An Analysis of Main Character’s Love Life in Alexandre Dumas’ the Lady of the Camellias

Abstract

The Lady of The Camellias is the novel written by Alexandre Dumas. The novel tells about the romantic, tragic and sad story of the true love of Marguerite Gautier and Armand Duval. The story of the novel is interesting to analyze because Alexandre Dumas creates the romantic novel that is related to his love life with Marie Duplessis. He creates the story with full of romantic and sad story. He also made his novel story to dedicate his love for Duplessis. The type of this research is qualitative research. It has no numeric data in the discussion and conclusion. There are two kinds of data in this research: the primary data and the secondary data. The primary data of this research are selected data that relate to the topic of this reseach in novel The Lady of The Camellias by Alexandre Dumas Jr. Then, the secondary data are taken from the books, journals and articles related with the problem discussed. The result of the research is several information to prove the love life of the main characters in the novel. The love life of the main characters is categories in romance love. Because of the three component of love are absence, but in the decision/commitment component Marguerite Gautier chose to break up with Armand Duval. It means that they chose the relationship in short term. The researcher concluded that both Armand and Marguerite have got their own love. Though the ending of the story is not good for them. Marguerite could not got the sincerity of love of Armand. She sacrificed for the happiness of Armand‟s family. Marguerite has done a big sacrifice for Armand. She can actually just abandon Armand‟s father and live with Armand, but she refuses it and chooses to sacrifice her love for Armand‟s sister happiness. While Armand chose to have a new lover for revenge make Marguerite jealous. But eventually he regretted having learned the fact that Marguerite so loved him, although Armand had repeatedly hurt him. The researcher categorize their story into love which is only based on passion and intimacy as lovers only. They do not make a commitment to stay together for long term. And the biggest factor of their relationship is Armand‟s father. So the love life of the story in The Lady of The Camellias novel is limited to romance only. Alexandre Dumas has relation between his love life with his writing novel The Lady of The Camellias. Dumas love experience is depicted in the novel. The is novel inspired by his short meeting with Marie Duplessis. His love for Duplessis was described in the novel. He narrates himself in the novel as Armand Duval and Marie Duplessis as Marguerite Gautier.