Profeminism and Contrafeminism on the Characterization of The Portrait of The Lady by Henry James

ABSTRACT

Literature can be seen as a reflection of life. Sometimes we learn the world through our imagination, though we might never have a chance to do. By reading novel, we may acquire amusement that will lead us to know perception of beauty and make us sensitive to artistic work in general.

Feminism is a theory about equality between men and women in politic, economy, and social; or organized movement that fights for the rights and importance of women. Feminism speaks about the equality between men and women in politic, economy, and social; or organized movement that fights for the rights and importance of women. The only cause that makes disposition and oppression of the women’s rights is sex distinction. The distinction allows feminists to accept some form of natural sexual difference while criticizing gender inequality. The feminists’ movement has occurred mainly in Europe and the United States.

Feminism in literature is about applying feminist literary criticism in literary work. Feminist literary criticism searches for a way of looking at the texts, which is different from the male perspective that has always been dominant in society.

There are two objectives of this research, first is to show the feminism problem on the characterization of The Portrait of the Lady. Second is to describe the profeminism and contrafeminism characterization appearing in female characters in The Portrait of the Lady by Henry James.

In this research, the researcher uses literary criticism as her research design to conduct the research. Literary criticism is the only research design that is directly related to the literary works. As the approach, the researcher uses Ideology Critic. Ideology Critic is a type of feminist literary criticism. Ideology Critic focuses on the stereotype of women in literary works.

From the novel, the researcher finds feminism problems that are appeared by the characterization of the characters. The feminism problems in the novel are sexual harassment and oppression. In addition, the researcher also finds the profeminism and contrafeminism characterizations that are appeared by female characters in The Portrait of the Lady. The characterization of profeminism is described as independent, strong, and free woman. The characterizations of contrafeminism are obedient and submission to man; also, women v.s women or the way women treat other women badly.

From this research, the researcher hopes that the readers can catch the novel’s message that is given by the author especially about feminism and the other researcher who focuses on this topic about the feminism can analyze wider and deeper research. This study is very limited and far from perfection. The researcher hopes that the next researcher can give more attention to this topic.