Feminist perspective found in sense and sensibility by Jane Austen

ABSTRACT

God creates human being into two kinds of sexes, males and females. Both of them are created equal. There is no difference between them. However, in the society there is a differentiation between men and women. Men, either consciously or unconsciously, have oppressed women, allowing them little or no voice in the political, social or economic issues of their society. This problem makes women try to struggle and to reach the equality of rights between them.

Jane Austen as the author of the novel of Sense and Sensibility described women’s oppression through her literary work. She tried to express her ideas of feminism through her writing. She used the female characters as the major characters, which are always treated unfairly in the society. Her literary work is dedicated to us especially for women to fight for the unfair treatment done by men.

The purpose of this study is to describe women’s rights, women’s position in society, and the effect of author’s cultural background that influences her attitude toward her literary work as reflected in her novel of Sense, and Sensibility. The novel tells about the unfair treatment that is usually faced especially by the middle class female characters in their social life.

The study used the feminist literary criticism in discussing the women’s rights, the women’s position in the society and the effect of author’s cultural background that influences her attitude toward her literary work as reflected in the novel ofSem٠e and Sensibility. Through the novel, we found women’s position in the society and three women’s rights, i.e. women’s right in social affairs, women’s right in getting education, and also women’s right in making decision.

Related to the biography of the author, we know the effect of the author’s cultural background that influences her attitude toward her literary work because at that time the author cannot express her idea in front of the society about women oppression that is faced by the women. So, she tries to protest the bad condition throughout her writings and she wants the readers to be an independent woman.

From this study, the researcher hopes that the readers can catch the novel’s message given by the author especially about feminism and the other researchers who focus on this topic about the feminist perspective can analyze wider and deeper research. This study is very limited and far from the perfection, so that the writer hopes that the next researcher can give more attention to this topic.