A Radical Feminist Analysis on The Major Character’s Struggle Against Christendom Patriarchy in Donna Woolfolk Cross’ Pope Joan

ABSTRACT

People have functioned literature as the way to experience the world around them through their imagination, because literature often presents a documentary picture of life. It describes the real life of another world. By reading literary work, especially novel, people can enrich their emotion and also enrich their experience about life reality, including women oppression reality that is often presented in the literary work.

This study proposes of this study are to describe: (1) the Christendom view toward female (2) major character’s struggle against Christendom patriarchy. The writer hopes that this study will be able to contribute some findings or information to the study of literature especially on Donna Woolfolk Cross’ Pope Joan. Besides, this study is also expected to be useful as an alternative scientific material for deeper or further study on the same work.

This study is a literary criticism. The approach applied is feminist approach since the researcher analyzes patriarchy and the struggle against it. The data are chiefly collected from the original text of Donna Woolfolk Cross’ Pope Joan. As the result this study shows, Donna Woolfolk Cross’ Pope Joan contains several Christendom views that oppress female and the major character’ struggles against.

Through the analysis in this study, it is found out that the Christendom views toward female revealed in four aspects of life. They are Education, Economy, Religion and Biology. In educational aspect; women are dangerous and unnatural to learn, women are incapable of reasoning, and a learned woman is a gross violation of nature. In economic aspect; it is ungodly for women to work. In religion aspect; having a daughter is a sin punishment from God, women are the mother of sin, women by nature are inferior to men, women are God’s wrath cause, women are beneath men in conception, place and will, and women are not be able to be an educate and dominant creature. And in biological aspect; a woman’s hair is Satan’s net to catch a man’s soul. The major character’s struggle
against the Christendom patriarchy is revealed in those four aspects of life as well. In educational aspect; the child Joan learns secretly, she refuses to destroy Homer’s book, she escapes from home for studying, she becomes a famous brilliant scholar, and she also institutes a school for women. In economic aspect; she works as a healer. In Religion aspect; she denies a dogma that women are inferior to men in conception, place and will. She struggles against catholic dogma to be a teacher, and she becomes a Lord Pope of Christendom, whereas her struggle against biological aspect is revealed in her masculine disguise.