CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study Criticism is a
common act of criticizing in academic communities in order to understand what they study. There are a lot of
students in universities, especially for the students of letters conducting an act of
criticizing as their academic requirement and trains their thinking and sensitivity in
understanding the phenomenon and development
on literary study, as it is cited by Lodge in his Modern Criticism and Theory (2000:xi). In understanding the
literary works, the students will know the meaning, the worthiness, the values and the
sense of the literary works itself.
Further, criticizing the literary
work is also one way how to appreciate the literary text, as Lodge (2000:
xi) adds his explanation about the aims
of criticizing literary work. By
criticizing, the student will reveal the meaning and aesthetic values of literary work and admit that literary works
are the product of human’s thought that most
of the ideas have to be appreciated. Besides, literary works are taken from the
people’s experiences and imaginations
that the students can take the lesson
from the author’s works which is
implicitly and explicitly applies a message through their works. So that, by doing criticism the
students will know how the aesthetics values are important
to be appreciated.
Moreover, conducting criticism in literary is
aimed at increasing the theory or approach
in literary criticism itself in order to
answer the developing question about literature
in our era. Here, the increase of theories and approaches that are offered in literary criticism help the students be able
to answer the recent questions in literary which are intertwined with social condition at
the time the author wrote the literary work.
So that, in line with this study, the aims are not merely to understand and appreciate the literary works but also to
increase the theory itself, as Lodge states in his Modern Criticism and Theory (2002: xi), by
analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating literary
work.
Related to this study, the
researcher tries to use feminist criticism approach and theory in order to reveal the oppressions
received by Black women in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Feminist literary criticism is
used because it is an appropriate approach
and theory to understand the relation between literary work and women’s oppression in literary work. As it is cited by
Peck& Coyle (1986:151-153) that feminist
criticism admits the relation which is applied sex discrimination and suppression on women in literary work.
Meanwhile, feminist literary
criticism has many genre that appears in literary work, such as liberal feminism, marxist
feminism, psychoanalysis feminism, existentialist
feminist, black feminism and many else. Eventhough there are many genre of feminism, there is the same aim. The
aim is to strugle women right and their equality
with women.
Discussing about Black women
oppression, basically,Black and White women receive the same oppressions that are done by
man socially, physiologically, culturally, and psychologically. As it is cited by Bell
Hooks that Black women as well as other groups
of women are in oppressive situation that acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their life experience
(http://hsph. harvad.edu/organizations/heathnet/ WoC/ feminisms /hooks.html).
Meanwhile, Black and White women have slight
difference oppression between them.
Here, Black women not merely receive oppression by men because of their gender but also their race and class, as
cite d by Andersen (2003:14-16). Moreover, Collins asserts that African-American women
have been victimized by race, gender, and
class oppression (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/252.html). So that,
it is clear enough to show that Black women have double oppressions that
are not only caused by their gender but
also their race and class, which is worthy to note.
When the researcher considers
novel to be the object of the research, she considers Toni Morrison as one of the best
representatives of women writers who deserves
to get honors because of her valuable writing. It can be proved by Mickay in Warhol & Herndl’s Feminist; an Anthology
of Literary Theory and Criticism (1991:285)
who mentions that as a new writer, Morrison is includedas one of the Black women writers who produces an
astonishing writing in the last three decades.
Moreover, she is also awarded the
1993 Nobel Prize Pulitzer for literature
that makes African American to be
so honored by her artistry of African American fiction and the validity of the Black women’s voice.
Furthermore, Morrison is included as a women’s
heroine who struggles the women’s
freedom from the oppression. In her fictions, most of her writings concern about women who are oppressed and
discriminated by their genderclass and race different. In her writing, she emphases on the
Black female experience in her own fiction,
struggling to find mirror of her worth in
her Black society and emerging
her writing from the universe of her
mind which has been shaped by the African American culture of her childhood and forged by her
experiences as an African American woman (Taylor & Guthrie, 1994: vii). Here,
Morrison’s struggle can be proved by her novels such as The Bluest eye (1970), Sula (1973),
Beloved (1987) and many else.
In this research, the researcher
considers The Bluest Eye (1970), the first Toni Morrison’s novel becomes an interesting novel
to discuss. The reason is because the main
conflict that appears in this novel is about Black women which become the central object that are oppressed. In this
novel, the oppression of Black women characters
becomes the main conflict, because Blackwomen characters in the novel are depicted as the victim of different sex or
gender and also the victim of class and race
that are predicated on them.
Moreover, The Bluest Eyeinvites the reader to
be part of the resolution fr om the main
conflict that is the Black female characters’ oppression. Further, the readers are invited to think about how to face the
oppressions without disadvantages or causing a negative impact on the women. From
those resolutions it is expected to
reduce or even stop the oppression of
women, especially the oppression of the Black women.
Based on the explanation above,
the researcher is interested in studying feminist literary criticism of the novel The Bluest Eye
written by Toni Morrison which focuses on
the oppression of the Black female characters particularlyPauline, Pecola, Claudia, and Frieda. These women characters are
considered by the researcher as the important characters because they receive hard
oppression than other Black female characters in the novel. Further, this study is given a
title, “The oppressions Faced by Black Women
Characters in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye”.
Meanwhile, for the problems of
the study, the researcher would like to reveal the oppressions faced by the Black women characters and to describe the
Black women characters’ response towards
the oppression they face as reflected in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
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