CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study Literature
is literally acquaintance with letters as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin
littera meaning an individual written
character (letter). Literature is a written work that has artistic values. The term has generally come to identify a
collection of texts, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and
non-fiction, drama and poetry (http//:www.modernlibrary.com).
Literature is one of such ways to
express the creativity in developing the view of civilization. There would be always
some messages, point of view, and ideas
that try to be delivered by the text of the literature. Something is described in the text is a part of illustration of the
world in our imagination. These massages from our imagination are related to the mind;
feeling and the ideas about something
exist or can be existed (Pradotokusumo, 2005:39) Literary criticism explains
what a work of literature means. It has important
role for human life and the development of literature itself. It means that literary criticism is important in
developing knowledge and understanding the values out side literary itself such as
religion, philosophy, moral and so on. The purpose in analyzing a literary work is to
understand what it tries to communicate.
Furthermore, analysis helps us
through reading and through reflection, understands
the way ideas and feelings are talked in the works (Endraswara, 2003:10).
In this study, feminism becomes a common issue
to explore the discrimination,
marginalization, and domination that exist in patriarchal culture.
Those stand up on the superiority
of men. Superiority is rank, status and quality that is to present men as super-power in the
societies. They dominate to possess women
in social, domestic, politic, economic and other sector in their society and culture. Men early claim and force their
culture that women have to be undercontrol of men.
In discourse of gender equality,
women experience inequality, oppression and
even violence in different condition. Man is one who becomes the subject to discriminate women as inferior and subordinate
by the system that is created by men
them selves through the culture. For example this novel describes the life of Afghan woman. Women in Afghanistan become
victim of discrimination of patriarchal
culture. They cannot work and go out their home. They have to use veil (burqo) when they are out of their home
and must be accompanied by their family.
Every woman whom breaks the low must be punished as a consequence of their measure. That is the system of violence
put by patriarchy toward woman as an
object.
Violence against women is one of
the most widespread violations of human
rights. It can include physical, sexual, psychological and economic abuse, and it cuts across boundaries of age, race,
culture, wealth and geography. It takes place
in the home, on the streets, in schools, the workplace, in farm fields, refugee
camps, during conflicts and crises. It
has many manifestations — from the most universally
prevalent forms of domestic and sexual violence, to harmful practices, abuse during pregnancy, so-called honour
killings and other types of femicide.
(http//:www.unifem.com/violence-against-women-html)
Women and children are often in great danger in the place where they should be safest: within their families. For
many, ‗home‘ is where they face a regime of terror and violence at the hands of
somebody close to them - somebody they
should be able to trust. Those victimized suffer physically and psychologically. They are unable to make their
own decisions, voice their own opinions
or protect themselves and their children for fear of further repercussions.
Their human rights are denied and
their lives are stolen from them by the everpresent threat of violence. (Mehr
Khan, 2000: 1) There is no one single factor to account for violence
perpetrated against women. Increasingly,
research has focused on the inter-relatedness of various factors that should improve our understanding
of the problem within different cultural
contexts. Several complex and interconnected institutionalized social and cultural factors have kept women particularly
vulnerable to the violence directed at
them, all of them manifestations of historically unequal power relations between men and women. Factors contributing to
these unequal power relations include:
socio-economic forces, the family institution where power relations are enforced, fear of and control over female
sexuality, belief in the inherent superiority
of males, and legislation and cultural sanctions that have traditionally denied women and children an independent legal
and social status (UNICEF, Innocenti
Research Centre Florence, Italy, 2000).
Lack of economic resources underpins women‘s
vulnerability to violence and their
difficulty in extricating themselves from a violent relationship. The link between
violence and lack of economic resources and dependence is circular. On the one
hand, the threat and fear of violence keeps women from seeking employment, or, at best, compels them to
accept low-paid, home-based exploitative
labor. And on the other, without economic independence, women have no power to escape from an abusive
relationship (UNICEF, Innocenti Research
Centre Florence, Italy, 2000).
Violence is the expression of
physical or verbal force against self or other, compelling action against one's will on pain
of being hurt. Worldwide, violence is used
as a tool of manipulation and also is an area of concern for law and culture which take attempts to suppress and stop it.
The word violence covers a broad spectrum.
It can vary from between a physical altercation between two beings where a slight injury may be the outcome to
war and genocide where millions may die
as a result. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence) Generally,
Santoso (2002) divides violence into three categories; violence is as an action of actor or community of
actor, violence as a product of structure, and violence as relation between actor and
structure. A scientist of biology and physiology
said that people exert the violence because of their innate, or as consequence of the different genetic and
anomaly.
Galtung (1975) defines violence
is something that caused people cannot actualized
his common potential in his life. He said that Structural violence is indirect violence, not appear, static, and
show the particular stability. Thus, violence
is not only created by actor or mass, but it is created by structure of the political form (nation) (Galtung in Santoso,
2002: 1-2).
In Hosseini‘s A Thousand Splendid
Suns we will find the relations of violence
in the politic structure with Afghan‘s women. The violence‘s experience of Afghan‘s woman is not only happening in
domestic life, but also in public life, it
is because of intimidation of political power when Thaliban has authority after
Soviet abandons Afghanistan. Thaliban‘s
law has been always manipulated and exploited
by religion as a basic power to discriminate women‘s right.
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