1.1 Background of the Study
The difference of genders in the society had created different roles between them. Therefore, structure of injustices are manifested into plenty of evidences. In the reality, a women are not only the victim of this injustice because men are placed in the same condition but only in a certain case. But generally, women are true victim most often. Women subordinate is one of the evidences.
When we talk about women subordinate, we will not go far from the society’s the way of thinking about Traditional gender roles. This systematic of gender division has already used by almost society from over the world. We can not only say it as ‘used’ but it has already buried in the mind of society consciously or unconsciously. These roles which are built the images of women as emotional, weak, nurturing, and submassive. There are so many sides of society that acknowledge about women emancipation but unconsciously is affected by these concept of roles because like the writer mentioned before that this concept has already buried in the mind of society from the beginning. The most famous issue of this traditional gender roles is Patriarchy. Patriarchy itself described as the culture that privileges men by developing traditional gender roles. From this concept, the term of Patriarchal woman is created. By definition, patriarchal woman is a woman who has internalized the norms and values of patriarchy. But it is not ending, patriarchy is not only created as something that determining women in such criterias but also dividing women into two types, those are good women and bad women. Members of pro-patriarchy decide that woman who does not follow her natural criterias as the bad one. The bad women themselves described as violent, aggressive, ambitious, monstrous women which basically mentioned as men’s behaviors. But when women do have those behaviors, they will turn into women who are not good enough to bear men’s name or having a child. But in other way, the good women are rewarded by patriarchal culture. The good one must be modest, unassuming, self-safrificing, nurturing, completely satisfied by serving the family, sad about the problems of others,worries about those in her care, and never angry. Those criterias are unfortunately used by men or patriarchal society, but slowly influenced the mindset of women themselves.
From the explanation above, the writer is interested in analyzing evidences of women subordinate from direct or even indirect explanation produced by main character in A Little Princess novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, since this novel is made a wealthy little girl who is described as princess manners girl as the main character. This novel tells the reader about the criterias of a girls who want to be a princess. But when the writer analyze deeper, the writer finds similarities of princess’ criterias and the rules of a good woman that made by patriarchal society.
The aim of this study is to investigate the evidence of women subordinate from the term princess manners which owned by main character of A Little Princess. In this study, the writer also limits her study to only give the evidence of topic the writer took. So, the writer makes an analysis of the novel with the title “Sara’s Thoughts As Main Character Manifesting the Women Subordination Potrayed in Frances Hudgson Burnett’s A Little Princess”.