissatisfied by the dreadful marriage, eventually meets Kimura-san and finds that he is more attractive than her husband. She begins to dream about Kimura.

Still, I wonder how much truth there was in my dream of Kimura-san. Why should he have appeared to me that way, since I’ve never seen him except when he’s fully dressed? Is the real Kimura-san different

from the one I’ve imagined? Sometime- not just in my imagination- I’d like to find out what he’s really like (p. 39).

Even, when she is fainting, she keeps murmuring Kimura’s name. It makes her husband feels suspicious “was she dreaming of making love with Kimura, or was she telling me how much she longed to?” (p. 33). From the quotations above, it is clear that the lack of communication in their marital life about their sexual problem affects their unsaid desire and thought so that both characters have sexual fantasies and dreams as the reflection of what they think and need.

Third is the after-drunk sexual activity as the way to gain the sexual satisfaction. The lack of communication makes the husband can not communicate what he wants in their sexual life. He only fantasizes about his sexual desire. Accidentally, the husband knows Ikuko’s weakness of alcohol and takes the benefit of it because he has no way to make his fantasies come true. Nearly every night Ikuko has fainted in the bathtub after drinking liquor.

When getting drunk, he can freely try several ways to satisfy him. He has many sexual fantasies that he has dreamt of. He has a desire to see Ikuko’s naked body in the white radiance so that he can see her in detail because Ikuko never allows him to see her below her waist. The first time having a chance to see her under the fluorescent lamp, he is very surprised of the beauty of her body. Unlike the other husbands who are familiar with all the details of their wife’s body, he only imagines Ikuko’s body by touching them. Mesmerized by her beauty, he pleases himself.

One by one I tried all the sexual vagaries that she so much loathes- all the tricks that she calls annoying, disgusting and shameful. At last I fulfilled my desire to lavish caresses with my tongue, as freely as I liked, on those

beautiful feet. I tried everything I could imagine- things, to use her words, ‘too shameful to mention” (p. 31).

He also takes photographs of Ikuko in the nude while she is fainted. He used the Polaroid camera to take many different poses of her naked body.

Then, he has Kimura to do with the negatives. Indirectly, he wants to humiliate her by letting Kimura see her photographs in that shameful state.

As to why I take such photographs: first of all, I enjoy taking them. I derive great pleasure from creating theses poses, freely manipulating her while she sleeps (or pretends to). My second reason is to paste them in my diary so that she will see them. Then, certainly she will discover- and be amazed at- the unsuspected beauty of her own body. A third reason is to show her why I am so desperately eager to look at her in the nude. I want her to understand me- perhaps even be sympathetic. Finally I want to humiliate her in the extreme, to see how long she will go on playing innocent (p. 52-53).

From the quotation above, we see that the husband is very enjoying the after- drunk sexual activity. Even though in the normal situation she will not let him to do that, it can not prevent him to gain his sexual satisfaction. All ways mentioned above actually means to communicate the sexual needs. The husband never has a chance to talk to her about their sexual relationship because the lack of communication between them both. This is the reason why he takes the benefit of this situation to tell her indirectly about what he wants in their sexual life.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

The Key is a novel that has the theme about the sexuality in a marital life.

The main characters are a husband and a wife who have problems in their sexual relationship during the twenty years of marriage. Both husband and wife are using diaries to write about their marital dissatisfaction, especially the sexual dissatisfaction because both are ashamed to discuss the topic.

From the first part of the analysis, the writer finds out the characteristics of the main characters. The husband is very suspicious of others especially to his wife. He always feels suspicious that will read his diary so that he hides the diary in a drawer locked by a key. He has the habit to check whether the key is in the same place or not. He also tapes the diary so that his wife can not read it. More, he feels suspicious that his inadequacy as a husband who has declined in his middle age will cause Ikuko has an affair with another man. Every time his wife goes out, his mind always be fulfilled by a lot of questions where she goes, for what and with whom. The husband is an introverted person. It can be seen from his habit of writing the diaries since he was young. His studying room contains a lot of diaries laid in the cupboard. He always spends a lot of time in his studying room after working. He rarely talks to his wife or his daughter; even when it is about the state of his health. Showing his feelings or having a discussion with his wife is difficult to be done. However, he prefers to write about the problems in a

59 60

diary rather than talk to her because of thinking that he will never have a chance to talk to his wife.

Ikuko, the wife, is a modest and introverted person. She is a kind of traditional Japanese woman who wears kimono and behaves in a well-manner.

Her parents had taught her to behave like the other conventional wives who have to be dutiful, unaggressive, calm, and careful in speech, thought, and behaviour.

She is very dutiful to her husband, and also to her parents. The husband’s decision is the most important thing in their house. Whether she likes it or not, she has to be obedient. In her marriage, she always feels disappointed of her “dreadful marriage”, but she never tells anyone because it will make her dead parents ashamed. She grew up with well-manner as a traditional Japanese woman that had her not to show up her deepest feeling to others. She prefers to write the diary in order to “talk to herself” because she does not want to share her feelings to anyone even to her husband. She rarely talks to him about anything, never speaks up, or begins a conversation and also involves herself into his privacy.

From the second part of analysis, the writer finds out that the husband and the wife’s characteristics cause the loveless marriage. During twenty years of marriage, it has lack of commitment and also lack of communication. The husband and the wife have lack of commitment because since the first time, their marriage is an arranged marriage. Their marriage was not the commitment between them both but the parent’s commitment. As a modest person, Ikuko agreed to marry because she had to be dutiful to her parents. She has never been

intimate with the other men so that when her parents told her to marry him, she had no objection. Ikuko, as an obedient daughter, considers her marriage as the commitment towards her parents, not towards her husband. On other hand, the husband agreed because he is passionately in love with her since he was an introverted person who had lack of experience with other women. The husband was always obsessed by her “physical endowment” although he wished that in future he will have her love.

The lack of communication is caused by the introverted characteristics of both husband and wife, and also by the husband’s high degree of suspicion. The husband and the wife can not communicate everything including their feelings, their doubt of their partners’ faith, their dissapointment, problems and anything in their marital life. They only keep the feeling of disappointed in their mind and their heart. They never complain about the monotonous marriage they have and pretends that this is normal for the marriage since it is the traditional marriage which adores the formal relationship in the marriage. The suspicion of the husband makes the marriage is going worst too. His wife never feels free in her own house. She always thinks that he will suspect her of infringing on his diary or having an affair with another man. The lack of communication makes them only guess what their partners thinks and wants without knowing the real one.

From the last part of analysis, the writer finds out that the loveless marriage experienced by the main characters affects their sexual ideas, attitude and behaviours. The loveless marriage has lack of commitment and lack of

communication that make the main characters have the different ideas of sex.

During twenty years of marriage, the lack of communication makes both characters never talk about sex, never share the thought or idea about sex, in particular about the meaning of sex itself. The difference in communication between both partners creates the misunderstanding about their sexual relationship. Ikuko grew up as a modest person who is very dutiful to her parents and the traditional norms believes that sex is taboo and a duty as a good wife, while the husband who is more open-minded and quite modern thinks sex as the way to get pleasure.

The loveless marriage also affects the attitude towards sex. Here, the husband and the wife have the negative attitude towards sex. Both characters does not enjoy their sexual relationship. The lack of communication makes them never understand their partner’s sexual taste so that it makes them think that their sexual life is monotonous.

Last, the loveless marriage affects the sexual behaviors. First is the extramarital relationship or affair done by Ikuko with the young fellow, Kimura.

The marriage for her is only the commitment towards he dead parents, not to her husband. Second is the sexual fantasies and dreams are the result of the unfulfilled desire in the real life.Third is after-drunk sexual intercourse. Because of both characters can not understand each other’s sexual taste, they use the effect of the alcohol as the stimulant to their sexual desire. After-drunk-sexual-activity

is the way to get the more pleasure since the wife is passive to response her husband.

After all, we can conclude that love, sex and marriage are not separated from the aspect of human life. They are the elements that support each other.

Love is the reason why a man and a woman end up in a marriage, while sex in a marriage does not only mean procreation or the way to get pleasure, but also the way to communicate love and feelings in a very intimate way. The successful marriage is not based on love only, but also to the commitment and communication between partners.

Both characters of The Key experience a loveless marriage because of the characteristics that makes them difficult to gain the commitment and communication. The loveless marriage then affects their sexuality, here, the different sexual ideas, the negative attitude towards sex and extramarital relationship, sexual fantasies and dreams; and after-drunk-sexual behaviour as shown by both character, the husband and the wife.

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