She told them that she didn’t think it was necessary to cut off her hair, and they were really cross with her. They said to her she thought she was white
because she had Tommy behind her. But Mother didn’t think that at all and she was very upset. Nannup, 1992: 26
The quotation above showed us that Ngulyi made a resistance to avoid the law that reflected the practice of patriarchy which violated the women’s right by forced
women to do something. She refused to shave her hair and stood in her principle even though the men tortured her by jabbing her leg with a spear while kept forcing
her to shave her head in order to make herself ugly for somebody else, she told them that the law for women to shave the hair was not necessary to do, until the elders
and the men were really annoyed at her. She was also very upset about their opinion about her that she thought she was white because she had Tommy. And the writer
could conclude that this resistance is a part of Feminism which struggle for women’s right against the men rule and domination toward women.
2. Alice Bassett’s Response to the Practice of Patriarchy
The researcher now moves to the response that Alice has done in facing the practice of patriarchy that she experienced. As the researcher mentioned before in
the first problem formulation , Alice was already ‘reserved’ by an old man from her
society before she was born. ‘Reserved’ here means that the old man has already ask Alice’s mother to let Alice marry him one day when she was mature enough to
be married, Ngulyi as her mother could not do anything to refuse it. When Alice knew the truth that she has to marry the old guy, she refused it. When the old man
asked her to be a servant by feeding him, this was how Alice tried to refuse to feed PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
the old man although her mother gave her an advice to give him what he wants, as she says in the novel:
He’d be saying to me, ‘You my woman, you feed me.’ I said to him, ‘Mirda, nyinda buga,’ That means, no you buga, you stink.
‘Never mind about the buga,’ he said. ‘You my manga woman.’ Nannup, 1992: 35
In the conversation above, Alice refused to serve the man by directly said no when he said that she was his woman and asked her to feed him. She believed that she
did not belong to the old man. She also fought him back by saying that he smelled stink. But the men still insisted and affirmed that Alice was his woman and she had
to obey him. Although her mother gave her an advice to give the man all things he requested, Alice stood on her principle and resisted the old man.
Alice’s resistance did not stop at that time. She had an idea to run away from marrying that old man. She got a chance to escape from that guy when the
Campbells came to meet Alice’s family and they were going to take her to the South and educate her, like what the researcher had explained earlier. Alice says
, ‘I was really excited about going, it sounded like a real adventure. Besides, I thought, it
was a good way for me to get out of marrying that old fella I wa s promised to.’
Nannup, 1992: 39. In that sentence, Alice was really excited about going to the south and shows her consideration to escape for marrying the guy. She thought that
if she went to south far away from her home; she could avoid marrying the old man, and she also got an education there.
