that women were marginalized as a creature with no education, no money, work in domestic area, the self-doubt, and fear.
5
Now the feminist political activists recognize that women writers have focused on women‟s lives and issues as the central themes of their writings. There
are some novels that put a woman as the central character. One of them is The Sweetheart Season written by Karen Joy Fowler. This novel adapts women lives
in the World War II in 1947, in Magrit, a small town of America. The men are involved in the war, therefore the women must work in public area and become
leaders of their families. Some single women work in the Scientific Kitchen of Margaret Mill, a breakfast-cereal maker as cooks. Henry, the company founder of
Margaret Mill decides to form a baseball team named the “Sweetheats Sweethearts” which members are all women of his employees. They hope that by
joining the team they will find their future husbands. In short, this novel ex
plores “Women‟s Liberation” movement. Although women in this novel are workers but the field of their work still focuses on the
“kitchen” or in domestic area. Therefore this paper tries to analyze how the feminism values are reflected in the novel through the women characters.
B. The Focus of the Research
This study focuses on the novel of The Sweetheart Season written by Karen Joy Fowler, by analyzing the women characters through feminism
approach. The women characters are Irini Doyle, Norma Baldish, Cindy May, and Claire Kinser.
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Mary Eagleton, Feminist Literary Criticism, London and New York: Longman, 1991, p.7
C. Statement of the Problem
Based on the background above, the writer proposes the statement of the problem as follow: How does the novel The Sweetheart Season written by Karen
Joy Fowler reflect the feminism values through the women characters?
D. The Objective
The objective of the study is to know the feminism values from the dialogues, acts, and statements, in the novel of The Sweetheart Season written by
Karen Joy Fowler by using feminism approach.
E. The Significance of the Researches
The writer hopes this research will gives many contributions to readers, especially to those who concern on literature. It is also hoped that readers will
understand of the novel The Sweetheart season written by Karen Joy Fowler better after reading the result of the analysis of women as well as the feminism
values in the novel. The writer hopes the analysis would motivate individuals interested in literature to do further analysis.
F. The Methodology of the Research
a. The Method
The writer uses qualitative method in doing this research by analyzing words as the evidencesthe data that are collected from the novel.
Through this method the writer analyzes and identifies women characters that reflect the feminism values.
b. The Technique of Data Analysis
The data obtained in this study will be analyzed qualitatively based
on feminism approach. The technique of data analysis of the research tries to
find out images of women live in the novel, and then the writer uses the feminist literary criticism to get the feminism values. The writer reads the
work deeply, understands it comprehensively and gives some marks in each
line of the novel, then analyze them and write them in a paper. c. The Instrument
The instrument of this research is the writer herself as a subject by reading deeply, giving some marks in each line of the novel, collecting the
data and analyzing the evidence the data that find out in the novel.
d. The Unit of Analysis
The unit analysis of the research is the novel of The Sweetheart Season written by Karen Joy Fowler, published in Great Britain by Penguin
Books in 2006.
e. The Time
This research is conducted in Jakarta and it start from August 2010 until May 2011.
