An analysis on Equality of Rights and Positions of men and women reflected in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of The Baskervilles

ABSTRACT

The biological difference has made men and women have different roles in their social life. The term masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. The rest is constructed by social construction and the custom. Social construction constructs people's perception when a phenomenon or a problem occurs in society, the social constructions play a big role in defining and separating the meaning of men and women. The patriarchy custom that used by some societies makes women position put under men’s control. Through his novel, Doyle tries to explain and let us know women’s oppression done by men. This novel reflects women’s right and positions whether it’s raised or drowned.

This research described the detail description about women’s right and positions reflected by female characters in the novel such as women’s right of speaking, women’s right in social affairs, and women’s right in making decisions. There are also reflections of women position regarded as subordinate creature, women as the victim of love affair, and women as the victim of physical intimidation.

In conducting this research, the researcher used feminist literary criticism. It means that this research focuses on feminist sides that explain how men in the novel are oppressing women. The traditional concepts that regard women as a doll that should be preserved and homed, will become the major consideration of this research.

From the data we know about equality of rights and positions of men and women reflected by female characters such as women’s right of speaking, where there is no equality of right of speaking, and that the female character are still affected by sex differentiation between men and women in the way they deliver their idea, women’s rights in social affair where as they deliberately or not try raise their social status, and also women’s right of making decisions in which female characters in this novel still bounded by the custom and regard that men are the decision maker.

We also can find out women’s positions reflected by female characters in
the novel such as women as apart of patriarchy, these female characters put under men’s control and still inherit the patriarchal system through their blood, women as victims of love affair where both major female character become the victim, and also women as the victim of physical intimidation in which the husband is always beating them for inadequate reasons.

From this research the researcher hopes there will be other researchers who concern to this topic and explore the feminist perspective more details. Of course, the topic still needs extra attention towards wider perspective in viewing women’s rights and positions and literature.