doing the works. Hooks 2000: 50 explains that working becomes the way women can gain self esteem and share their thought. Furthermore, they can get
better acceptance in the society. Women who work inside the house as housewives suffer to feel isolated, depressed and lonely while women who work
outside the house will be able to interact and share their burdens and problems with other people. Thus, working becomes the opportunity for women to show
their capability and strength to get their rights as the part of big society. Those forms of struggles are very important to do by women to speak out
about women’s problems in patriarchal society in order to get equality and freedom. Women should take real actions and challenge the oppression and
discrimination that trapped them to change not only people perception but also the condition. Therefore, women’s struggles can be categorized as the form of
empowerment to get equality and freedom.
4. Feminist Literary Criticism
Feminist literary criticism appears as a respond towards the emergence of feminist movement in 1960s. Cuddon 1999: 315 defines feminist literary
criticism as an attempt to examine and to explain women’s lives and experiences
in any kind of literature, such as novel, drama and poetry. Cuddon says that feminist literary criticism used to explore and scrutinize lives and experiences of
women in society in the form of literature. It facilitates feminist reading practices to explore more about women in different literary forms. Moreover, it can give
more understanding and opportunity for the feminist readers to read poetry, novels or prose and criticize male-based perception on it.
Plain and Seller 2007: 2 explain that feminist literary criticism appears as the result of women’s writing, women’s and men’s writing about “women’s minds,
bodies, arts and ideas.” It means that feminist literary criticism analyses women as writers and figures, in literary works. Furthermore, feminist literary criticism can
be applied in literary works written by both men and women. This criticism gains its popularity since its first appearance and it invites more people to analyse
literary works about women in order to understand more about women’s problems. Feminist literary criticism becomes the only way to explore about women
in the text. Hogeland in Gamble, 2006: 103 argues that feminist literary criticism as a kind of literacy to read about women’s texts and everyday life from a certain
perspective. However, in many male-authored works that can be considered as canonical texts, male authors construct their ideas about women based on their
own perceptions. As stated by Gamble 2009: 103 in canonical text, women are usually portrayed “as a part of crude sexual binary.” They are portrayed as virgins
or whores. Those men writers use binary opposition and gender stereotype to describe women. Therefore, women are falsely judged with negative traits and
stereotype that is believed by large society. Thus, people use the feminist literary criticism to criticize deeply about women’s issues in the patriarchal society.
Gamble explains 2009: 103 this criticism used to find out stereotypes of women and as a means to identify the ways of this judgement strengthen women’s
oppression. Therefore, feminist literary criticism seeks the wrong believes about women imposed by negative stereotype and false judgement.
Since the popularity of feminist literary criticism has aroused, many female writers are encouraged to write about women’s problems. Virginia Woolf
is one of the noticeable feminist writer examples who writes a bout women’s
problems. She writes A Room of One’s Own in 1929 as one of the feminist literary
criticisms that tells about women suffering from economic and cultural conflict. In her work, she criticizes that there are not many women who write because they do
not have the opportunity to write. The other feminist writer is Simone de Beauvoir who criticized about political argument towards women’s cultural identification
entitled Le Deuxieme Sexe in 1949. In this seminal work, she criticizes about the
position and role of women in society. She also becomes the first feminist who attempts to examine the way men depict women in fictional works Cuddon, 1999:
316-317. The above examples of feminist literary criticism explain about women’s
values and position in society who depict the writer’s idea in the form of literary
criticism. Feminist literary criticism clarifies male-based perception to be a neutralized perception in literature because literature plays an important role to
shape society mind-set. This cri ticism will be able to clarify about women’s
capabilities and nature, which is seen from women’s perspective. Thus, it will help women to be able to change society’s perspective about women and help
women to survive from harms caused by gender discrimination.
B. Children’s Literature
Literature is a means used to entertain, convey ideas, and values through language. Literature can be enjoyed not only by adults but also by children.
Children can enjoy reading literature that is intentionally made for them called as children’s literature. The development of children’s literature started when it still
became one of the most debatable topics among many scholars. Some of the scholars argue about the importance of children’s literature and how to define it
because there are no single definitions to explain about children’s literature.
Hunt 1991: 61 tries to define children’s literature. He defines it as “books read by, especially suitable for, or especially satisfying for, members of the group
currently defined a s children.” From this definition, Hunt wants to explain that
children’s literature is book that provide supreme values and pleasure for children. Furthermore, Wooden in Hintz and Tribunella, 2013: 51 argues “a literary work
becomes ‘children’s books’ when a child finds pleasure in it. Children themselves claim their own literature.” From these definitions, a book can be categorized as
children’s literature if children can enjoy reading the story through each page without any pressure.
There are various genres in literature and children’s literature becomes one
of the genres. Children’s literature according to Nodelman in Hintz and Tribunella, 2013: 52-
53 “… is a specific genre of fiction whose defining characteristics seem to transcend specifics of time and place, cut across other
generic categories such as fantasy or realism, and even remain consistent despite variations in the ages of intended audiences.” Therefore, people should understand
