CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The House at The Briar Lake is a novel written by the best-selling and
award-winning author of many romance novels, Roxanne Rustand, in 2000. Her
first manuscript won the Romance Writer of American Golden Heart in Long
Contemporary in 1995. Three years later, her second manuscript entitled Her
Sister’s Children also became Golden Heart finalist in August 1999. She also was
nominated for Romantic Time’s Career Achievement Award in 2005. A Man She
Can Trust in 2006 was her phenomenal work that discuss about struggle of
married couple to endure their domesticity. Most of her works deal with romance
story, as well as The House at Briar Lake that tells about the romance of a widow
and a man who fall in love.
The House at The Briar Lake is an artificial story based on the creator’s mind or
talent. In this novel, the setting of story, Briar Lake, really exist in California, but
the story itself came from Rustand’s imagination. This novel is known as a
heartwarming novel which tells about people who endure hardship and work hard
to protect those they love. The issue of deep relationship with traditional values of
home, family, community, and love appear in this heartwarming novel. Various
characters, insecure mother, benevolent old woman, decent guy, and even naughty
goat, become interesting side to be discussed because each character has different
idea. The interaction between characters leads to the conflicts that develop the
story. The unexpected event, conflict, and foreshadowing also enrich the plot of
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the story. The naughty goat that always makes problems with funny act will make
the reader laugh, but the touching scene of mother’s struggles to make her
daughter happy will make the reader cry.
One important element of a novel is character. Character is an author’s
imagination representation of person, animal, and other creatures that become the
key of the story. As an important element, character plays significant role in the
development of the story, especially when each character experiences conflicts.
Close relation between character and conflict can lead to the character
development. As Moll and Kortland (1967:12) said, character can be developed
after facing many experiences and getting human contact. Character may have
conflict with her or himself and also conflict with other people. Conflict that
happen inside the character itself can be called as internal conflict, and conflict
that happened between characters is external conflict. The writer is interested in
two elements of fiction, there are conflict and character. The reason is because
conflict can become a cause of character changing or character development.
Undeniable, the life experiences can change someone characteristic and behavior.
One of the interesting sides of The House at The Briar Lake novel is about
conflict. Since there is character that has clashes inside the mind that can lead
conflicts, the character will experience character development. The most
interesting conflict is the conflict inside the main character’s mind. In this case,
the writer wants to analyze Hannah because she is an interesting character who
experiences many ordeals in her tender age which made her character developed.
Hannah is ten years old girl who had to experience problems because of her
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parent’s divorce. She felt lonely but afraid to make a friend. She became an
uncommunicative girl and did not care about everything that happened around
her. One day, a man came in her life, and then she wanted that man to become her
new father. Many obstacles happened in her effort to make a friend and get new
father. She faced conflicts with her mind and caused her characteristic changes.
For the conflict itself, the writer chooses internal conflict than external conflict
because something that can change people is their own self. Something inside the
heart and mind is the biggest key that can change people. Someone may try to
influence another people’s mind, but whether they want to change or not are
depend on their own self because people do not know the great depth of human’s
heart and mind.
In order to analyze Hannah’s character development through internal
conflict in The House at The Briar Lake novel by Roxanne Rustand, there are
three problems that will be done. Firstly, the internal conflicts faced by Hannah in
The House at The Briar Lake novel. Secondly, find out Hannah’s characteristics
before experiencing internal conflicts and characteristics after experiencing
internal conflicts to see the character development that is influenced by her
internal conflicts.
This study is conducted to find out the internal conflict faced by Hannah
and find the characteristics of Hannah before experiencing internal conflicts and
character after experiencing internal conflicts in The House at The Briar Lake,
then analyze the character development through internal conflicts using
formalistic approach. Formalistic approach itself is the way to analyze literary
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work by the formal element from the literary work itself (Ann Charters,
2007:1798-1799). The formal elements on this essay are conflict and character
that will lead the character development. The writer will use the conflict to find
character development. There are some criticisms that come from many sources
which have the same idea about finding character development through the
conflicts, but this study is the first study that is analyzing the character
development through conflict in The House at The Briar Lake novel by Roxanne
Rustand. Therefore, the focus of this essay is to find out Hannah’s character
development through her internal conflicts in The House at The Briar Lake.