Major characters’ opinion on Mary Magdalene’s Oppression Reflected in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: A Poststructuralist Feminist literary study

ABSTRACT

Differentsexes create gender inequality. This condition is not a natural condition, but it is constructed and maintained in our social life. Education, religion, state, or family might be agent of this patriarchal system. In this system women are in charge as victim of oppression, whether they realize it or not. Oppression is a phenomenon that appears every day in real life. In this study, the writer found oppression also recorded in literature, as what written in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, the object of this study.

The Da Vinci Code provides us with the information about oppression to women that constructed and maintained by religion, Christian. Related to this case, problems of the study can be formulated; (1) Whatis major characters’ opinion on Mary Magdalene’s oppression reflected in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code? (2) What is the historical context of Mary Magdalene’s oppression reflected in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Cod?

The researcher, in this analysis, uses feminist literary criticism as her research design, because feminist literary criticism is the approach that directly related to the problem of study and to this literary work. Feminist literary criticism is suitable to use for analyzing the oppression to women in this novel.

There are two major points that can be revealed in this research. The first finding is major characters’ opinion about the oppression to Mary Magdalena. She was oppressed in kind of labeled as whore or prostitute and poor that causes her marginalized and become powerless. She is also not recognized as the Holy Grail of Jesus Christ due to the blocking of her history in Christian church.

The second is the historical context of Mary Magdalene’s oppression. The researcher found that the oppression is manifested in kind of elimination of sacred feminine and rite or attributes that related to them. It happens after the patriarchal religion come to replace the matriarchal system. The researcher also found the stereotyping about women as the cause of original sin that makes women oppresses in kind of exploitation.