Oppression to women in Shirley Conran’s Crimson: A Feminist literary criticism

ABSTRACT

God has created human with many differences but He never differentiate human because of those differences. God differentiate human based on faith and devout. But, people always see those differences as distinguish factor to humiliate others. It makes some different right and position for women; women always have lower position than men. The assumed norm in society is for women to be in charge of domestic labor and childrearing while men engage in public concerns. It attracts men as the owner of authority to oppress women. The oppression to women is a phenomenon in women’s life and in literature. In this study, the writer takes the novel Crimson by Shirley Conran as the object of this thesis.

Crimson presents the oppression to women in their life. Related to this case, the problems of the study can be formulated; (1) what is oppression to women major characters described in Shirley Conran’s Crimson? (2) What are the reactions of women major characters toward their oppression in Shirley Conran’s Crimson?

In this research, the writer uses feminist literary criticism as her research design because feminist literary criticism is the research design that is directly related to this literary work. The writer uses feminism because it is very suitable to find out the oppression to women in this novel. Since there are many feminism thoughts, the writer uses existentialist feminism in this study.

From this research, there are two finding that can be revealed. The first finding is the oppression to women character, Elinor and her granddaughter Clare; the oppression really exists in their pre- mariagge and marriage time. In pre- marriage and marriage time, women are men’s authority. Women are oppressed by men in many aspects of their life. It happens in their sexual, education, economy, family, etc. Such as how men determine women to be good wife and to be domestic labor. They get physical and verbal violence. In sexual, they are the object to fulfill men sexual satisfaction while their satisfaction is ignored. Then they still limited in education. Moreover, the most terrible thing is that they receive the oppression as women’s nature. The second finding is the reactions of women toward their oppression, there are two women reactions; reception and struggle. Women receive the oppression as part of women’s nature. They internalize men determination as destiny. Yet, after experiencing the horror life with men they realize and fight the oppression. They make struggles to resist oppression, such as get divorce and kill her husband. Since there are two women characters, they show different reactions toward their oppression. Elinor’s reception toward her oppression is more dominant while Clare tends to show her struggle toward her oppression.