Women’s position in 19th century English social life in Jane Austen’s Emma

Feminism is women’s movement for the equality between men and women. It is traditionally constructed that women are men’s inferior. To change this condition, feminists figure out why men are dominance in women’s life. It starts from the patriarchal society where always put women in the second class after men. Basically, every of us was created equal in every single part, so it is forbidden to dominate or even exploit someone else. The men domination not only proves itself in the real life but also in the world of literature. Women frequently turn out to be the second class, as men’s inferior, Emma written by Jane Austen also talks about that issue.

This study is intended to answer the questions as follows: first what were women’s role in Britain 19th century in Emma by Jane Austen; second how were women’s positions in 19th century social life in Emma by Jane Austen.

This research is a literary criticism by using feminist literary criticism. The data source of this study is the novel Emma by Jane Austen. The data of this study are all sentences in the form of written dialogues, monologues and expression, which are collected from novel Emma. The steps of data collection are reading and understanding the novel to gain comprehension of the depiction Emma’s thoughts. Next is picking up the data about the women life. After that, the writer selected the data which focus on the research problems.

To analyze the data, the writer classified, interpreted, and made conclusion based on the result of data analysis about the women’s role and their position in 19th century social as the last for the writer to analyze the data. Women were described as the house keeper; and that women were the men’s servant. They have nothing to do than become a daughter for their family, wife for her husband, and women for their men. It is portrayed in the novel that the nature of women are become men’s servant. More over, women’s position were considered as the second sex, women were the men’s inferior, women were not equal to men. Even though, some of characters represent the effort such as independent women but most of them cannot avoid the men’s domination in their life.

The writer hopes that this study can give a new contribution to the readers, especially the students who are interested in women’s studies. Also it is hoped to enrich the understanding about woman’s position in social life that reflected in the literary works.