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CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Feminist Literary Criticism
Feminist criticism is a type of literary criticism, which may study
and advocate the rights of women. As Judith Fetterley says, "Feminist criticism is
a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by
changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they
read". (http://classiclit.about.com) In addition to many of the questions raised by a
study of women in literature, feminist criticism may study stereotypes, creativity,
ideology, racial issues, marginality, and more.
Feminist literary criticism is the rebellion of the women consciousness of
against the male images of female identity and experience. The concept of female
identity shows us how female experience is transformed into female
consciousness, often in reaction of male paradigms to female experiences. It is an
ideology that opposes the political, economical, and cultural relegation of women
to position of inferiority. The critical project of feminist critics is thus concerned
with uncovering the contingencies of a gender as a cultural, social and political
construct and instrument of domination.
Before 1970 the main points of criticism were authorship and condition
of women and the way they are portrayed in literature. Since 1970s things have
become complex and varied. Gender studies after the 1970 were dominated by the
revisionists. Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis are now taken into account
while evaluating literary works relating feminism. The studies and assessment of

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feminist literature in the present day is related to queer studies which is study of
sexual orientations and gender individuality in the society.
According to Catherine A. Mackinon, feminist theory (1982) female
gender stereotypes whether: manifested n a fiction or in reality are revealed as
sexual. Vulnerability means the appearance or reality of easy sexual access
passivity means receptivity and disabled resistance, enforced by physical
weakness. Womens situation also has been explained as a consequence of
biology. Simone de Beauvoir, the second sex (1970) criticizes the social meaning
with biological determination what she called anatomy destiny.
A feminist literary critic resists traditional assumptions while reading. In
addition to challenging assumptions which were thought to be universal, feminist
literary criticism actively supports including women's knowledge in literature and
valuing women's experiences. Women through the ages have written feminist
theory and various forms of feminist critique. During the period of second-wave
feminism, the loftiest academic circles increasingly challenged the male literary
canon. Feminist literary criticism has since intertwined with postmodernism and
increasingly complex questions of gender and societal roles.

2.2 Liberal Feminism
Liberal feminism seeks no special privileges for women and simply
demands that everyone receive equal consideration without discrimination on the
basis of sex. Liberal feminists would seek to remove barriers that prevent equal
access for women to information technology jobs not only to provide economic

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equality but to provide access to higher-paying jobs for women
(http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/Feminism.htm).
Liberals hold that freedom is a fundamental value, and that the just state
ensures freedom for citizens. Liberal feminists share this view, and insist on
freedom for women. There is disagreement among liberals about what freedom
means, and thus liberal feminism takes more than one form, classical liberal or
libertarian feminism and egalitarian liberal feminism.
Classical liberal or libertarian feminism conceives of freedom as
freedom from coercive interference. It holds that women, as well as men, have a
right to such freedom due to their status as self-owners. It holds that coercive state
power is justified only to the extent necessary to protect the right to freedom from
coercive interference. Equity feminists are classical liberal or libertarian feminists
who hold that, in societies like the United States, the only morally significant
source of oppression of women is the state. They hold that feminism's political
role is to bring an end to laws that limit women's liberty in particular, but also to
laws that grant special privileges to women. Some equity feminists see a
nonpolitical role for feminism, helping women to benefit from their freedom by
developing beneficial character traits or strategies for success, or navigating
among their increasing options. Other equity feminists are socially conservative
and argue that, while the state should not enforce them, traditional values function
as bulwarks against state power and produce independent and self-restraining
citizens. Cultural libertarian feminists are classical liberal or libertarian feminists
who hold that the culture of societies like the United States is patriarchal and a
significant source of oppression of women. They hold that the patriarchal culture

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and the state are complementary systems of oppression. Cultural libertarian
feminists hold that much of the oppression women suffer today is no coercive,
however, and thus should not be met with state remedies but with a nonviolent
movement for feminist social change. Readers interested in classical liberal or
libertarian feminism may want to skip ahead to that section now.
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-liberal/)
Egalitarian liberal feminists hold that the exercise of personal autonomy
depends on certain enabling conditions that are insufficiently present in women's
lives, or that social arrangements often fail to respect women's personal autonomy
and other elements of women's flourishing. They hold also that women's needs
and interests are insufficiently reflected in the basic conditions under which they
live, and that those conditions lack legitimacy because women are inadequately
represented in the processes of democratic self-determination. Egalitarian liberal
feminists hold that autonomy deficits like these are due to the gender system or
the patriarchal nature of inherited traditions and institutions, and that the women's
movement should work to identify and remedy them. As the protection and
promotion of citizens' autonomy is the appropriate role of the state on the
egalitarian liberal view, egalitarian liberal feminists hold that the state can and
should be the women's movement's ally in protecting and promoting women's
autonomy. There is disagreement among egalitarian liberal feminists, however,
about the role of personal autonomy in the good life, the appropriate role of the
state, and how egalitarian liberal feminism is to be justified. Readers interested in
egalitarian liberal feminism may want to skip ahead to that section now.

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2.3 Power and Resistance
One of the broader modern views of the importance of power in human
activity comes from the work of Michel Foucault, who has said: Where there is
power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never
in a position of exteriority in relation to power.(Foucault, 1990:95)
What he seems to mean is, because power is not forced in the sense of
direct threat of violence, it must be understood as an asymmetrical set of
relations in which the existence of this multiplicity relations necessarily entails
the possibility of resistance.
Put more strongly, Foucaults analysis in the Method section of
Volume I leads to a conception of resistance in which it is the possibility of
reversal within specific force relations, the contestation of specific objects and
impositions of power on subjects, that is fundamental to the creative possibilities
for resistance within power. The problem in this rendering of power and resistance
is that resistance becomes entirely reactive in this model, or merely a reacting-to
power and not a positive action on its own terms. (McCharty, 1994:258)
Foucault's also analyze the link between power and knowledge. He
outlines a form of covert power that works through people rather than only on
them. Foucault claims belief systems gain momentum (and hence power) as more
people come to accept the particular views associated with that belief system as
common knowledge.
Such belief systems define their figures of authority, such as medical
doctors or priests in a church. Within such a belief system or discourse ideas
crystallize as to what is right and what is wrong, what is normal and what is

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deviant. Within a particular belief system certain views, thoughts or actions
become unthinkable. These ideas, being considered undeniable "truths", come to
define a particular way of seeing the world, and the particular way of life
associated with such "truths" becomes normalized. This subtle form of power
lacks rigidity, and other discourses can contest it. Indeed, power itself lacks any
concrete form, occurring as a locus of struggle. Resistance, through defiance,
defines power and hence becomes possible through power. Without resistance,
power is absent.
We often talk about people as if they have particular attributes as 'things'
inside themselves, they have an identity, for example, and we believe that at the
heart of a person there is a fixed and true identity or character. We assume that
people have an inner essence, qualities beneath the surface which determine who
that person really 'is'. We also say that some people have different levels of power
which means that they are more or less able to achieve what they want in their
relationships with others, and society as a whole.
Foucault rejected this view. For Foucault, people do not have a 'real'
identity within themselves; that is just a way of talking about the self, a discourse.
An 'identity' is communicated to others in the interactions with them, but this is
not a fixed thing within a person. It is a shifting, temporary construction.
In place of a model which is based upon the differential, asymmetrical
relations between forces, the account offered in The Subject and Power paints
a portrait of power in which power functions by structuring a field of possible
action in which a subject must act. The structure of the field, however, does not
imply external coercion by power itself, power functions by guiding the actions

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of a fundamentally free subject, but always with the possibility that the subject
can traverse the field in new and creative ways.
2.3.1 Power
The analysis of power through the emphasis on the effect of action upon
action, also serves to highlight the positive manner in which the subject is able to
act upon his or herself, or the relation of oneself to oneself. Foucault captures
those forms of power that make person centralized. Power is not an institution,
and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the
name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society or
community. (Foucault, 1990:108)
The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the
social structure . Power can be seen as evil or unjust , but the exercise of power is
accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. From the emergence of the
concept of power who covers (power over), which reach goals through resource
mobilization. Such definitions are explicitly appearing in the thought of Foucault.
He puts the power of parallel to the authorities, so have legitimacy to apply their
ceremonial and desires to others, even if that person does not want it.
Foucault describes power as the modification of action by action; put
somewhat differently, power is no longer conceived as the abstract relation of
forces but as the structuring of the field of possible actions by means of action.
People do not have power implicitly; rather, power is a technique or action which
individuals can engage in. Power is not possessed; it is exercised. And where
there is power, there is always also resistance.

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2.3.2 Resistance
While Foucault does not abandon the idea of force relations outlined in
Volume I, he does complicate and recast it, if power functions through the
structure of a field of possible actions, resistance to power should not only be
understood in terms of agonistic force relations, but in terms of a creative
traversing of the field of possible action. Resistance is a consequence of reduction
of individuals to effects of power relations. It relies upon and grows out of the
situation against power in the act of disapprobation which it called struggles. .
(Foucault, 1990:137)
Foucaults understanding of resistance as refusal the power which is local
struggles against forms of subjection aimed at loosening the constraints on
possibilities for action. He suggests that a key struggle in the present is against the
tendency of dominating power to tie individuals to their identities in constraining
ways. It is, Foucault contends, because disciplinary practices limit the possibilities
of what we can be by fixing our identities that the object of resistance must be 'to
refuse what we are' that is, to fracture the limitations imposed on us by
normalizing identity categories. (Sawicki 1994: 289).

2.4 Character and Characterization
Abrams (1985:20) says that a character is a person in dramatic or
narrative work which naturally possesses moral disposition qualities that are
expressed in what he says through the dialogue and what he does through his
action. Of course this definition can not be applied in certain kinds of literary
works. The more general definition, that character is the element of fiction that

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focuses on the individuals involved in the plot; theses are usually human but could
be animals or even forces of nature. This definition reconciles with fantasy fiction
or fables. In the fantasy fiction or fables, the character are not people but the
author gives them human ability and human psychological traits.
We can group the characters on the basis of some categories, e.g. flat and
round characters. Flat characters have only one or two personality traits and are
easily recognized as stereotypes. Such as the handsome prince, the heroic soldier,
the lovely princess, and so on. While round characters have multiple personality
traits. (Widyowati, 1996:21)
A character may be either static or dynamic; a static character is one who
changes little. A dynamic character, on the contrary, is one who is modified by
action and experiences. In other word, a static character remains the same
throughout the work, while a dynamic character changes in the course of the
work. Usually strong characters are rounded and dynamic; they exhibit the full
range of human emotions and reactions to people and events. They have histories
and more than one possible future.
On the basis of importance, Koesnobroto, in Widyowati (1996:21), says
that we can distinguish two types of characters. They are minor and major
characters. The former is the less important character while the latter is the most
important character in a story. Koesnobroto also says that the chief character in a
fiction or a play is called protagonist. The opponent of this character is called the
antagonist. The antagonist can be human or non human being, animate or
inanimate things that hinder the protagonist in achieving her goal.

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From the explanation, we can conclude that characters must be realistic;
they must act and sound like people in the situation we find in the plot of the
novel. Characters must be internally consistent; any change in a character must be
caused by circumstances or the actions of some other characters.

2.5 Previous Studies
This research has close relation to the previous research on the same
novel. Peggy Reeves Sanday (2000) with the title Comparing a Lost Lady and
Like Water for Chocolate. In this research, she compares some elements of the
novel by using structural approach. She is interested by these two novels because
it is written in different eras, in different styles, and in different cultures. Cather's
Victorian realism seems totally incompatible with Esquivel's surrealistic imagery,
and yet, if readers look closely, they may find common threads woven between
the two works. She compares the development of the central character in each of
the novels. Marian and Tita are both members of well-born families, tied to
convention and tradition respectively. Both are motivated by passion and their
desire to fulfill it. Each is characterized throughout her novel by an emotional
trademark. Tita, for example, is marked by her tears, and Marian is noted for "her
many-coloured laugh". Each of these women is shown to have a strong will and
the ability to stand up to other characters and to their conflicts. Marian Forrester,
as we have seen, manages to maintain a devoted relationship with the Captain, yet
she still satisfies her longings for excitement and passion.
Peggy wrote that both stories are about strong, passionate women living
at the turn of the century who face obstacles of tradition and conventionality. Both

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women pursue their own dreams while striving to maintain some sense of
respectability and honor.
The second previous study is closed to the research about power and
resistance of woman has been written by Suhartini (2006) entitled Women
Negoitating Power in Egypt Society : A Textual Analysys of Power And
Resistance In Novel Ayat-Ayat Cinta by Habiburrahman El-Shirazy. The research
has focused on how four male characters in the novel, Fahri, Bahadur, Robin, and
Rudolf Greimas manifest their power upon women. In this research, Suhartini
found that Fahri, as a good man or man with good characteristic described that he
manifests three kind of power; coercive power, reward power and expert power.
He manifested his power verbally by forcing, giving (something to), and
influencing a person concerned. This research also found that Bahadur only
manifests coercive power which is uses three action; verbal action, physical
action, and psychological action. The next character is Robin who only manifests
coercive power in his interaction with women. He often makes women disturbed
or disappointed through his coercion action. The coercive power manifested by
Robin only uses psychological action. The last male character is Rudolf who
manifests two kinds of power upon women in order to reach his goal; coercive
power and reward power. He uses two ways in manifesting his power in
interaction with women; verbal action and psychological action.
And the second purpose is focused on how five female characters; Noura,
Aisha, Nurul, Maria and Syaima resist mens power exercised on them. Noura,
she resists mens power exercised on her by screaming and sharing with other
people (Nurul). Aisha performs her resistance through verbal action and in

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addition, she performs her resistance by moving out from the house. The next
female character is Nurul who performs her resistance through verbal action by
refusing and sharing. Same with Nurul, Maria shows her refusal through verbal
action by refusing and rejecting. The last is Syaima who shows her resistance
through physical action by protecting, and verbal action by condemning.