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The postmodern feminist perspective on equality and the definition of woman. It argues that human beings are created as pairs, men and women, to help each other, but factors influencing the ideal relationship between genders have led to unfair treatments towards women. Postmodern feminism suggests that there are numerous different situations among women and formal equality is inappropriate for those with unique circumstances. The document also discusses the impact of societal expectations and the role of feminism in challenging these misconceptions.
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Presented as Partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By DEBBIE WIDYASTUTI Student Number: 004214014
This undergraduate thesis is dedicated to: My Beloved Father in Heaven My Beloved Mother And My Brothers and sisters
First of all, I would like to thank Allah SWT, for giving me such a wonderful life, for being there anytime I need to talk, for blessing me in everything I do. This thesis is dedicated to my beloved father in heaven, Rahardjo Soebardjo; my lovely Mom, the best and great mother in the whole world; grandpa, Dr. Ir. H. Soepraptopo, thanks for directing, supporting and giving me inspiration; my brothers and sisters; my lil’ nephews, Naufal, Rakha, Fadhil, Raissa. My deepest gratitude goes to Mr. G. Fajar Sasmita, S.S, M.Hum, my advisor, for pointing my mistakes and showing me the right way. Thank you for the patient in guiding me from the beginning until I completed this thesis. Also, Mr. Paulus Sarwoto, S.S., M.A. for the critiques and explanations. I’m so grateful having these friends who are always there for me, for better or worse, for the laughs and joy, for great moments, love, hates, cries, and happiness: Rama (je t’aime bubu), Anjas (for being my beloved brother and friend), Adit, Brian, Lanny, Victor, Andri, Galih, Uchiel, Bettie, Andith, Nana, Friendslist, C’est La Vie (thank you for giving me a great experience), English Letters Department especially ’00 class and all my friends that I cannot mentioned one by one. I save a special place for you in my heart, thank you for making my life so beautiful and colorful, and for showing me how worthy our friendship. SHMILY.
DEBBIE WIDYASTUTI
DEBBIE WIDYASTUTI. (2007). Inge’s Representation as a Postmodern Feminist in Fremd’s The Glass Inferno Yogyakarta: English Letter Study Program. Department of English Letters. Faculty of Letters. Sanata Dharma University. Feminism is an ideology that speaks and struggles for women’s voice to get an equality of rights as men. Postmodern feminism refuses ideology of formal equality and general definition of woman. It proposes the new way of seeing the women and their situations that each woman should be treated differently according to their situations. This is the background in writing this study.Angelika Fremd’s The Glass Inferno contains the idea of postmodern feminism by analyzing the woman main character in the story. The objective of writing this thesis is derived from the writer’s curiosity to find out Inge’s struggle for her own living in the middle of men’s world. character development depicted in the novel? (2) How is Inge characterized as aThere are three problems related to the topic of this thesis: (1) How is Inge feminist? (3) How does Inge represent postmodern feminism in her life? In order to answer the problems, theory character and characterization is used to inspect Inge’s character development. The writer used theory of feminism to identify Inge’s idea of feminism in the novel. The writer also used postmoderntheory combine with the theory of feminism to identify Inge’s representation as a postmodern feminist. A library study method is also applied in this study. There are two sources used: primary and secondary sources. The Glass inferno, the novel, is the primary source in this study. The secondary sources are obtained from books on literature and feminism.Based on the analysis, Inge in the beginning of the novel is told to be a dependent woman that comes from a broken family. Her stepfather rapes her and makes her in trauma. She becomes dependent and becomes David’s sexual object and also the sex object of many men, including her own boyfriend. As the time passes, Inge can maintain herself and tries to get out from the misery. Shebecomes an independent woman. She is revealing a characterization of a feminist. She is able to use her capacity of a free woman to get equality, freedom of choice, opportunity to develop herself and rights to be herself. She is said that she is representing the postmodern feminism thoughts because she searches for her freedom as a woman not in a particular way that most feminist did. She knowsthat she had something that she can use to achieve what she wants. She uses her body and her sexual appeal to survive in the middle of men’s world. She uses her sexual appeal to control men and also to bargain for something she wants. She also uses her sexual appeal as means of fun. She is not considering marriage life as something sacred and attached her. She sees marriage as a process to get astatus and protection. a woman has rights to be free from men’s oppression, though reaching it through a different point of view.
A. Background of the Study God has created human beings in such a way so that they can live harmoniously in this world, since they need each other in their daily lives. This can be seen from the fact that human beings are created in pairs, men and women, in order that they can help each other. However, many factors, which have been connected each other for years, influence the ideal relationship between men and women. Those factors are political, economical, and psychological. Logically, the factors should provide a good relationship between men and women due to on the same political, economical, and psychological condition. Unfortunately, in real world, those factors become the source of imperfect relationship between men and women, because men treat women unfairly. Women, in men’s opinion, are the second class human. Men tend to feel superior to women. This unfair treatment has been internalized in very man’s life. Since men have treated women unfairly for years, women themselves feel that they are weak and inferior. The feeling of being weak makes them weaker than what they think, whereas feeling of having big strength and having more power makes men act more than what they think (Ashley Montagu, 1953: 38 – 39). Men tend to be superior in many kinds of relationship with women, such as at work relation, husband and wife relation, and in sexual relation. Moreover, Luce Irigaray in Modern Criticism and Theory states that men only think of women as sexual object.
Women have no reason for envying either penis of the phallus. But the non-establishment of the sexual identity of both sexesresults in the fact that man, the people of men, has transformed his penis into an instrument of power as to dominate maternal power (2000: 420). It means that men are always dominant in the society, in the relationship or marriage, and women have to accept their position to be under men’s power. For example, a wife should serve her husband well, if not she will be blamed by the society of being unfaithful wife. Furthermore, men’s unfair treatments toward women, such as subordinating women in social class, race, culture, and religion, have been internalized in the relation between men and women by most women. This can be seen by the willingness of women to live their lives under men’s control. The worse is that women consciously let men make decision for women. For example, a girl was married to a man based on her father command. For it has happened for years, there have been many attempts to portray this condition. Moviemakers show how men control women’s life through their movies. Poets tell this condition through their poems. Songwriters, artists, and writers portray this condition their pieces of art. Among of those many attempts, there is one novel discussing it, i.e. The Glass Inferno. It is a story about the life of a woman named Inge in searching for her identity and happiness through her experiences in a patriarchal society, where men are the rules. The Glass Inferno tells about her journey after leaving the house to find what she is looking for Inge’s new life after her stepfather’s seduction. David, her intimate friend, brought Inge to Melbourne into a house shared with Fitz and Jo. She learned how men think and treat women in that house only for sex
realities of that period” (http://www.concepttshirts.co. uk/articles/post- modernism.htm).
Postmodern feminism is a feminism movement that emerged in the 1990’s. It is different with the common feminism that emerged in 1970’s and 1980’s. Postmodern feminism rejects the general definition of women and formal equality. Rather, postmodern feminism suggests that there are numerous different situations among women and it is inappropriate to apply formal equality to the women who have different situation. The focus on ‘male-dominated institutions were to change the direction to the inside of the women’s movement’ (Martha Chamallas, Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory, 1994: 86)
B. Problem Formulation Based on the facts identified in the background of this study, the writer formulates two problems to be solved as follows:
D. Definition of Terms Before going to a deeper analysis, the writer will explain terms used in this research in order to avoid misunderstanding. The first term is character development. Laurence Perrine in Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense said that all fictional characters can be classified as static and developing. The developing or dynamic character undergoes a permanent change in some aspect of his or her character personality or outlook (1974: 71). It means that a character’s personality, way of thinking or attitude is changing throughout the story. The changing of the character can be implicitly or explicitly seen. The second term is feminism. According to Malson, O’Barr, Westphal- Whil, and Wyer, in Feminist Theory in Practice and Process, feminism is a belief in a principal the women must have equal rights to men (1999: 72). The fundamental question of feminism is the definition of gender, the social relations with another class or another race, and the relation with man and forms of dominance. The third term is postmodern. According to Wendy Olsen, postmodern is a re-interpretation of the contemporary world as being profoundly different from its 19th century predecessor. Post-modernists use this “fact” to help explain anomalies in class mobility, voting patterns, alienation and culture (1992: 162). The fourth term is postmodern feminism. Chamallas, in Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory, states that postmodern feminism rejects the general definition of women and formal equality. Rather, postmodern feminism suggests that there are numerous different situations among women and it is inappropriate to apply formal equality to the women who have different situation. The focus on
A. Review of Related Studies There are many studies or critiques on literary works by British and American feminist writers, but it will be different case if the literary work is produced outside the two countries mentioned. “If you’re an author from the USA (or possibly the UK) writing, horror or fantasy then you are well-covered on the Web. If you are Australian and writing what might loosely be termed serious modern fiction then you might as well not exist” (Perry Middlemass, http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/lit.html). It means that the sources, studies or critiques for the novel is very limited on the web, because the writer is not a British or American and the novel published is in Australia and there are not many webs available that provide Fremd’s novel. Since the novel is an Australian novel, the writer found that there is limited information or sources related to the work available on books or Internet, but two comments based on the novel are finally covered. The first review is from Sneja Gunew who says that there are many sexual actions that appear in the story. The men are physically brutal and sexually rapacious, while the women in the story become the subject. They are the victims who need to learn survival: bartering sex only for materials leading to alienation from their own bodies. Sneja Gunew also commented on Inge’s character that Angelika describes Inge as a survivor who successfully involved in a wartime black market (http://www.projectroom.com/joystick/cross2000/5/angelikafremdreview.htm)
Sue Walton in The Newcastle Herald, 5 December 1992 says that Fremd’s The Glass Inferno is very evocative that can stimulates reader’s emotions, especially women, to feel the strong feeling of freedom, such as sexual freedom, to do something that they want. Though that kind of emotions is not clearly exposed in such a lifestyle, which stimulating the need of sensation and truthfulness, but Fremd is clearly concerned with that kind of freedom. Women’s quest for freedom becomes a regular theme in literature. Inge, as the main character, represents the same idea. Inge’s struggle for sexual freedom is sort of recognition for her curiosity about her self-understanding, and not understands that her rejection to choose any particular way of action is in itself a kind of selection (http://www.projectroom.com/joystick/cross2000/5/glassinfernoreview.h tm). Betty Andriyani writes in her thesis entitled “Searching for Woman Existence as Seen in Inge’s Character: a Feminist Reading on Fremd’s Heartland” that Inge presents a woman heroine who brings the idea of feminism. Inge’s self-determination in choosing the pattern of her life and facing all her problems evokes her spirit of feminism because she has the control to construct herself, not by the people or the society. Furthermore, Betty also describes Inge’s characteristic as a feminist woman. Betty says that Inge is a brave, strong, intelligent, active and independent woman. Inge eradicates the women’s stereotyping and the liberal actions which are conducted, show her pride and dignity as a woman to get an existence in a society where she lives in (2005: 46- 55).
his or her judgment. The main character may change as he or she can learn from his or her experience (1981: 20). X.J. Kenedy and Dana Gioia in their book entitled Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama, stated that “a character is presumably an imaged person who inhabits a story and the reader usually recognized human personalities that become familiar. Should a character behave in a sudden and unexpected way, seeming to deny what the reader have been told about his nature or personalities, the reader trust that he had a reason and that sooner or later the reader will discover it” (1999: 60) Borrowing the useful terms of the English novelist E.M Foster, X.J Kenedy and Dana Gioia mentioned that there are round characters and flat characters. Round characters are often appearing as the center of the story and look like real human beings. With his or her complex aspects in temperaments and motivations, sometimes he or she surprises the reader with unexpected behaviors. The author develops round character fully and the characters grow and change during the story. (1999: 60-61). Meanwhile there are two principle ways by which an author can characterize a character. The first is direct way, which describes physical appearance of the character. Another one is dramatic, which means placing the character in certain condition to show what the character is by seeing the way she or he behaves or speaks (Rohrberger, 1971: 20). Each of the principles shows the readers the qualities of the character both physically or psychologically. An image of a character in a story that has been created by an author can be concluded
