27 to read and write. They were allowed to work only in the house. They could
engage in kitchen tasks, embroidery, chatting, chanting, and even only sitting in the women’s chamber—the only place that men could not enter. In this situation,
Lily and Snow Flower lived. To be more marriageable their feet are bound. If they had perfect feet, they would marry with a man of high status. Lily had perfect
feet—about three inches in length—so she married a man from the richest family in Tongkou. Meanwhile, Snow Flower did not. They had different fortunes. She
married a butcher. Due to not having right to education, they used women’s secret writing to
write letters, songs, prayers, popular stories, etc. By nu shu, Lily and Snow Flower could share their hopes, dreams, and also accomplishments. They also
shared their sorrows and joys in their lives of being a wife and a mother.
B. Approach of the Study
To analyze the problem, the writer employs the sociological approach as the appropriate approach to deal with the relation of male domination to
footbinding and Chinese women’s secret writing in the nineteenth century. According to X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, sociological criticism examines the
literary work in the cultural, economic, and political context. It also explores the relationship between the characters and the society. However, sociological
criticism also examines the author’s sociological status to check whether or not the author’s particular background influences hisher literary work. Besides, the
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28 social content can also promote what cultural, economic, and political values are
present, implicitly and explicitly, in a text Kennedy and Gioia, 1998. Sociology specifically explores on why and how a condition happens in a
society. Kammeyer, Ritzer, Yetman 1994 classified sociology into at least fifty specializations. One of them is the sociology of culture. The sociology of culture
is based on the interrelationships within the complex unity Raymond, 1977. It means that one person will influence the other when they live in a society which
consists of people of many different races, religions, and cultures. The classification ‘sociology of culture’ draws our attention to the usefulness of
sociology in culture studies. One of cultural studies goals is to go beyond the limits or borders of a
specific discipline such as literary criticism or history Guerin et al. 1996. Guerin et al. describe that goal as “scrutinizing the cultural phenomena in a text and also
drawing conclusions about the changes in textual phenomena over time”. Cultural studies looks at the cultural phenomenon of literary work. Footbinding and the
women’s secret writing are the cultural phenomena in the novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. In this study, the writer would like to examine how the cultural
phenomena in the novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan such as footbinding and women’s secret writing influenced the women’s life in the nineteenth century. By
using this sociological approach, the analysis of the relation of male domination to footbinding and Chinese women’s secret can be effectively done.
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C. Method of the Study
