gender role as “…socially encouraged patterns of behavior exhibited by individuals in specific situations. Thus, a person acts to fulfill a role by behaving in the expected
way in the appropriate situation.” p.168. Gender role is not created by innate reasons, but by the activities which are associated with men and women, whether
being feminine or masculine.
6. Review on Gender Roles of Victorian Women
This study focuses on gender role of a noble Russian woman in the late 1800s. Therefore, to make it clear and more specific, the writer would like to add some
reviews related to the gender role of women, especially in Victorian Era. In her blog titled Life of Women in the Victorian Era, Nickson 2009 states that the role of
women in Victorian Era was really limited. Their life was forced to fulfill family commitments. Their only roles were to get married, raise children, and look after the
households. The groomed young ladies should be innocent, virtuous, biddable and dutiful in a marriage. They were obliged to learn French, dancing, drawing and
singing to help them get a perfect suitor. According to Soames 2004 in a website titled Marriage in the Victorian Era,
women married because they had limited options. They were not formerly educated and were only encouraged to find a man to marry and to have children. It shows that
women only have to fulfill their domestic duties as a wife and as a mother.
In his book titled Sex and Suffrage in Britain 1860-1914, Kent 1990 writes
that an arranged marriage was applied to women for the sake of their survival. Since
women were not allowed to make their own living, they had to be depending on the husbands‟ income. A husband had a complete control under his wife‟s and his
childrens‟ body, rights, identity and property p.86. He also states that marriage was considered by the Victorian Society as both the expected duty and the best position of
women p.91. In Victorian Families in Fact and Fiction, Kane 1995 says
that “to be even considered as a potential wife, women had to be not only virgins, but were expected
to remain innocent and “free from any thought of love or sexuality”. p.97. Moreover, Vickery 1993 thought that women were considered as dishonorable
human beings by men in Victorian period. He said: In reality women held an important position as wives since they took care of
the household, any servants, helped with the ir husband‟s work, and managed
the finances, however from the male‟s point of view, women were nothing more than overly emotional and mindless creatures ruled by their sexuality, or
simply “the Sex” p.389.
According to Kent 1990, being a mother was formally considered as a sacred and honored position in that era. A mother was seen as „the angel of the house‟, and
motherhood was „the crowning achievement of a woman‟s life‟ p.33. However, Holmes and Nelson 1997 say that motherhood is not assumed more respected than
marriage. According to their finding, sex for any other excuses than creating children was judged as a dirty and scandalous action which desecrated the sexless image of
motherhood. p.2.
The theory above means that to be a truly appreciated mother, a woman should be religious and free from sexual lust. Holmes and Nelson also said that, “a mother
who lacked religious faith could not instill sexual propriety in her daughter, and thus was unfit to be a mother at all.” p.21. It implies that being virginal and religious was
more important than the role of being a mother. Mothers were socially valued if they could become good mothers based on
rigid moral standards of propriety both in behavior and opinion. Thus, in a website titled Wom
en as “the Sex” During the Victorian Era, Zeltser 2004 says that: Thus mothers were viewed by men as angelic only if they seemed to eschew
sex, were meek, submissive, and conforming. Mothers, men kept in mind, were also women controlled by their emotions, and were socially accepted as
long as they stayed in their sphere of submissiveness and passivity.
From the theory above, it can be seen that like marriage, motherhood was also aimed at limiting women‟s roles in society. To be as sexually free as men, women should
escape from motherhood and violate the convention of the society and and the rules made by men.
In Victorian Era, women were not able to get justice by herself. Their justice was determined by the point of view of men as Perkin 1993 says th
at, “Justice was administered according to a male view of her rights, and of how she ought to behave.
It seemed appropriate that justice was portrayed as a blindfolded woman, since her scales were so tilted in favor of men.” p.113.
The same as the effort of getting justice, the desire of women to get a divorce would also not be accepted without men‟s favor. Holmes and Nelson writes that,
“While a wife‟s adultery was sufficient cause to end a marriage, a woman could divorce her husband only if his adultery had been compounded by another
matrimonial offense, such as cruelty or desertion.” p.40. Soames 2004 supports the idea above that Victorian women were difficult to
obtain a divorce. They were able to get a divorce if there was an adultery reason with a supplement of proving their husbands engaged in incest and crime. Women, as
wives and mothers, were considered unnatural to commit adultery because, they should be the moral guides for the children.
C. Theoretical Framework
This study provides some theories to support the analysis and to answer the two problems presented in the first chapter. They are; theory of character and
characterization, theory of psychological approach, theory of motivation, theory of needs, theory of gender role, and a review on Gender Roles of Women in Victorian
Era. The first is theory of character and characterization. It is used to answer the
first problem formulation, which is to identify how Anna Karenin described in the novel. The theory of character is used to find out what sort of character Anna Karenin
is. In addition, the theory of characterization is used to know how the author makes the character understandable in the story.
The second is theory of psychological approach, motivation, and needs. In this study, the writer uses the theory of psychological approach, motivation, and needs to
