Review of Related Studies

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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW

This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part is for review on related studies. The second part is for review on related theories. The last part is for theoretical framework.

A. Review of Related Studies

The study in Toni Morrisons Paradise had been done by other researchers. In order to get the basic or the main position for this thesis, other studies are used to compare this thesis and other studies. In this section, there are some passages which are taken from undergraduate thesis. Discrimination Within An Afro- American Community in The Unites States in 1960s-1970s as Depicted in Toni Morrisons Paradise written by Stanislaus Febri Atmaka is one of study which are used in this section. This study focuses on the social structure of the Ruby community. The structure of Ruby community which lives in isolation does not create equality. Atmaka says that Every member of Ruby does not get the same treatment and opportunity. There are three points which maintain the inequality. They are stratification, class system, and power distribution within Ruby community Atmaka, 2003: 76. The study discusses the influence of Morgan family which creates inequality in the community. Morgan family has an important role in the society because Morgan family is the upper class and they unconsciously creates rule for the society. The most influential figures of the Morgan family members are businessmen since they have a bank as the central regulation of Ruby economy life. They provide loan for those who have financial problems Atmaka, 2003: 52. Morgan family is the center of the society and they can use their power to dominate the Ruby community because people in Ruby depend on Morgan family to keep living. As a rich family, they have the ability to buy everything they want. It seems that they want to conquer all of the property in Ruby. Having all of the property of Ruby let them rule the community Atmaka, 2003: 58. The difference of power within one and another create the stratification and class system. People who have more power such as wealth and money can dominate the society, it makes the inequality of people appear in the Ruby community. Unlike the previous study which is written by Atmaka, The Identity Challenge in Toni Morrison’s Paradisewhich is written by Vida de Voss focuses on the identity and behavior of the characters in Paradise, namely New Father and Old Father Big Papa and Big Daddy. New Father and Old Father is symbol of the men identity in the society, New Father has different concept and rule from the Old Father. For the Old Fathers, the true test of their triumph and achievement lay in the fact that none of their women had ever worked in a white mans kitchen. The Oven, as a kind of communal kitchen is in stark contrast to the white kitchens where the rape of their women was if not a certainty a distinct possibility De Voss, 2010:24. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI New Father and Old Father is the leader of the Ruby Town. New Father has the similar ideologies to the Old Father, their ability to fulfill the responsibility to provide for and protect their women and children. Even the New Father has similar aspect of identity; they create the role of women and children by using concept of protection. Their concept of town it should be men as the ruler of the town and family because it gives protection to the women and children. The New Fathers unfortunately take their responsibility to the extent that they define and determine the role of women and children. In the description of the sleepless woman, her possible thoughts are described as her thinking of food preparations, or family things, or lift her eyes to stars and think of nothing at all. De Voss, 2010: 29. De Voss says that Paradise not only focus in the inequality and intolerance. The identity of characters is important to discuss because their own identity create the present condition of the community. He explains that the group is affected by the image of one self and other self. Her works are meant to impact human consciousness and affect change. Her works do not advocate specific courses of action. Morrison sketches an image of the self to the self and leaves the self with the choice of what to do with the self revelation held up in Paradise. Each group, affected by such an understanding, is similarly left with the same responsibility of choice De Voss, 2010: 54. The next study with title Feminist Literature: An Impossible? Working with Toni Morrisons Paradise which is written by Beatriz Revelles-Benaventeis different from the other studies.This study discusses the movement of the women in the community story in the novel and how literature can affect the politics in their era. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI Introducing this generational debate, Morrison aims at promoting a more inclusive politics since she is making her readers aware that time matters and the embodied experiences of the different members of the community are never equal because of their unique development Benavente, 2014: 14. Benavente explains that literature affects the politic condition in that era because this Morrison’s work makes women to get their freedom and it gives affection to the changes of politic in the society. It is explained that Paradise breaks the oppositional thinking. The ruby community becomes the oppressive system to the women by repeating the logic of the oppressor. Ruby is a town in which only black people could live and be born. The main focus of the story is the women who live in the Convent. Women in the Convent live without societal rules congruent with conventional patriarchal systems. Ruby and the Convent could be considered as denominated the exteriority within Benavente, 2014: 10. Benavente discusses the effects of the Morrisons work to women in 90’era. He explains that the impossibility to identify with is directly related to the impossibility to organize social movements depending on certain identities.At the end of the story, the condition of the women in the Convent changes, they have another opportunity to make peace with their previous life in the Convent when supposedly they have all been killed. The last study is journal fromJournal of the Association for Research Mothering . It’s different from the previous studies. Maternal Resistance and Redemption in Toni Morrisons Paradise which is written by Andrea OReilly discusses about how women live and mothering as healing theme in the story. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI Women in the Convent live by taking care each other, this shows that women is a symbol for healing. In Paradise, as the women take refuge in the convent, they nurture and sustain one another. The convent itself, Connies home and the womens refuge, signifies maternal nurturance; kitchens, and cooking, both metaphoricallyand literally central to the convent, represent in Morrison fiction care andhealing O’Reilly, 2000: 190. The failure of nurturance and care is not much an individual womans inability to mother because of her disconnection from her mother line, but a communitys failure to nurture because of its denial, displacement of funk, and the ancient properties. The causes of the nurturance failures is abortions, miscarriages, sickly children, and dead babies, abandonment, motherlessness, mother loss. Because of those nurturance failures, the convent women create a maternal community from their own individual maternal losses. Maternal Resistance and Redemption in Toni Morrisons Paradise has similar perspective with this study. It explains the connection between women and the society and how their action towards the oppression. This study is different, it focuses on the work and discusses the feminism idea in the story while other studies discusses the discrimination of upper class and lower class. This study analyzesnot only the ideas of feminism but also the patriarchal practice reflected through the characters in the story. It relates the condition of life in the story and the characters to get the feminism idea and gives deeper explanation how the major female characters were abused by the men and how they tried to find their own freedom.

B. Review of Related Theories