Definition of Terms INTRODUCTION
theory. To Udayan, the Left Front and CPI M are nothing more than the puppets of wealthy landowners, and parliamentary politics has proven futile.
Mao and Che’s exhortations to bring about a revolution through violent struggle are all that remain for him, and fit his Newtonian sense of history
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Moreover, the main difference between this undergraduate thesis and Chaudry’s is the approach of the study. This undergraduate thesis considers this novel
as a Postcolonial Feminism novel, different form Chaudry who considers this novel as a Postcolonial novel. Based on the Postcolonial Feminism perspective, this
undergraduate thesis focuses on the character named Gauri as the base of an examination about her effort to redefine the concept of motherhood. Quoting from
Cahudry’s journal about Gauri’s characteristics: In Gauri, Lahiri has written the most captivating and controversial character in
all of her fictional works. She is a thoughtful and impulsive feminist; the perfect match for Udayan and the worst for Subhash and Bela
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Gauri was a character which came across as the most complex, unpredictable character whose thoughts and feelings were opaque from all - even from her own
daughter, Bela Udayan and Gauri’s daughter. According to TK Pius in his journal Jhumpa Lahiris the Lowland: A Critical Analysis, Gauri had several dominant
characteristics as a character in the novel. She was intelligent, open-minded, and has strong determination. Gauri was described as a smart, complicated, and selfish
woman. The qualities of her character help him to survive several crises in her adulthood life: the life before her 1st marriage with Udayan, her first marriage,
Udayan’s death, her 2nd marriage with Subhash and being alone after her separation with Subhash.
According to Pius in his journal Jhumpa Lahiris the Lowland: A Critical Analysis:
Though initially the reader perceives Bijolis prophecy that Gauri would never love Subhash, as being delivered by a woman embittered by the death of her
favorite son, it will turn out to be all too true: Gauri will abandon her daughter, Bela — conceived with Udayan and brought up by Subhash as his
own beloved child — to pursue her own dreams of studying philosophy and building an academic career. Lahiri never manages to make this terrible act —
handled by Gauri with cruelty and arbitrary high handedness — plausible, understandable or viscerally felt. Why would Gauri regard motherhood and
career as an eitheror choice? Why make no effort to stay in touch with Bela or explain her decision to move to California? Why not discuss her need to
leave her marriage and her child with her husband? 2014: 12
From the quotation above, it can be concluded that Pius was questioning Gauri’s decision as a woman and a mother, “Why would Gauri regard motherhood
and career as an eitheror choice?” Pius stated that Gauri showed no effort to show a “good mother” quality. In my opinion, those statement is an interpretation that Gauri
is expected to be a good mother and expected to have a sense of motherhood, that she had to put her husband, her daughter and her family first rather than her own dream to
pursue a higher education. Unlike Pius statement, this undergraduate thesis believes that Gauri’s decision should be seen as the act of changing perspective of herself in
attempt to retrieve subaltern position of a mother. Gauri’s strong belief that the social values and motherhood did not suit her, should be seen as the act of redefining the
concept of motherhood. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
In the first chapter, I stated that both first and second wave of feminism focused on the experience of White women, they did not include the existence and
experience of colored women who had been regarded as the second class members of both their own society and the dominant society. In 1984, Barbara Smith, a black
American feminist, spoke warmly of being part of a Third World feminist movement: And not only am I talking about my sisters here in the United States-American
Indian, Latina, Asian American, Arab American-am I also talking about women all over the globe. . . Third World feminism has enriched not just the
women it applies to, but also political practice in general 1984: 27.
The struggle of Third World women-both in the West and in the developing world-for recognition by Western feminism has been long and hard. More often the
silenced objects of Western analysis, Third World women are making their voices heard and are beginning to change the face of feminism in the West. One of the
studies about Postcolonial Feminism is the study of Subalternity. In an interview from 1993, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak clarifies that her use
of the term subaltern was and is very specific; the pure subaltern cannot, by definition, move upwards in the social hierarchy or make his or her voice heard. In
The Spivak Reader, to speak, in Spivak’s sense, is when there has been a “transaction between the speaker and the listener” and to her there is “something not spoken in the
very notion of subalternity” Landry, 1996: 289. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is one of the most influential figures in contemporary critical theory. However, her hugely
important theoretical work is often hard to approach for the first time. Her highly controversial essay Can the Subaltern Speak? with an obvious negative answer
denies the very possibility of cursing or voicing their angerwrath. The composition drawn from Gayatri Spivak, argues that to reclaim women’s ways for the field
requires a “strategic essentialism”, the ways in which subordinate or marginalized social groups may temporarily put aside local differences in order to forge a sense of
collective identity through which they band together in political movements Dourish, 2008. The strategic essentialism is designed to subvert the patriarchal, hierarchical
principles of current-traditional system Spivak, 1988: 41. In this undergraduate thesis, I will support the view of Gayatri Spivak which
argues that the Indian subaltern woman has a voice consciousness. Spivak’s conclusion that ‘the subaltern cannot speak’ will be the base for me to identify
Gauri’s characteristics in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland. The undergraduate thesis argues that Gauri has contributed with diverse representations of subaltern women in
the ‘Third World’ who—despite their oppressed and marginalized status—display the struggle to redefine the concept of motherhood.