ABSTRACT
This study analyzes domestic violence found in a short story entitled A Meeting in a Silent Garden by Helvy Tiana Rosa. This story tells about a married couple who were in love but after their fifth year marriage they could not find their happiness that finally causes domestic violence. Kas, the man character abused Sih, the wife. This final project has six statements of the problems, they are: (1) What types of domestic violence which happened in this story entitled A Meeting in a Silent Garden? (2) How is the cycle of violence in the story? (3) What are the causes of violence happened in the story? (4) What are the effects of violence in the story? (5) How are the characteristic of the victims in the story? (6) What are the causes of Sih (the female character/ the victim) stays in abusive relationship?
There were some steps that I used to collect the data to answer the statements of the problem in this final project. The first step was reading the text of A Meeting in a Silent Garden several times in order to understand the content of the story. The second was classifying the data of the types of violence and finding the cycle of violence in the story. The third was classifying the data of the causes, the effects of violence, and the characteristics of the victims that happened in the story. The last was classifying the data of the reason of woman has preference of staying in abusive relationship related to the story A Meeting in a Silent Garden. In this final project, I used structural and social approach. The method of analyzing the research is descriptive qualitative.
Domestic violence is divided into three types, but there are only psychological and physical violence found in the story. In domestic violence there is a circle of violence but here the cycle is not completed because there are only building tension and acting-out phase found in the story. Some of the causes of domestic violence were environment and alcohol. Some of the effects were physical injuries and low self esteem. Some of the characteristics of the victim are puts up with the abusive behavior and has a low self esteem. Here were some reasons of Sih prefer to stay in abusive relationship; she is not employed outside the home, she fears of lower standard of living, she doesn’t want to divorce, she believes that she is responsible to make her relationship work again, and she is isolated.
In a marriage life, being open and having a good communication between couple are needed in order to understand each condition. Preparation before getting married is also needed to prevent domestic violence.
