Women’s exploitation under capitalism on the Danielle Steel’s ‘Wings’

Literature is the expression of what the people have shown in life, what they have experienced in daily life, and what they think and feel about life through language. Novel is one of the works of literature that represents the real life of society.

In this study, the writer analyzes the major character especially female character in Danielle Steel “Wings” viewed from the feminism point of view. The capitalism and patriarchy cultural become the issue in the analysis.

In this analysis the writer presents some problems that are related to women’s exploitation under capitalism. In this case, the writer uses Marxist Feminism criticism as approach in analyzing the novel. The purposes of the study are to find out the exploitation of women under capitalism and the factors that influence the exploitation over women in capitalistic society.

The idea of Marxist feminism criticism is an effort to get an understanding of the position of female character and the relationship between male and female character in the novel. The problems of female characters and her relationship with male character become the focus of analysis. Moreover the analysis is also aimed to explore the capitalism and patriarchal culture which place female as an inferior.

The result of the study shows that there are two kinds of women’s exploitation and two factors that influence the exploitation; the first is exploitation of women in the family and exploitation of women in the workplace. In this story, Cassie as the major female character was exploited by her husband, Desmond Williams. Cassie not only gives service for her husband as a wife, but she is also exploited by her husband as a tool to sell his plane business. The second is the exploitation of women in the workplace. Cassie is also exploited in the workplace by Desmond. In the workplace Desmond is not only exploit Cassie’s talent in flying a plane, but he also exploits Cassie’s beauty to get publicity and big benefit. Desmond made Cassie’s life more like an actress than a pilot.

The two factors that influence the exploitation are patriarchal ideology and capitalism ideology. Capitalism ideology viewed that the relationship between the labour and the employer are based on power relationship. Patriarchal ideology claims that in the family relationship, a husband has a right to exploit his wife because in the family, men are the head of family and women’s life depend on men. These two ideologies are influence Desmond attitude as the employer in confront his worker and his family. As the employer, Desmond prosecutes the big profit from his worker. In the family, Desmond acts as a husband that can control his wife and exploits his wife. In this case Cassie as the major female character faces this problem. As a worker of Desmond Company, Cassie can not refuse the Desmond commands, although she feels that she is exploited by Desmond. Cassie also exploited in the family after she marriages with Desmond. As a wife, she can not stop the exploitation over herself or avoid herself from exploitation, because her life’s is controlled by Desmond as her husband.

This analysis, the writer finds that Cassie delivers many ideas of feminism. She states that every woman have a legal right to work and to explore their talent in workplace without exploitation. Finally, the writer hopes that this analysis gives benefits to the next researchers as the references or as the data supporting.