TRI SUTYOSO H.

907222407117
FINAL TERM-COMPARATIVE LITERARY STUDIES

Comparing Armijn Panes Belenggu to D. H. Lawrences Lady Chatterleys

Lover
In this moment, I would like to compare two novels from different countries
which surely have diverse culture. The first one is Lady Chatterleys Lover, a D. H.
Lawrences controversy. The first edition was printed in Florence, Italy. Yet it could
not be published openly until 1959 in United States and 1960 in United Kingdom.
Then the second one is Belenggu, Armijn Panes novel. At first, Belenggu was
rejected by Balai Pustaka, the very famous Indonesian publisher. Since it considered
as rebellious writing which can easily damaged morality in society. Many people
think that Lady Chatterleys lover is mainly talked about pornography and obscenity.
At the same time as Belenggu, a lot of people debated about that novel. They
assumed that Belenggu is a novel which discussed such taboo thing. Seeing as it
uttered about problem in family circle or marriage that regarded as privacy for
individual that unnecessary to tell. The thing that I want to compare is about the plot,
the characters, and also the reactions that involved in society.
According to Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana:
Sebenarnyalah yang menarik hati dalam buku Armijn ini ialah permainan perasaan
pengarangnya, yang memberikan kepada buku ini suatu suasana romantik ialah romantic
yang gelap gulita yang pesimistis oleh karena watas-watasnya sudah ditetapkan oleh
berbagai-bagai belenggu yang dimana-mana hendak dikemukakan pengarang

From the excerpt above, S. T. A. said that the interesting point is established through
his impressive tone in build such romantic circumstance which actually enclosed to
gloomy and cynical romantic because of the bound which is ruled by fatter, spread

everywhere. Followed by, Dr. H.B. Jassin (1954:6770) told that it is the first
Indonesian modern literature which exposed the life of intellectual before war.
I argued that Belenggu reflected sort of cultural strained. His affecting style of
writing really showed that he is an imaginative writer. His way in narrating an affair
of Sukartono without thinking about people disagreement on his novel is like he
wanted to show his consistent from his statement, which said:
Kalau keyakinan sudah menjadi pohon beringin, robohlah segala pertimbangan lainlain

From his quotation, we can see that he had strong conviction about his ideology. He
never feared to convey his feeling toward his writing. He settled to focus on
describing his characters with fluctuating emotions.
Talk about Lady Chatterleys Lover, it actually has some similarities to
Belenggu. Lady Chatterleys Lover also told about an affair of Connie Chatterley, an
aristocratic woman with Oliver Mellor, a gamekeeper who worked in his husbands
land. The author explicitly portrayed a physical relationship between Connie and
Mellor. Along with Belenggu, many people assumed that Lady Chatterleys Lover
spoke about taboo thing, which is sexuality. Sexuality believed would be able to
change lifestyle in society. Even, Lady Chatterleys Lover called as prohibited novel
in the first 20th century.
However in my personal impression, David Herbert Lawrence has courage
and honesty to depict the story throughout his explicit words, open description, and
surely with attractive diction. The author used both elegant English and Mindland
accent, which reflected on lower society. But then, many people realized that those
two novels truly illustrated the bad moral in the real life. Even, those works became
the canon in their countries.
In our culture at that time, Belenggu itself is an uprising from what is
considered as taboo, yet it is the reality of society which happened in their marriage.

Moreover, the reality is also involved through the street. The existence of prostitute in
the metropolis city should not be positioned as a wrong thing. More than that, it
should be further thinking how to find the solution. Indeed, prostitute is always being
the big problem in marriage. Then man is always being the one who made mistake if
there is an affair.
The main characters from Belenggu are Doctor Sukartono (Tono), Sumartini
(Tini) and Siti Rohayah (Yah). Tono is a doctor who is so kindness, charity, and also
responsible to his job. Next, Tini is activist and modern woman which has dark
memory. She felt so lonely all the time since her husband is so busy with his work to
be a doctor. He forgot Tini and let her at home alone. Then Siti Rohayah (Yah), she is
a woman that forcibly married to bureaucrat at colonial era. She loved to reading
book. She is frustrated so that she became a prostitute in Tanjung Priok. She is Tonos
friend which secretly loved him.
Polemic existed through these three characters, Tono, Tini and Rohaya. The
author created those characters as the person who suffered because of their ego.
Tonos affair presented because of Tini uncaring to him. In fact, Tono did not really
bother to his wife. His busyness with his patients made Tini felt so alone. The
appearance of Rohaya which kept her secret love to Tono became the crisis of their
marriage. The whole story framed through the image that is emerged by the author to
the characters. Divorce developed into the problem that difficult to avoid. But in the
end, why Rohaya leaved Tono to Kaledonia? Didnt she love him? Maybe, the closed
answer is Rohaya did not want to destroy the relationship between Tono and Tini then
she decided to go from Tonos life.
Subsequently, the main characters of Lady Chatterleys Lover are Lady
Chatterley (Connie), Clifford Chatterley (Clifford), and Oliver Mellor (Mellor).
Connie is an intellectual and social progressive from Scottish bourgeois family. She
comes to despise her weak, ineffectual husband, and to love Oliver Mellors, the
gamekeeper on her husband's estate. Clifford Chatterley is Connie's husband. Clifford

Chatterley is a young, handsome baronet who becomes paralyzed from the waist
down during World War I. As a result of his injury, Clifford is impotent. He retires to
his familial estate, Wragby Hall, where he becomes first a successful writer, and then
a powerful businessman. Oliver Mellors is the lover in the novel's title. Mellors is the
gamekeeper on Clifford Chatterley's estate, Wragby Hall. He is aloof, sarcastic,
intelligent and noble.
Disappointed by a string of unfulfilling love affairs, Mellors lives in quiet
isolation, from which he is redeemed by his relationship with Connie: the passion
unleashed by their lovemaking forges a profound bond between them. At the end of
the novel, Mellors is fired from his job as gamekeeper and works as a laborer on a
farm, waiting for a divorce from his old wife so he can marry Connie. Mellors is a
man with innate nobility but who remains impervious to the pettiness and emptiness
of conventional society, with access to a primal flame of passion and sensuality. But
the gap between him and Connie grows ever wider; obsessed with financial success
and fame, he is not truly interested in love, and she feels that he has become
passionless and empty. In the process of leaving her husband and conceiving a child
with Mellors, Lady Chatterley moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the
intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in sensuality
and sexual fulfillment.
The ending of those novels showed that cultures have influenced the writers to
describe their works. After I read Belenggu, it directly affected to the emotions of the
readers as well as it can gave moral valued to the readers. I think Belenggu appeared
a kind of judgment in society that marriage without loving each other will not be able
to make harmonious family even divorce will be the only choice. The most feared
thing is when a couple built marriage without love. Because they did not have a
feeling, they always do such quarrel and they rarely exchanged idea or even just
talked. They never solved their problem mutually as a couple. They even finished
their problem individually. Misunderstanding always happened to them. This kind of
situation constructed the readers to stay away from marrying without love or

marrying in force. Since marriage through that way would make their family
discordant and unhappy.
It will be wrong if we valued Lady Chatterleys Lover just from the sexual
illustration. I believed that readers would find how the author invited them to think
about integrity and totality of human. According to Richard Hoggart, the key of
integrity is the unity between body and soul. Here, I could clearly catch propose from
the author is to critique the society at that time, especially aristocrat, that is too
arrogant with his ideology and intellect.

Belenggu itu berupa "angan-angan", kepentingan-kepentingan, nilai subyektif. Setiap

manusia membentuk nya melalui pendidikan, pengalaman, apa yang dihargai,
dijunjung tinggi, dibutuhkan dan akhirnya diwujudkan dalam kenyataan hidup.
Perbedaan nilai-nilai kepentingan itu kalau sampai berbeda bahkan bertolak belakang
dapat menimbulkan pertentangan. Tini melihat dirinya sebagai perempuan modern
pada zamannya, mustinya bebas bergerak mewujudkan apa yang dirindukan yakni
ativitas sosial dan banyak bergerak di luar rumah. Angan-angannya sebagai istri
dokter yang leluasa bergerak di luar rumah melakukan aktivitas sosial. Bukan
menjadi penjaga telepon pasien yang ingin menemui dokter untuk pengobatan.
Sedangkan Tono dibelenggu oleh angan-angannya, bahwa Tini sebagai istri selalu
didekatnya dan dapat membantu dan mendukung profesi suami sebagai dokter.
Harusnya belenggu itu diputuskan agar seorang dapat membangun hidupnya yang
baru. Namun krisis hubungan suami-istri itu berkepanjangan dan dimasuki oleh orang
ketiga pelacur kelas tinggi bernama Rohayah yang suka membaca. Dan
pengalamannya (kawin cerai dan menjadi pelacur) membentuk sosok Rohayah
menjadi tokoh yang pragmatis alias mampu memutus belenggu sebagian
kehidupannya.

REFERENCES
Lawrence, D. H. Lady Chatterleys Lover. Web-Books.Com
Pane, Armijn. 1982. Belenggu, Cetakan kesebelas. Jakarta: P.T. DIAN RAKYAT.
Pradopo, Rachmat Djoko. Beberapa Teori Sastra, Metode Kritik, dan Penerapannya
(5th ed.). Pustaka Pelajar. Jogjakarta: 2009.
Reaske, Christopher Russel. How To Analyze Fiction. Monarch Press. New Jersey:
1966.
Universitas Negeri Malang. Pedoman Penulisan Karya Ilmiah (5th ed.). UM Press.
Malang: 2010.
Widada, Rh. Saussure Untuk Sastra, Sebuah Metode Kritik Sastra Struktural.
Jalasutra. Yogyakarta: 2009.