The early Sundanese novel : 1914 -1940
Abstract
The early Sundanese novels, the ESN, are a realist narrative genre written in the language
of West Java, and appearing in print from the turn of the second decade of this century up
to the fall of the colonial Netherlands Indies government to Occupation by Japan's
imperial forces in 1942. The novels reflect the intellectual foment of their times in all its
hues, but two ideological streams are dominant: the condition of Islam in West Java and
the rise of secular nationalist politics. The Islamic message is one of an community
attempting to accommodate the challenge of social change, brought about in the main by
the extension of Western-style secular education, through an unwavering affirmation of
moral values. The story of the nationalist struggle is well known: the emergence of
political organisations, of radical hopes culminating in uprising, defeat and fifteen years
of harsh reaction on the part of the colonial government. Romantic novels reflect either
the revolutionary aspirations of the 1920's in their themes of social progress or the voice
of social conservatism in portraying a maintenance of the status quo during the 1930's.
Colonial censorship ruled all literary production during the period.
Didactic ESN tell of wickedness swiftly punished and virtue surely rewarded in the matter
of sexual morality. Novels about the abhorred custom of arranged marriages form a subset.
Romantic ESN are aligned with political developments of the period. The two
discourses are almost completely distinct from one another in the novels, taking
alternative forms in Characterisation (Chapters One and Two), in Narrative Structure,
Fable and Plot (Chapters Three and Four). More commonality between the two is found
at the narrative level of Setting, within the denotation of the material environment of the
novels (Chapter Five), while a variety of representation is found in realisations of Point
of View, novel by novel. Point of View is discussed in concurrence within the other five
narrative levels, throughout the thesis.
There is marked stylistic development in the genre within this short time span of thirty
years, pointed out in the discussion. The social focus of the novels shifts from the
private torments of the feudal aristocrats of West Java, in the Didactic novels, to an
empathy with the little people, the rayat, in the Romantic novels, and on to an obviation
of social difference in a new Sundanese society, founded on ever-expanding education
and social enlightenment. Finally, while the D-novels reiterate their moral warnings to
the last, in the R-novels a kind of measured optimism within the bounds of colonial
control takes over in the last decade to close the period.