literary works. This means there is no difference between the society portrayed in the novel and real-life society. Toward the assumption that society is too abstract
to be portrayed in the novel, Langland says the novel does not aim to become a “mirror” or an exact-concrete and detailed copy of society. This is because the
novel tends to shows the society from “patterned, formal relationship” among the people, which is truly existant in real-life society and does not depend on
absolutely fidelity to the outside world costumes, setting locality. The two theories provide facts that from a novel, a real-life society’s
condition can be seen and therefore provides an answer to the previous question: Could we study a society reflected in the novel to see the real society? In
conclusion, the writer can show how a real-life American society treats Chinese- Americans by seeing what happens in the novel that pictures it.
3. Post-Colonial Studies on Stereotypes, Prejudices, and Identity a.
Stereotypes and Prejudices
As stated in the problem formulation and objectives of the study, the character in this novel need to face stereotypes from Americans due to her
condition of being second-generation Chinese-American. Before going any further, a definition of stereotypes needs to be found. Joe Feagin, through his book
Racial and Ethnic Relations, defined the stereotypes as “an overgeneralization associated with racial or ethnic group that goes beyond existing evidence”
Feagin, 1978:12. The keywords here are overgeneralization and beyond existing evidence. This means that stereotyping is basically just overgeneralization,
meaning that people only take some of the fact about some races and
“overgeneralize” it to represent the whole race. People that stereotype Chinese as “nerds” for example, perhaps only found a number of Chinese who are like that.
However, they “overgeneralize” it so they all have a thought that all Chinese are nerds. The next question to be asked to those people is “Can they prove that all
Chinese are nerds?” Of course the answer is that they cannot prove that their stereotype is 100 correct because not all Chinese behave or are born like that.
This stereotype can be dismissed easily should there be a number of Chinese who are not “nerds.” However, the stereotypes will always be repeated eventhough it
has no proof because as Feagin noted, stereotypes is “overgeneralization associated with racial or ethnic group that goes beyond existing evidence.”
Therefore, basically stereotypes need no evidence to work because it “goes beyond” it. That is why stereotypes usually only consist of thought and
perspective, not a scientifically proven fact as it tends to use overgeneralization and goes beyond evidence.
In the practice stereotypes cannot be separated from prejudices, which themselves have many definitions, two of which are “a set of attitudes which
causes supports, or justifies discrimination” Rose, 1951:5 and “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” Allport, 1954:7. These two
definitions define prejudice as an antipathetic attitude toward a certain group based on generalizations that are not true. Prejudices are very closely related to
stereotypes, because prejudices are “reinforced and maintained by racial stereotypes and thus make stereotypes the mechanism while prejudice is the action
Kitano, 1985:49-51. Therefore, as long as stereotypes persist, prejudice will
