It had been niggling her all week, chipping away at her self-confidence. What she dreaded most, however often she tried to push the thought away,
was returning to her former state of emptiness and the feeling that she had been abandoned liker in her first year in England Lim, 2003: 179
3. Lack of Confidence
Though Suwen‟s dream or desires driven her to paint the society, Suwen is desribed to be so unconfident toward the manners that she would like to perform
in the canvas, the lack of confident travelling her outside race in the painting driven the result of the painting to be considered as the void of universality, as
Nica thought. The artist must dare to perform her artistic freedom in universality, painting the society without doubts, on the other hand, the lack of certainty of
Suwen‟s identity and race driven her to by shy to move beyond her ethnic group. Besides the lack of confident in the painting.
Suwen also found her doubt to move out from the her mother‟s oppression. The characterization of Suwen is derived from the other character,
Nica‟s speech and thought, as supported and emphasized by Abrams in the theory of character and characterization.
Suwen had lacked the guts to walk out on her mother and away from the ong mansion, compared with the likes of nica and jan, she was just a blob
of jellyfish, flapping on the beach, dreaming of freedom riding the waves but had no ability to move on her own accord. Lim, 2003: 128
Through this description of Suwen‟s behaviour in the narration, Abrams, once again emphasized the characterization to be judged objectively with seeing
both side of speech and action. A critical tendency has been to consider telling a violation of artistryand
to recommend only the technique of showing characters; authors, it
issaid, should totally efface themselves in order to write objectively, impersonally,or dramatically. Abrams, 1999: 34
B. Kinds of
Singapore’s Society that Suwen Encounters.
Suwen lived within the diversity Singapore‟s society. According to the multicultural feminists, the society‟s diversity caused some problems or conflicts
since each race tried to live their lives with personal ideological thinking. The main problem is the practice of oppression among the races.The writer decided
thatthere weretwo main or basic possible oppressions, the oppression from men and the oppression from women.
1. Men’s Oppression as Attached in Suwen’s Experience in Fistful of
Colours
Patriarchal practice was delivered as the situation where men had the full authority to govern the society without considering the essence of human rights, it
was found inFistful of Colours. In Fistful of Colours the writer also found out that there was the situation where women oppressed another women as direct spin-off
from the patriarchy system. Suwen, Nica, and Janice‟s family tried to survive
according to their ancestral culture that was built through their veins and flesh, therefore there was a gap that caused the conflict among races and cultures, as
emphasized by the Multicultural feminist that patriarchal practice was the product of diversity in the conflict of multi ethnic in Singapore.
a. Men’s Oppression in Suwen’s Family
